Richie Sambora, Las Vegas Sun, April 20, 2001

Making it Rich Lisa Ferguson Friday, April 20, 2001 | 12:01 p.m. Forget "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and "Survivor." Richie Sambora is addicted to "Behind the Music." And there's no shame in that, according to the Bon Jovi ax man. "Man, I watch that stuff all the time. You learn a lot by doing that," Sambora said during a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. Doesn't matter who is the profile subject on the VH1 biography series. "Even the crazy ones, like Leif Garrett and things like that stuff that you never think youd be interested in. It really is a good program. It really grabs you." He even enjoyed the installment that's been airing this year about himself and his Bon Jovi bandmates frontman Jon Bon Jovi, drummer Tico Torres and keyboard player David Bryan -- whose "One Wild Night" tour stops Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. "I thought it was cool. We dug it," Sambora said of the Bon Jovi tell-all. "We were very, very candid about everything that we said, and we wanted to be." He's not kidding. Much was dredged up about the rock band, from its New Jersey beginnings nearly two decades ago, through its action-packed heydays in the '80s and early '90s, to its present course working its way back onto the music scene with its first new release in five years, "Crush." "You know, Bon Jovi was a band that almost never seemed to get dirty, you know what I mean?" Sambora, 41, reflected. "We just kept the dirt to ourselves ... We didn't feel like we had to discuss that with anybody else. "A lot of other bands kind of used their drug addiction and alcohol addiction as a marketing ploy or something. Whatever we were going through and getting through in the rock 'n' roll business, whether it was hardship between (the members) or people having bouts with alcohol or whatever, we just kept it to ourselves and that was the end of it." Some might have assumed the mid-'90s marked another end -- the end of the band. Then "Crush" surfaced last summer, and has so far produced a pair of singles, the pop-friendly rocker "It's My Life," and the love-soaked ballad "Thank You For Loving Me." Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi, who co-wrote most of the group's songs, will perform an acoustic version of the latter immediately following the MGM Grand show, at the Graceland Wedding Chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Their audience: 75 couples who won a national radio contest for which the private performance was the prize. Rob Sheffield reviewed "Crush" on the website rollingstone.com. In his pun-laced piece, he wrote that Jon Bon Jovi "does a fine job of shaking his Bon-Bon to the blow-dried rockish tunes on 'Crush,' especially ... 'It's My Life,' which sounds like a Britney (Spears') track shot through the heart with (guitarist) Richie Sambora's voice-box guitar." Not exactly a ringing endorsement but, Sheffield concluded, "Bon Jovi admirably keeps livin' on a prayer." Back to basics Next up for the band is a live CD, also titled "One Wild Night," scheduled for release in mid-May. It's a compilation of the band's biggest hits -- such as "You Give Love a Bad Name," "Bad Medicine," and "Lay Your Hands on Me" -- from 1984 through the present, recorded at Bon Jovi's live shows. "Everybody's been asking us to do a live record for such a long time," Sambora said, "and we've been recording live shows since 1983 ... It's a high-testosterone album; there's not one ballad on the record. And it's pretty guitar-heavy, which makes me happy." Is it correct to assume that the discs and the tour are Bon Jovi's attempt at staging a comeback? "We never really left," Sambora contends. "Domestically, in this particular country, it seems like there was a little lull in our career after like '96, and we went away for a bit." Sambora cited Jon Bon Jovi's budding movie career ("Moonlight and Valentino," "U-571") and solo record, "Destination Anywhere," as well Sambora's own 1998 solo release, "Undiscovered Souls," and tour. "But that's what we said we were gonna do." he said. Bon Jovi had released two records back-to-back -- 1994's "Crossroads," a greatest-hits compilation which sold more than 16 million copies, followed in '95 by "These Years." Those were followed by a tour that included stops in 42 countries. "So we looked at each other and said, 'You know, it's time to take a little break and do some individual, artistic stuff.' Jon really wanted to get into the movies, and he did, and he's doing a fantastic job at it. And I wanted to do a solo album and ... kind of nourish my own artistic desire." Besides Jon Bon Jovi and Sambora's solo efforts, Torres pursued his interests in creating art, and Bryan recently released an instrumental piano CD. "We said we were gonna come back in two years ... and we got together to write the 'Crush' album in '98. We were pretty much done in the summer of '99." But what halted the process, he said, was the merger of Bon Jovi's record company, Mercury, with Island Records and the Def Jam label (which collectively became the Island Def Jam Music Group). "They weren't ready to handle the global assault of a Bon Jovi album. It was a brand-new company and nobody really knew us." Sambora says the band had to, in essence, re-introduce itself and "show people we were part of the regime that built this house -- don't forget us." All in the family Sambora chalks the band's staying power up to "attitude and refusing to go away ... Success has afforded us a great education. If you keep your eyes open you learn, and I think that's one of the reasons we're still around. "The one thing about Bon Jovi is we transcended a lot of trends in the music business, and we really had to get our dander up to actually transcend the grunge period." It was that era of brooding rockers in flannel shirts -- and the work that Bon Jovi had to undertake to continue on despite it -- that Sambora said likely led to the departure of the group's bassist, Alec John Such, in the mid-'90s. "Basically what happened," Sambora explained, "was he was a bit older than the rest of us, and he just kind of got sick of keeping up, I think. "We weren't nowhere near" the grunge sound, Sambora said. "So Jon and I had to make breakthroughs as songwriters, we had to make breakthroughs as record makers ... and (Such) just didn't want to keep up with the evolutionary process like the other four of us wanted to continue to do." (Bassist Hugh McDonald stepped in to fill Such's spot.) "We didn't hold it against (Such). We just kind of went, 'OK, we kind of get that.' He couldn't hold hold up his end anymore, and he really didn't want to work that hard. It's all cool." In fact, the band has invited Such to join them this summer for two dates at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., where the "One Wild Night" tour will wrap up. "A rock 'n' roll band is much like a family. You have to get over it when people have arguments, and there's gonna be disagreements. Nothing's perfect, and you can't pretend it's gonna be ... so you have to be prepared to have the metal to stand there and not be a sissy and deal with it." Speaking of families, Sambora's clan -- including his wife, "Spin City" star Heather Locklear, and their young daughter, Ava -- is rather high-profile. But husband and wife don't concern themselves much with the celebrity aspect of their relationship. "Heather and I both share the same opinion of this: We look at it as we're very privileged to have a great job and go to work, and that's really the way we keep it," he said. "The fame is the pain -- that's the hard part." Lisa Ferguson is the Sun's assistant features editor. Reach her at lisa@lasvegassun.com or 259-4060. archive