nice one, jon!


Kerrang! January 13, 1996

Bon Jovi have bagged top honours in an astonishing SEVEN categories in our Readers’ Poll - including worst band and worst album! Here are the results in full - with commentary from Jason Arnopp...

Best band:
1. Bon Jovi
2. The Wildhearts
3. White Zombie
4. Metallica
5. Green Day

The winners: Bon Jovi
A top year for Bon Jovi who enjoyed 3 consecutive sell-out nights at Wembley Stadium in June. They won the Kerrang! Hall Of Fame Distinction at the Big K!‘s annual award ceremony and they were also voted Best International Live Act. Plus Jon and the boys exchanged tongue-in-cheek jibes with Brit starlets Reef. Their ‘These Days’ album, the band’s sixth, shifted millions of copies worldwide. A truly triumphant year in every respect...

Did you know?
Eight of last years top ten bands don’t feature in this year’s top ten. It’s tough at the top...

Best album:
1. Bon Jovi - These Days
2. The Wildhearts - P.H.U.Q.
3. Paradise Lost - Draconian Times
4. White Zombie - Astro Creep 2000
5. Iron Maiden - The X Factor

The winners: Bon Jovi - These Days
’These Days’ has sold consistently all over the world and makes Bon Jovi just about the biggest rock band on the planet these days.

Did you know?
Last years’ ‘Cross Road’ Bon Jovi compilation - one of the UK’s best-selling albums of the past 5 years- only snuck in at Number 8 in the 1994 Kerrang! Readers’ Poll.

Worst band:
1. Bon Jovi
2. Take That
3. The Wildhearts
4. Warrior Soul
5. Hole

The winners: Bon Jovi
At the start of 1995, we still had the lingering unpleasant aftertaste from watching Jon snog Cindy Crawford for the super-soppy festive single ‘please Come Home For Christmas’. Please never do anything vaguely similar again, Jon. Drummer Tico Torres also made people painfully jealous and irritated by frolicking on the beach with a topless Eva ‘Hello Boys’ Herzigova, the Wonderbra model. Not that Tico personally invited those 40 tabloid photographers... In June, Bon Jovi busked at three different UK locations in the space of a day. Smooth bastards.

Did you know?
Jon Bon Jovi had now shaved off all of his chest hair for a role in the new ‘erotic’ thriller ‘The Leading Man’? His bald torso is said to look ‘hideous’.

Worst album
1. Bon Jovi - These Days
2. Iron Maiden - The X Factor
3. AC/DC - Ballbreaker
4. Greenday - Insomniac
5. Bon Jovi - The best of Cross Road

The winners: Bon Jovi
Well, it would definitely seem that you either love Bon Jovi....or you bloody well loathe them. Two albums into the ‘worst album of the year’ category? Oh dear...

Did you know?
No fewer that four of your worst albums of the year were each given the maximum five Ks by Kerrang! Writers. Ah...

Dick of the year:
1. Jon Bon JOvi
2. Axl Rose
3. Courney Love
4. John Major
5. Malcome Dome

The winner: Jon Bon Jovi
The final Jovi ‘triumph’. There are many reasons why one might cast a vote for Jon: he’s got lots of money, and he’s the ‘Tasty Bloke of the year’. He’s snogged Cindy Crawford. None of his songs sound like Green Day, and they’re a bit girly.

Did you know?
Jon Bon Jovi probably doesn’t care that some of you think he’s a dick. Still, he’s paid off all the Kerrang! Team’s mortgages in exchange for your home addresses. Chico and Lefty will be paying a visit soon.

Taste bloke of the year
1. Jon Bon Jovi
2. Burton C Bell
3. Iron Maiden's Eddie
4. Danny of the Wildhearts
5. Ozzy Osbourne

The winner: Jon Bon Jovi
Jon’s first comment to get the girls clutching their crotches last year was a prediction for the band’s Wembley summer shows. He promised everyone an orgasm during the set. We were only too happy to excite the ladies even further by running the line ‘Jon Bon Jovi: “Watch me orgasm”!‘ On the cover of Kerrang! More knicker-wetting news sprang up a couple of month’s ago when Jon admitted that his acting role in The Leading Man would involve him wearing only his birthday suit. “I see my dick every day,” he shrugged, and Britain experienced minor earthquakes as a million fans colapsed simultaneously.

Did you know?
Iron Maiden’s Eddie character has been in this bloody chart every year since time began.

Best promo video
1. Bon Jovi - Something For The Pain
2. Therapy? - Diane
3. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Warped
4. Fear Factory - Replica
5. Paradise Lost - Replica

The winner: Bon Jovi - Something For The Pain
’Something For The Pain’ features a young rock kid standing in a record store. He’s watching a screen showing impersonations of Eddie Vedder and Courtney love and is clearly giving them the thumbs down. When Bon Jovi appear, he looks much happier. Bon Jovi themselves hardly appear in the video at all - probably due to the band’s dislike of videos full stop. Their most recent video ‘Lie To Me’ caused internal rows aplenty.

Did you know?
Bon Jovi deny that their ‘Something For the pain’ video was taking the piss out of grunge stars. “Actually,” reckons JBJ, “Everybody came off looking pretty good in it. I don’t think there was any defamation going on there....”

Jon vs. The Wildhearts
They dominated the Kerrang! Readers’ Poll - but Jon Bon Jovi and Wildheart’s mainman Ginger couldn’t be more different. Paul Rees pits the 2 together in a one-off clash of the titans...

Jon Bon Jovi
Birthplace:
Perth Amboy, New Jersey
Age:
33
Previous bands:
Before Bon Jovi, Jon gigged around New Jersey - presumably seated atop a steel horse - in Atlantic City Expressway and The Rest (as in, Give It A...). The former sounded like Bruce Springsteen. The latter were an embryonic version of Bon Jovi (ie, their stetsons were smaller)
Image:
Jon is now your average, suave, sophisticated multi-millionaire rock-star about town. He wears designer clothes and has his barnet so rigorously coiffeured that not a single hair would fall out of place in a hurricane. A far cry, in fact, from the early days of Bon Jovi when Jon appeared to have a live poodle on his head, used a trowel to apply his make-up and wore what looked like a pair of fishnet stockings as a shirt. Or ‘Slippery When Wet’ era Bon Jovi when Jon famously mutated into Clint Eastwood crossbred with Liberace.
Attitude:
Jon doesn’t say nasty things about other bands. He never complains about life in a rock band. He is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Dorothea. He is a nice man. A very very nice man. Unless of course, you cross him, like ex-Bon Jovi bassist Alec John Such, in which case he can be more ruthless than a shark in a goldfish bowl.
Wealth:
Jon is so rich that he could buy Wales with his loose change. Mainly this is due to the fact that Bon Jovi have sold squillions of records. But also, Jon is so astute as a businessman that he could sell ice to an Eskimo.
Sexual preferences:
Jon has been a happily married man for 5 years. He has 2 children. So, he doesn’t fire blanks.
Leader of the gang:
Bon Jovi are famously known as The Brotherhood. But Jon is Big Brother. And when he says, “We’ll be playing my solo hit, Blaze of Glory live tonight, but Richie, don’t bother teaching the rest of them the chords to Stranger In This Town, cocker”. Sambora, Bryan, Torres and the bloke-who-replaced-Such-but-isn’t-allowed-in-the-photos are highly unlikely to throw a sack over his head and give him a good seeing-to.
Home:
Jon’s house in New Jersey is so big, Noah could have used it as his ark. And he also owns a beach-side pad in the millionaires’ playground, Malibu.
Would he give you his last Rolo?
Yes. Jon Bon Jovi is so generous he once invited Kerrang!‘s news newt Malcome Dome round to his gaff for a barbeque. On the understanding that Dome brought his own bottle. And food.
Personal happiness:
Wife. Two kids. Two houses. A wallet more stuffed than Meat Loaf’s Y-fronts. Basically, Jon is happier than a dung beetle in a compost heap.
They say:
“I respect Jon. He has the ability to see the hole and just rush into it...” - Richie Sambora
“Jon always thinks I suck!” - Alec John Such
“Jon Bon Jovi is a Bruce Springsteen fan. I’m a Metallica fan in my early twenties. Who do you think would win a fight between us?” - Sebastian Bach.
He says:
“I’m not really envious of anyone. I’ve been fortunate myself.”
Don't mention:
Skid Row royalty cheques. Seb Bach once alleged that Jon had taken the money Skid Row had earned from their first LP. Surprisingly, given Jon’s Italian blood, Bach has yet to wake up to find a horse’s head in his bed.
Ambitions:
Jon Bon Jovi is keen to launch a movie carreer. Thus far though, he has undergone the triple indignity of being shot in ‘Young Guns’, having to have his chest waxed for ‘Moonlight and Valentino’ and being asked to whip his todger out for erotic thriller ‘The Leading Man’. On this form, his next lead role could well be ‘A Day In The Life of a Bogie’.
Ego:
You cannot pout and preen and wiggle your hips in front of several thousand people every night without being massively self-assured.
Highs:
From ‘Slippery When Wet’ to ‘These Days’ Jon Bon Jovi’s career has almost always scaled stratosphere-scraping heights...
Lows:
...apart from when he and the band suffered alarming burn-out after almost 4 years on tour at the end of the ‘New Jersey’ trek. Jon was so upset, he grew a beard. He looked like David Bellamy.
Where next?
The stadia of Europe next summer. The global cinema screen...
If Jon met Ginger:
“Hello. May I just say I respect anyone who can survive in this cut-throat business we call rock and roll? Ouch!”