It's just so sickening: Bon Jovi: The Billboard Cover Story

Bon Jovi: The Billboard Cover Story

Around the turn of the millennium, Bon Jovi found another gear.

The result of the shift has been a decade of career-altering achievement in just about any category used to quantify success in popular music: touring, hit songs, awards, branding, No. 1 albums, DVDs, all produced at a remarkably prolific pace.

Call it the next level. But not the last level.

Driven by the intense work ethic, broad vision and rock'n'roll charisma of its frontman and namesake, Jon Bon Jovi, this band is still breaking new markets, finding new fans and remaining relevant while most of the rock groups that emerged in the '80s either have disbanded or are relegated to playing decades-old hits with little hope of charting new ones.

If Bon Jovi were a stock, it would be a blue-chipper-savvy investors would be bullish. And Jon Bon Jovi is CEO, the personification of that delicate intersection of art and commerce. He accepts that description, with a caveat. "The commerce is really just a by-product of the art," he says, calling from a hotel room in Los Angeles where he's decompressing from the latest mega-tour by writing and cutting tracks with multiple Grammy Award-winning songwriter/producer John Shanks for what will end up being the next Bon Jovi album.

"The intent wasn't that I picked up a guitar to make money," he continues. "I loved the idea of learning to play and perform, and then when I chose it as a career path, it was only for the passion. The by-product of that was we were very successful and, subsequently, not only earned but kept our money, as opposed to so many other artists you read about that weren't as lucky."

 

Bon Jovi: Billboard's Top Touring Act of 2010

 

As successful as the band continues to be, Bon Jovi's aspirations have long transcended musical confines. "I always saw a much bigger, broader canvas than just being the lead singer in a rock'n'roll band," he says. "My peer group aspired to be on the cover of Circus magazine. I aspired to be on the cover of Time. There was just so much more I wanted to do in the world than just be a guy in a rock band."

Even so, the "guy in a rock band" thing is working out OK. The numbers alone confirm Bon Jovi is truly among the elite acts on the planet by any stat that matters. Five hundred eleven shows at stadiums and arenas around the globe since 2000 have moved nearly 13 million tickets, resulting in a gross just shy of $1 billion. A worldwide tour merch per-cap average of about $8.50 means an estimated $110 million in gross sales during the past decade. In this young century, the band's only label home, Island Records, has released eight albums and a boxed set generating more than 23 million units sold worldwide, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Universal Music Group (UMG). Five live DVDs have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide.There are other milestones. Jon Bon Jovi won a Grammy (in 2007 for his duet with Jennifer Nettles, "Who Says You Can't Go Home") and was inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame in 2009. The band received MTV Europe Music Awards' Global Icon honor in 2010, and also performed at the Grammys for the first time.

The group's tours finished as Billboard's highest-grossing twice (in 2008 and 2010). The band became one of a handful of acts to perform on the Great Lawn in New York's Central Park. The "Circle" world tour -- which wrapped this summer with a $365 million gross, according to Billboard Boxscore -- and the preceding "Lost Highway" tour, not only continued building the group's North American and European audiences, but also sold out shows in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

Bon Jovi has more than 14 million Facebook friends, and BonJovi.com claims a database exceeding 1.3 million people. The band generates $2 million annually in online merch sales. And it's not just the fans that are loyal -- Paul Korzilius, co-manager of the group with David Munns at Bon Jovi Management, has worked with the band since its earliest headlining days. Bon Jovi's global touring partnerships with Creative Artists Agency and AEG Live have become synergistic beasts, with the latter producing the band's last three world tours. There are two reasons for all of the success: great songs performed well, and the drive and vision of Jon Bon Jovi.

"No one works harder than Jon," CAA managing partner Rob Light says. "No one is more involved on every level of his career as an artist than Jon. He knows exactly who he is and has embraced that, so it's much easier to then go market it. He's comfortable being Bon Jovi and Jon Bon Jovi. He knows what that brand means."

The high regard for Bon Jovi the band extends to Bon Jovi the man, and transcends the music business. "He's one of those people who's just gotten better," "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels says. "Jon is one of those guys who I'd never underestimate. We're not talking about him in the past. We're talking about him now. That alone marks him as something to watch. Longevity is a testament to something other than a marketing campaign."

Formed in New Jersey in 1983, the group -- Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres and then-bassist Alec John Such -- was let loose upon the world with "Bon Jovi" in 1984, then exploded with "Slippery When Wet" two years later. (Hugh McDonald has handled bass duties since Such left the band in 1994.) Unlike many of its counterparts, Bon Jovi weathered both the grunge era and internal conflicts unscathed, consistently racking up hit albums and global tours and settling comfortably into a superstar groove before taking an amicable hiatus in 1997. Despite having already seen enough success for 10 bands, the break was only the calm before the next storm.

 

U2, Bon Jovi Lead Forbes List of 25 Highest-Paid Musicians

 

In retrospect, it's now clear that 2000's "Crush," the band's seventh studio album, was the jumping-off point for a huge commercial and creative renaissance, and "It's My Life" became the group's most important single in a decade. Bon Jovi had already developed his career as an actor and was respected in that field, but filming "U-571" with such stars as Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton and Harvey Keitel oddly brought the singer a renewed vigor and vision toward his music. Focusing on acting brought him new "source material," he says, leading to "a great period of growth which was based on humility."

For inspiration, Bon Jovi turned to another famous Garden State hero. "I came home and said to Richie, 'I want to be Frank Sinatra. I'm going to make movies here, I'm going to make music there, I'm going to run the business here. This is the way it's going to be,'" he recalls. "It's the Sinatra kind of vision. He got a president elected. He did incredible things for civil rights at the time. He was making movies, music, and he was doing it the way he wanted to do it. Frankie said, 'I did it my way,' that beauty of that honest lyric. The people who related to that song found Frankie in themselves. It was an incredibly empowering lyric-it empowered me. That's what happens when you hit on a lyric that's honest and true."

 

Next: Bon Jovi 'Could Have Sold My Soul A Hundred Times Over'