Around the time Bon Jovi were preparing to start work on their second album, my son Noah was born, and I invited Jon to come to my house and celebrate the bris with us. Jon knew that a bris was a Jewish tradition, but I think he thought it was a just celebration of a baby’s birth. He didn’t know what he was in for. He arrived, took a look at Noah, and congratulated me. He kissed my wife, told her how beautiful Noah was, and then mingled a bit and sipped champagne. A few minutes later, the mohel took Noah in a blanket and walked to the center of the room. I’m sure Jon thought the man was like a rabbi; he’d say a few prayers and then everyone would continue to celebrate.
In the Jewish faith, a mohel is a specialist who performs circumcisions on newborns. I could see Jon smiling as he watched the mohel say a prayer in Hebrew and lift Noah. When the doc slipped the blanket off Noah and pulled out a knife, Jon’s smile disappeared, and his face turned white. The mohel flicked his knife, Noah cried, and Jon looked like he was going to throw up, faint, or both. When the baby was bandaged, wrapped in a blanket, and stopped crying, Jon seemed to regain his composure, but I could tell he had been enlightened in a way he didn’t expect.
There’s a saying that a band have their whole career to write their first album and less than a year to create the second. It’s what separates the one-hit wonders from the career acts. Bon Jovi weren’t quite ready to follow up their debut that quickly, but they did the best they could and wrote some pretty good songs, including ‘In And Out Of Love’ and ‘Only Lonely,’ which were solid singles. Richie had co-written four songs on Bon Jovi. This time he co-wrote six. As far as I could tell, the process went smoothly, especially considering how little time they had to throw everything together.
Once Bon Jovi got into the studio, their circumstances changed. The most affordable move would have been to go back to the Power Station and record with the same gear used on the first album. For obvious reasons, that wasn’t going to happen. So, we hired Lance Quinn, who had engineered the first album, to produce the new one, with Obie O’Brien as engineer and peacemaker, and booked time at a studio called the Warehouse in Philadelphia, which was cheaper than any decent New York-area studios.
I went down to Philly to oversee the recording, and right away it was clear that the anxiety level within the band had risen exponentially. Spending all their time on the road and in the writing room had taken its toll. Jon was short-tempered and stressed out, and he and Ritchie hardly joked around anymore. The band’s goal, it seemed, was to quickly record the songs and get the fuck back home. However, their path was strewn with obstacles. Everyone thought that having the familiar face of Quinn to walk them through the second album would be a good idea. No one realized he wasn’t a good producer and didn’t collaborate well with bands. He and Jon were soon locking horns like angry rams. Having released one album, Jon wanted to call the shots in the studio, but Lance treated him like a student in a remedial class. They both had big egos, and while truthfully Jon wasn’t ready to steer the ship, Lance should have looked at him as an apprentice, not an underling.
The biggest problem with Lance was that he had worked with Tony, and that immediately soured him to Jon. Also, Lance would interject if he didn’t like something the band played, but he lacked the creativity or the people skills to help massage ideas that were close but not there yet. Jon was great at coming up with riffs and melodies, but he hadn’t mastered the art of cohesively combining them. Tony Bongiovi had been able to work with rough ideas and blend them together, which is why the first album sounded good. Lance didn’t do that so well—he simply shot down anything that didn’t sound right to him, which infuriated Jon.
After one shouting match too many, I had had enough.
‘Lance, this isn’t working. You’re off the project,’ I said sternly.
‘You can’t do that,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t finish it without me.’
‘We can and we will,’ I corrected him.
His response? He turned around, dropped his pants, and flashed his ass at me.
‘Wow, okay,’ I responded. ‘I’m impressed. Did you learn that from Tony?’
After a few moments of silence, and with the temperature rising, he told me to go fuck myself and left.
With Lance out of the picture, the songs on 7800 Fahrenheit still weren’t as cohesive as they should have been, and it was too late to erase the tracks that were already finished. We had to defer to Obie O’Brien, the main engineer, to finish recording the album with the band. Jon got along far better with Obie than Lance, and Obie made everything sound good. In the end, the album wasn’t bad. It wasn’t a sophomore slump. Jon sang his heart out, Richie played his ass off, and so did everyone else in the band. There were some good songs. Maybe they would have been better with a different producer, but the band still rocked when they needed to and tugged at the heartstrings at just the right moments. When I heard the final mix, I put my hand on my chin and wondered, Hmm, is this going to work or not?
Bon Jovi hadn’t been away for long, and they still had a lot of momentum. Their live shows had improved, and they held their own opening for Ratt, Dokken, and even Judas Priest. Interestingly, their fans weren’t just male anymore. A sizable number of girls started showing up, and not just with their boyfriends. MTV started playing the videos for ‘Only Lonely’ and ‘In And Out Of Love,’ which boosted the band’s reach considerably. Everyone at the label was aware that 7800 Fahrenheit wasn’t as good as the debut, but we could all see the band was still drawing crowds, and the singles were performing—if not well enough to catapult album sales then at least sufficiently to put asses in seats.
Doc and I knew we had promised the moon and delivered just a few stars, which made the record a minor disappointment to the label (even though it eventually went platinum). The question was, what do we do next? Instead of doubling down and waiting for lightning to strike, we tripled our efforts and helped create a thunderstorm.
Jon and Richie were a good writing team, but they were still young, and while they could compose strong hooks, they didn’t always know how to use them in a song in the best way. Doc and I thought it would be a good idea to have an established hit songwriter work with the band. I did some homework and discovered that KISS had worked with Desmond Child on their single ‘Heaven’s On Fire’ and two other songs.
‘Who’s this Child guy?’ I asked Gene and Paul. They told me that Desmond had been in a group called Desmond Child & Rouge in the 70s. KISS discovered him on Capitol and asked if he would work with them. One of his gems, the 1979 disco-tinged hit ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ from KISS’s Dynasty, helped resurrect the band. Child had also worked with Billy Squire, Cher, and Bonnie Tyler.
I called Desmond, who said he was open to meeting Bon Jovi. Then I told Jon what I was thinking. ‘You and the band are great, and you and Richie work well together,’ I said, buttering him up. ‘You’re about one step from being huge. What would you say to the idea of working with another songwriter for the next album? There are a lot of other rock stars out there that hire incredible, well-known hitmakers, and we think that would be a great move for you.’
If someone had come up to me in the early days of Gentle Giant and said that I should hire someone to write hits for me, I would have told them to fuck off. Having dealt with hundreds of artists, I’ve learned that’s how most people would react—but not Jon. His desire to be a star outshined his ego.