‘Look, if that’s what other bands are doing and you think it will work for us, then yeah, I’m open to it,’ he said.
We met Desmond in a little garage somewhere in New York, and he played us three or four demos he had sketched out. Immediately, I could tell this was the right move. Jon’s eyes opened wide, and he smiled. It seemed like he was picturing himself singing these songs, or similar ones, to giant crowds. Jon and Desmond talked for a while about music. They were influenced by many of the same artists, and their personalities clicked. It was a match made in heaven—or as close to heaven as you can get in the Tri-State area.
Having landed the perfect co-writer, we needed the right production team. Tony and Lance had been nightmares. Fortunately, the label agreed to pony up for someone more established. I had heard about producer Bruce Fairbairn and his engineer/protegee, Bob Rock, who made their names working with Loverboy. Bruce also produced albums by Blue Öyster Cult and Krokus, and he and Bob had just worked with melodic hard rockers Black ’N Blue.
I figured the dream team of Richie, Jon, Desmond, Bruce, and Bob was a sure thing. Everyone was pumped, except maybe Bruce, whose initial reaction was, ‘I’m not going to do anything with them until they’ve got great songs.’ Fair enough. I sent him six songs. Four were by Desmond, including a demo of ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’; two were by Jon and Richie, including ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive.’
Bruce called me, fighting to hold back his enthusiasm. ‘Okay, I want to do it.’
I got Jon and Bruce on the phone. Then, Bon Jovi flew to Bruce’s studio in Vancouver, Little Mountain, and began work on Slippery When Wet. I wondered how the change of venue would affect the band’s mood. Maybe I was projecting, since back in the Gentle Giant days I had hated recording outside of London, and Vancouver was far away from the East Coast environment the band members were used to. There was no reason to worry. From the start, Jon and Bruce blended like peas and carrots. And Bruce, Bob, and their team had a superb work ethic. Everyone was meticulous about working on every song until it was perfect.
I visited them in Vancouver five times while they were working on the album, and each time it was clear that everyone was excited, dedicated, and in great spirits. When they finished, they screened the album for four or five people from PolyGram. Played in its entirety, it was clear that this thing was going to be huge. There were hit singles on there, but that wasn’t the only selling point. Everything flowed in the same direction, and nothing was lacking from any of the songs—no missing parts, no hastily constructed segues, nothing to interrupt the listening experience. It rocked, it grooved, it was poppy, it was infectious. Everything about it felt right. It’s very hard to describe the overwhelming state of euphoria I felt, or how I absolutely knew that this was going to be one of the biggest albums of all time. I would have bet my career on it. I knew Slippery When Wet would move mountains. And it did.
Radio programmers went crazy as soon as they heard it. MTV played the video for the first single, ‘You Give Love A Bad Name,’ non-stop, and the song and album shot straight to #1. Then came ‘Livin’ On A Prayer,’ which became the longest-running #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, and ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive.’ And the band kept going.
Jon was a gorgeous, instantly recognizable rock star, Richie was a big-shot guitar hero, and Bon Jovi sold out arenas and stadiums across the world. Slippery When Wet was the top-selling album of 1987 and to date has sold more than twenty-eight million copies worldwide.
I was immensely proud to have been a part of Bon Jovi’s gestation and evolution. At the same time, the victory was bittersweet since I knew my days as a creative force for the band had peaked. Slippery When Wet was the last Bon Jovi album that really rocked, and it served as the missing link between Jon the rock star and Jon the pop icon. From there, the band branched out further into the pop world, and my role in their career became less significant. I had done what I could to make Jon a star, and I had fulfilled my obligation to his mom to look after her boy. Now, Jon was a man, and he was calling all the shots. I was getting ready to move on too, to explore different paths and make new discoveries.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
POP GOES
THE WORLD
Having discovered, developed, and signed Bon Jovi, I rapidly moved up at PolyGram and landed other big artists before anyone else knew who they were. Not long after Bon Jovi came on board, a manager in Philadelphia named Larry Mazur came to my office to plug another new band. We shook hands, and he handed me a demo tape that had at least sixty songs on it. I didn’t have the time or patience to make it through the whole thing, but even though the songs weren’t fully fleshed out, I could tell right away that the vocalist, Tom Keifer, had a fucking amazing voice.
‘Okay, this guy sounds really good,’ I told Larry. ‘When the band plays another show, let me know, and I’ll try to make it.’
Around the same time, Jon told me he had seen this melodic metal band at the Empire Rock Club in Philly and they’d blown him away. Both Larry and Jon were referring to the same band, Cinderella. Ever since Elton John introduced me to the music of Spirit—and maybe even before that, when all these legends at the Abbey Road café turned me on to British Invasion bands—I knew that when a musician you admire tells you to check out a band, you should take them seriously.
I went down to The Trocadero to see Cinderella, and the crowd was decent. As soon as they hit the stage, it was clear that my instincts were right about their singer, Tom, who was also a guitarist. He had the looks and chops to be a star, and the bassist, Eric Brittingham, was also talented and had a strong stage presence. But the second guitarist and the drummer, Michael Schermick and Tony Destra, weren’t very good. They were dragging the band down. I knew Tom could rise to great heights, and I wanted to be there when it happened. But this wasn’t the lineup for him to do that.
‘So, what do you think?’ Larry asked me backstage after the show.
‘Honestly, Tom’s great, and Eric’s great. But I can’t sign them because you’ve got half a band here.’
Larry took me over to meet Tom. When we started talking, I asked him what he wanted as a musician. Tom wasn’t like Jon. He didn’t tell me he wanted to be bigger than Elvis. He was more humble than that. He told me how much he loved Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy and wanted to be in a cool, bluesy rock band. I love that stuff, too, but that’s not what I wanted to hear from someone when I asked them about their goals. I wasn’t sure he wanted to be a rock star badly enough.
I told Tom we should stay in touch and to keep sending me any new music. I guess he might have been hungrier than I originally gave him credit for. Over the next year, he sent me another hundred songs, and they were considerably better than the first batch. To my relief, he fired Schermick and Destra in 1985. The two formed the glam-metal band Britny Fox, who eventually wound up on CBS; tragically, Destra died in a car accident two years later. Larry helped Tom put together a better band featuring guitarist Jeff LaBar and drummer Fred Coury and invited me to see another one of their gigs. Everyone in the band looked prettier than Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, making them, perhaps, the prettiest of all the pretty boy bands. They were better with makeup than most women, and from the back, many people mistook them for girls. More importantly, though, they rocked hard.
I signed Cinderella to a development deal and called the producer Andy Johns, who agreed to record four songs at the Sound Factory in Hollywood. They came out with the single ‘Shake Me’ and three other tunes, all of which sounded like the soundtrack to a roaring party. It was good-time, down-and-dirty, bluesy rock’n’roll. There was no question that Tom had evolved to star level, and his new band had the attitude to back his performance. I immediately took a major interest in them, offering them a deal for a full album, as well as working with Tom to co-write one of their biggest hits.