Soon the two realized how effectively they worked together and the hits began flowing. Even though it was a simple four-track recording, their writing and stuff has a lot of depth twenty four years of depth actually because I still listen to those records and it still drives me and inspires me to write more.”Īfter Richie joined the band Jon asked if he wrote and when Sambora replied in the affirmative the creative wheels were set in motion. And it’s really funny because I’m 30 now and today I listen to those records as a producer and songwriter and I still get inspired and still find more in them. I was the coolest kid on the block cause I had my own music. It was “Love Me Do” on Veejay Records by the Beatles and “I Should Have Known Better” on Capitol. It’s your own.’ It was my first possession. He said ‘son, I want to give you this, this is your music. “The first memory I ever had in my life was my Dad coming home with a little victrola and two singles. Maybe it’s God, maybe your experiences, but I guess eventually it’s God.” Sometimes I think you open yourself up and it just comes through you. “I started to come into my head for songs. “I started writing as soon as I could play,” Richie says recalling his songwriting roots.

Like Jon, Richie felt songwriting was an integral part of his career as a musician.

At the time Sambora was a musician and entrepreneur with his own group, Message, and his own label, Dream Disc Records. Jon then hand-picked the musicians for his band – drummer Tico Torres, bassist Alec John Such, keyboardist David Bryan and guitarist Richie Sambora. A song he wrote titled “Runaway” became a part of a local radio compilation album, and became a hit, garnering airplay in Detroit, Denver, Tampa, Minneapolis and New York in addition to the young artist’s native New Jersey.

“Right around my eighteenth birthday I realized it was a dead end street and I joined as the singer in another guy’s band that was playing all originals, but nonetheless I was learning a whole new avenue from these people.”īon Jovi put what he learned performing other people’s original material to use and soon began writing and recording demos of his own tunes. “I was in cover bands until I was 18 years old,” Jon recalls settling onto the sofa in his dressing room backstage before a Nashville concert. Both men say they decided early that songwriting would play an important role in their musical careers.

80's jon bon jovi