While artists like Billy Joel, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner have had Broadway musicals written around their songs, it doesn’t sound like you’ll ever see one featuring the Bon Jovi catalog.
“I’ve been asked to do that 100 times,” Jon Bon Jovi tells Variety about the possibility of doing a jukebox musical. “Everybody wanted to write the story of Tommy and Gina [from ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’], but I’m going to guess that ABBA did it and Jersey Boys did it, and they did it really well many, many years ago. So I have turned down that opportunity time and again.”
It seems Jon feels like the band’s story has already been told on the stage.
“I do recall all those years ago when I saw Jersey Boys, and I went, ‘Oh, that’s our story.’ That’s every band’s story. So our story isn’t that unique,” he explains. “And then I thought, OK, if you take the characters of Tommy and Gina and build two and a half hours around the catalog and their life, then it’s Mamma Mia. So that’s not unique.”
Instead, Jon is working hard to get his voice back after having vocal surgery two years ago. And when he does, he hopes to get his band back onstage for a tour.
“I know that none of us can achieve perfection, but I have to achieve excellence in order for me to do it on that level again, or I won’t,” he says. “I don’t want to pretend to be something I was … I don’t try to be that boy from 29 years ago, but I want to be the very best version of the 2024 version of me.”
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