Bon Jovi and me: David Bryan - page 2

16-06-2006 22:30

And what did you think of Axl Rose when he left fans waiting for hours last week

Ha ha ha. Well, to be honest I think it's the same behaviour that was there zillions of years ago. I just don't get it. We will never ever do that to our fans. It's an honour and a big gift to get to where we are at and we have never looked at our position as anything less than that. You know we are professionals and we go up there and we do what we do and we do it on time. If any curfew is going to be broken it's because we're playing longer.

Is it a problem keeping you public and your private life separate

Well no, not really. Where I live is suburbia, so everything works out pretty good. Life is a good balance.

Is it difficult to hold down a relationship when you're in a rock 'n' roll band

I mean we have been doing this for so long now its just part of what you do. Our children come to the shows and on tour with us wherever possible. It has got difficult to bring them with me now because they are all in school. When they're babies you can do anything you want but when they start going to school you are on their schedule.

Richie Sambora is going through a very public divorce at the moment. What do you think about stories claiming he had an affair

Those papers have to make money, you know what I mean and that's what they do. We're a band we are here for each other and play together and we do what we do, those stories are just a bunch of crap. I mean what are you gonna do? It sells papers! The only thing I wish for is that we owned those papers.

And what about claims that Jon Bon Jovi calls the shots and the rest of the band just follow

I mean it's always been that the lead singer is the lead singer. He has got the mic and he has a lot of vision but it's a team thing.

Jon mentioned recently that he didn't want Bon Jovi to end up like the Rolling Stones.

No I think that was most probably a misquote we definitely look up to the Rolling Stones. As for retiring, I do what I love and I love what I do and I will keep doing it until the mind and the body fails and when it's no longer fun. At the moment we are having a blast. You've got to have fun - I haven't had a bad day since the doctor slapped me on the ass!

I was interested to read about your work on the musicals Memphis and Sweet Valley High.

Yeah and there's a new one I'm working on called The Toxic Avenger. I'm just venturing into another world and the nice thing about what we do is that we can stretch out and do different things. So for me I really love it, it's a fun process of I'm writing essentially rock 'n' roll songs but writing them within the confines of a story.
The Toxic Avenger is a big cult movie and we are just basically using the characters and we are completely changing it. We just started work on that one. The writer is Joe Dipietro who wrote the Elvis show 'All Shook Up'.

Is there ever going to be Bon Jovi The Musical

Maybe down the road you never know, but at the moment the scene has kinda got clouded up with those kind of musicals. So right now you don't want to be the 15th one. The Abba one is huge but for every Mama Mia there are 15 that didn't become huge. So I mean it's just not right yet.

So when you're not in the band or writing musicals what do you do to relax

Lie on the beach with my surfboard and surf!