Jon Bon Jovi on the secret to marriage: ‘I’ve never lied about being a saint’
Jon Bon Jovi takes a sip from a bottle of water and flashes that unblemished smile. The stadium-filling rock star has somehow always managed to retain a reputation for clean living. He may have come of age amid the excess of Eighties hair metal, but the 62-year-old has resolutely steered clear of at least the narcotic element of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. As he tells me via video call from London, it was a bad experience in his youth that kept him on the straight and narrow over the next four decades.
“It was smoking something that was laced with something else, and I remember feeling out-of-body high and thinking, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t feel comfortable with this,’” he explains, leaning forward in his chair. “It was scary, and I was so young that I was glad I had that sort of ‘scared straight’ moment.” At least, when his vocal cords atrophied catastrophically in 2022, he knew it wasn’t due to any drug habit. “I couldn’t blame it on putting anything up my nose,” he laughs. “The only thing that’s ever been up my nose is my finger!”
Years of living healthily have served Bon Jovi well. His heartthrob grin is still intact, and his hair, albeit now a shock of white, has retained its famously tousled “run your hands through it” look. Dressed in a tight black T-shirt, he exudes a youthful ebullience, slipping comfortably into the role of raconteur. There is, though, a touch of pathos to his laughter. The last tour by his group Bon Jovi, one of the world’s
