They have won multiple awards for Music Video of the Year, and boast many nominations for the title at the Grammys, VMAs, EMAs and more.However, in between masterpieces, there is one music video that Jon Bon Jovi thought was not even remotely up to standard.
In 1987, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora looked back at their least favourite music video of all time, ‘Only Lonely’, in an interview with Metal Edge magazine.
“We saw the ‘Only Lonely’ video in Tokyo,” Jon said. “We said, ‘$90,000 for this piece of shit?’”
The video was shot and wrapped before the band could see a final cut, and by the time they did, it was too late to change a thing.
“You get disgusted,” Sambora admitted. “It makes you not want to do them anymore.”
Released in 1985 as the lead single from their second album 7800° Fahrenheit, the video tried to build a dramatic story around the band. It featured Jon brooding in a dimly lit bar, surrounded by a rival gang, a mysterious love interest, and an inexplicable plot that arguably went nowhere.
At the time, Jon was still figuring out how much input he could have when it came to visuals, and after learning the hard way, the band took back control in hopes they’d never hate another of their videos as much.
When it came time to shoot the video for ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ – the first single off 1986’s Slippery When Wet – they ditched the dramatics and stuck with what they knew best: playing live.
Filmed over two days at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, the shoot doubled as a free Bon Jovi concert for over 5,000 fans: “We finally locked into what we want from a video. We’re really happy with it. It finally captured us.”
“We had the opportunity to look at what we were doing right after we did it,” Jon explained. “So if it didn’t look good, we changed it.”
The efforts – with their personal touch, this time – were met with critical acclaim and a nomination at the MTV Video Music Awards of 1987, for Best Stage Performance in a Video. Although, it lost that award to ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, also by Bon Jovi.
“We wanted to be comfortable,” Jon said. “It’s not real glamorous. It’s a lot more played down.”