KEEP THE FAITH

He paused for thought. "Like, I missed him very much when Little Steven left Bruce, it just wasn't the same any more. I don't want this band to break up. But there aren't any plans to make a record at the moment. "

Two years later, the Bon Jovi live album still hadn't materialised. Instead, Richie released his much-touted solo album that got the critics lining up to interview him but dent­ed the charts not at all. David Bryan managed to get a Japan-only release for his obscuran­tist 'new age' album. And Jon watched 'Blaze Of Glory' go to Number 1 in the US charts, receive an Oscar nomination for best movie theme tune, and propel his 'Blaze Of Glory’ ­Music From The Soundtrack To Young Guns II to the top of the world's charts as though it were just another Bon Jovi album (which many critics argued it may as well have been, given the rather predictable lone-man-on-a­-horse parables of most of the tunes).

When Bon Jovi did finally regroup and release another album, in 1992, as few doubt­ed they eventually would in the light of Jon's now proven ability to survive without them, and Richie and Dave's (the other principle writ­ers in the band) inability to do the same, the most admirable aspect of the reformation was that they didn't immediately attempt to release another collection in the 'Slippery .. .'/ 'New Jersey' mould. 'Keep The Faith', the fifth Bon Jovi album, went some way to living up to Jon's predictions and provided the band with some of their most adventurous and diverse material yet.

'I Believe' wandered into full-spectrum U2 territory; 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead', the second single, was pure Springsteen once again, but this time in his muscle-glossed 'Born In The USA' era, loose-limbed and impressive; while the title track and first sin­gle, 'Keep The Faith' could have been INXS on one of their more funkier outings. And though it featured the by now predictable Desmond Child collaborations on the first two singles, most of the songs on 'Keep The Faith' were written by Jon on his own, includ­ing the other two singles from the album, 'Bed Of Roses' and 'Dry County'. Jon has always been the leader of the band, but not since the first Bon Jovi album had he treated it so clearly as his own properly.

In time honoured fashion, they had retreated to 'lucky' Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver. Only this time, it would be Bob Rock producing. Very much Bruce Fairbaim's prodigy, Rock had been chief engineer on both 'Slippery ... ' and 'New Jersey' and he not only felt that he knew what the band were capable of, but thought he would be able to bring something new of his own to the quintessen­tial Jovi sound.

"Defending all Bon Jovi albums," says Jon, "I never in a million years thought. 'This is a commercial album, therefore it's gonna sell a lot of records'. I didn't set out to do that on 'New Jersey'. With 'Slippery ...' who knew? We had no fucking idea. And definitely not with this album, no way.

"With that in mind ... that's where we need to go. That's where we want to go. Somewhere just a little left of where we've ever been.