The future rock star was then just an aspiring teenage musician working at the Power Station, an acclaimed recording studio in New York, run by his cousin, Tony Bonjovi. (planetradio)
“They eventually paid me 50 bucks to be the gofer,” Bon Jovi recalled on the Rockonteurs podcast, adding that having studio access allowed him to work on his burgeoning songwriting. “If it was a weekend or late, late, late night I could go in and they would just keep a tally and said basically if you ever make it, you gotta pay us back.”
Besides access to a studio and equipment, the job brought Bon Jovi face to face with some of the biggest names in music.
“No one believes what I saw,” the rocker declared, looking back on his famous run ins. Among the most memorable, his chance meeting with the Rolling Stones.
“I had a band and we were rehearsing a few blocks away,” Bon Jovi recalled. “[I was] getting out of a cab, counting out my change to pay the cabbie ... and the Stones got out of whatever car it was they were getting out of. The Stones!”
As luck would have it, Bon Jovi wasn’t the only person who spotted the English rockers. “At the same time [as the Stones were] going into the studio, a photographer jumps out of a trash bin and paparazzi, starts taking pictures.”
It was at that point that Bon Jovi and his friends stepped in and tried to shoo the photographer away. “The photographer’s screaming, ‘Mick, Mick, Mick, Mick, give us a picture!’ I swear to you, [Jagger] grabs me and these kids and he says, ‘Here’s my new band, the Frogs.' And we took a fucking picture.”
The encounter cemented what Bon Jovi referred to as the “greatest lesson” he learned while working at the studio. “The bigger the star, the nicer the person. It was the guy that you don’t hear about today who was not cool. The Stones were cool.”
Sadly, Bon Jovi never saw the developed image of he and his fellow Frogs, despite attempts to track down the photographer. Still, he takes joy in recounting the experience.
Mick Jagger’s advice for young bands Few writing partnerships can boast a 50-year relationship. In fact, few partnerships, in general, have lasted as long as the relationship between The Rolling Stones’ singer Mick Jagger and his partner in crime Keith Richards.
The Rolling Stones are the very definition of the word longevity, and few souls have been at the top of the music industry for as long as the Stones have. (Faroutmagazine)
Back in 2015, Jagger opened up about what his advice would be for bands who found themselves in a similar position to The Stones back in the early ’60s. While a lot has changed over that time, the principles of what makes a good band remains the same for Jagger, who said: “Every night the audience is like a challenge for me. Every time you go out there it’s different. You think it’s the same show, but it’s a different show, different place, different audience,” said the singer.
“For a younger band, you got to bring a sense of uniqueness to every show you do, and you got to sort of try somehow to forgot — even though it appears to everyone it’s the same show — but to yourself, it’s always got something different and special about it. I’m not sure if all young bands want to stay on the road as long as we have. Maybe they’ll want to do something else,” he added.
“When you go out in front of all those people you get an enormous rush of chemicals in your body — your own chemicals, not chemicals you’ve put in,” “Let’s face it, it is a huge buzz. Must be like playing football or something,”
“Basically your life’s attuned to doing those few hours onstage and everything else is a build up to that. Of course, you get to enjoy yourself at other times, but really you’re thinking about the next show or the show you’re doing that night,” said Jagger, “A lot of prep time goes into that — keeping yourself (together) so you can get through the whole thing without screwing up physically and mentally and keeping yourself really sharp. But I really enjoy it.”
Especially if you are the frontman of the band, you have to move, dance and sing together. so you need a good workout or you find yourself out of breath while you sing and people whistle at you
When you tour Europe it’s a lot of languages, so I try to do them all and that takes up some time, so (in the U.S.) I can concentrate on some other things.
