Detailing the split was, Bon Jovi says, in keeping with the film’s chief aim: keeping it real, which was achieved by including the voices of as many of the relevant people as possible. “It’s not my truth,” he says. “It’s each of our individual truths.”
Indeed, Good Night doesn’t shy away from Bon Jovi’s vocal troubles, the result of natural aging of the vocal tissues. This culminates in a tour in 2022 when he is forced to confront how weak his voice has become. He undergoes vocal surgery soon after. The star is shown recording a song eight months later, and he is still so raspy that he says downheartedly, “I don’t even sound like me.” (Spoiler: With continued improvement, Bon Jovi was able to record a new album, Forever, to be released on June 7.)
Many is the singer who might have been content to leave such struggles to viewers’ imaginations. Not Bon Jovi. “Telling a truth sells itself,” he told me when I asked about this tough scene. “And the truth is easier than a series of lies. Because how long can the liar remember the lies? So tell the truth, sell your truth, and if anyone is buying, good for you.”
This goes for those archival photos and film clips as well, many of which are of Bon Jovi in the mid-1980s, sporting silk scarves and sometimes cowboy chaps — a look very different from his current silver fox elegance. He laughs, saying, “There was a period where I was repulsed by some of those pictures. Now I can look back on them and say, ‘Yep. Guilty as charged.’ Those were my baby pictures. Chances are, if you were alive at the time, you looked the same. Fortunately, I’m here to tell the tale.”
Jon Bon Jovi is AARP the Magazine’s next cover star. Check back at the end of May for a full interview.
