BON JOVI'S HOME IS WHERE HIS HEART IS
Jon Bon Jovi opens the door to his mammoth New Jersey home. "Hi, come in," he says, walking with a cane -- a side effect of recent knee surgery to fix a torn meniscus. "Want some drugs? I'm on painkillers for this knee." His wife of 11 years and companion of 20, Dorothea Hurley, smiles from across the entrance. "Don't bother," she says, "they're not very good." It may seem typically rock & roll for a singer to offer up narcotics, but, in fact, these days the 38-year-old Bon Jovi, who has a new album and a booming acting career, is more the stay-at-home dad than the out-all-night partyer.
With a house
like his, why go out? Bon Jovi lives in Red Bank, New Jersey, with his wife,
38, and two children, Stephanie Rose, 7, and Jesse James, 5, in a 30-room
eighteenth-century-French-style stone manor that was four years in the making.
The kitchen has a 12-foot-high vaulted brick ceiling; an antique sandstone
mantel hangs prominently in a den; old mirrors and dark wooden chairs line the
windowed hallways. Pop-star touches include a neon-tinged Warhol-type portrait
of Jon and Dorothea and a full-size 35-millimeter movie screen that ascends
from the wood floor at the far end of the living room. "We get the studios
to send us whatever's out," he says. "Plus there's video and cable
hooked up to a separate projector so we can watch DVD or sports on TV."
The family moved in a year and a half ago from across the
Navesink River, which borders their backyard. Born John Francis Bongiovi in
Perth Amboy, he grew up in Sayreville with his younger brothers, Matt, now a
concert producer for Los Angeles' House of Blues, and Anthony, a video producer
in L.A. Their parents, John, a retired hairdresser, and Carol, a former Playboy
bunny and Miss Erie, Pennsylvania, still live in Sayreville, just 21 miles
away.
The riverside grounds boast a very fancy security gate, a
guesthouse, an English pub in a former caretaker's cottage and Bon Jovi's
proudest possession: a professional-grade recording studio with 22-foot-high
ceilings and a view of the water. It was here that his band, Bon Jovi, recorded
it's first new album in five years, Crush, which arrives in stores June 13.
"It is so comfortable to record at home," says Bon Jovi, his
footsteps resounding as he walks through the studio's main room. "You get
up in the morning, take the kids to school, work out, then record. It's the
simple things, too, like sunlight."
Amazingly, it is the first album the Jersey boys --
guitarist Richie Sambora, 40, drummer Tico Torres, 46, and keyboardist David
Bryan, 39 -- have done entirely in their home state. Bon Jovi has released
seven albums over the past 17 years without fighting, breaking up or enduring
any other rock-star ugliness, a feat they attribute to their
keep-it-in-the-family attitude. "We worked through our problems over the
years," says Bon Jovi. "There were plenty of stupidities. There was alcoholism,
there were drugs, there was plenty of rock & roll stuff. We just didn't
tell the world about it."
Don't count on getting the whole story when the band's
Behind The Music episode is broadcast on VH1 June 11. "We've
suffered by not airing our dirty laundry," says Bon Jovi. "We were
never considered dangerous. If we told the truth, it would make a great rock
& roll story. But why put someone's nose in our problems?"
Bon Jovi takes the same tight-lipped approach to his
remarkably solid marriage to his high school sweetheart. "I can't say I've
been a saint and we haven't had trials and tribulations," he says,
"but my wife is the coolest. She is the girl that everyone wants to hang
out with, and that's the greatest compliment I can pay her. Through everything,
she's truly been my best friend." As for their children, Jon and Dorothea
are careful to keep them out of the spotlight. "I've chosen to be a public
figure; they haven't. We just want our kids to lead very normal lives," he
says.
Here's normal life, Bon Jovi-style: The rocker walks
outside, hops in a golf cart and whizzes across the lawn to his pub, the Shoe
Inn, est. 1999. Inside the cozy, low-ceilinged building, a fireplace, a pool
table, an Addams Family pinball machine and a jukebox full of 45's await. Bon
Jovi pours some white wine and takes a seat at the antique bar. This is where
he and the band hung out every night after recording.
On one side of the room sits a curious orange chair, straight
from a sports arena, with a patch that reads ORANGE SEATS SUCK. It was given to
Bon Jovi by Matthew McConaughey, with whom he costarred, along with Harvey
Keitel and Bill Paxton, in the recent World War II action film U-571. "I
told him this story on the set," explains Bon Jovi. "When we did a
European tour in 1995, Van Halen was opening for us, and they're not very big
over there. Alex Van Halen didn't feel too good about it, so I told him, 'You
know what color the seats are in Knoxville, Tennessee? Orange. How do I know?
Because when we played there, no one was in 'em.' So McConaughey sent this over
with a good-luck note about the album."
The role as McConaughey's best friend in U-571 is Bon
Jovi's biggest to date. He'd previously appeared in indie films including
Moonlight and Valentino, as a romantic house painter, and Homegrown, as a drug
dealer alongside pot growers Billy Bob Thornton and Kelly Lynch. Next up is a
role as a boozing two-timer in Mimi Leder's Pay It Forward, starring Kevin
Spacey and Helen Hunt, due in theaters in October, in which he plays the father
of a boy (The Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment) who takes up a teacher's
challenge to try to change the world.
Now, Bon Jovi is getting ready to say goodbye to his
family for the summer and hit the road for a European tour before playing the
States in the fall. He may be a homebody these days, but there's still a part
of him that's pure rock & roll. "I love performing and making records
after all this time," he says. "Seeing all of our fans out there for
us after being away for five years is going to be just amazing. I can't
wait."