How Jon Bon Jovi really feels about son Jake marrying Millie Bobby Brown (2024)

JON BON JOVI throws back his neat mop of grey hair and laughs.

“My grandkids will be more English than Italian or my other heritage!” he exclaims. “How crazy is that?”

He’s talking about his new daughter-in-law, Millie Bobby Brown, the Stranger Things actress who married his son last month.

Born to English parents before moving to the US aged eight, Millie, now 20, dated model and budding actor Jake, 22, for three years before they decided to tie the knot.

Jake’s Anglophile rock star dad is thrilled.

“It’s a very exciting time,” he continues.

“My other son (Jesse) just got married so we’re welcoming two daughters-in-law into our family.

“To think that they’re carrying on my father’s name, my grandfather’s and my great-grandfather’s . . . wow!”

That name is Bongiovi . . . the one that morphed into Bon Jovi in 1983 and became synonymous with stadium-sized songs like Livin’ On A Prayer, You Give Love A Bad Name and I’ll Be There For You.

With Jon’s daughter Stephanie also getting engaged, he’s aware that his rapidly expanding family means a big change in HIS life.

“Suddenly, your kids are married and then they’re telling you about the prospect of grandbabies . . . woah!

“There’s no chapter in my book that went this far.”

I’m meeting Jon at London’s swish Mandarin Oriental Hotel to mark his band’s 16th studio album, the life-affirming Forever, which celebrates their 40 years in the business.

It includes a heartfelt ballad, Kiss The Bride, a prime candidate to be played at weddings everywhere.

‘Rehab and therapies’

“That’s about my baby, my daughter,” he says affectionately. “I’m the (proud) dad.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Jon talks about why he can’t perform live, for now, his abiding love of wife Dorothea, the departure from Bon Jovi of guitarist Richie Sambora and his deep friendship with another favourite son of New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen.

At 62, he is looking fit and well in his brown leather bomber jacket, those handsome chiselled features never far from breaking into a big white smile.

But his bright demeanour belies a health crisis that began in 2015 when doctors discovered one of his vocal cords was “atrophying”.

Jon’s struggle is documented with searing honesty and unflinching detail in a compelling new four-part series, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story.

It hasn’t been a fun journey even to get to this point, but I’ve diligently done my rehab and therapies.

Jon on health battle

When I ask about the issue keeping him off the stage, Jon holds up the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to his eyes.

Then he makes a gap between them of about two centimetres and peers through it.

“For years, I’ve known that everything depends on something that small,” he says.

“It’s been horrible.”

The singer, who had been belting out “whoa, we’re half way there” for decades, had been seriously compromised.

But Jon is a fighter and, two years ago, decided to have make-or-break surgery.

Thankfully, it went well, although he’s not out of the woods quite yet.

“It hasn’t been a fun journey even to get to this point,” he admits.

“But I’ve diligently done my rehab and therapies.

“I’ve had to relearn how to do things.

“I got the high notes back a long time ago, but then we forgot to work on the low stuff.

“So you’re thinking, ‘What the hell is wrong with B-flat to F? This is weird.’

“Suddenly, you’re worrying about all the low stuff that you never thought twice about — ever!”

Jon says it has been a case of “breakdown” followed by “breakthrough”, before adding: “But the breakdown is still a difficult period emotionally.”

So, does one of his setbacks mean he has to stop singing for a bit? I venture.

“No, you work harder instead,” he replies.

“First you have to take your fist out of the wall, then you look back on what you did two months ago and realise there’s been progress.

“I’m being careful because I don’t ever want to go out there and give less than 100 per cent.”

In the documentary, there’s a crushing scene from April 2022, when Bon Jovi have just played a gig in America’s Music City, Nashville.

On screen he curls up on the floor of his dressing room, in despair at the thought of not being able to give it his all.

“I couldn’t. I tried,” he tells me.

“The body could but these little things as big as your thumbnail (vocal cords) could not.”

Though we’re sitting elsewhere in the building on Knightsbridge, Jon says his hotel room overlooks Hyde Park, scene of several triumphant Bon Jovi summer shindigs.

Thinking about the prospect of returning there to perform one day, he says: “I couldn’t bear to break my heart in that park, let alone have anybody writing that it sucked or have the crowd disappointed.”

I talk to him all the time, he's like a brother.

Jon on Bruce Springsteen

Last year, when his friend Springsteen strode the Great Oak Stage, I spotted Jon among the select few invited to watch from a little platform above the control desk.

“I was there just as a fan watching the Bruce show,” he says.

“The plan was that it was going to be my coming out party, but I just wasn’t ready to sing.”

He adds: “Everybody loves playing Hyde Park — it’s the best.

“The Stones did it in ’69, they are the granddaddy of it all.”

Jon first met Springsteen in the late Seventies when he sang in the bars and clubs of the Jersey Shore.

“I had no Plan B at that time,” he says.

“Higher education wasn’t even thought about.

“I’d just say, ‘No, Mom and Dad — I’m going to be a rock and roll star.’”

One night, he and his band, The Wild Ones, were performing a cover of The Promised Land — “I’m 18 years old and Bruce jumps up on stage with me and I’m still in high school.”

Over the years, Jon’s hero, who is 12 years his senior, became more like “an older brother”.

“I talk to him all the time,” he reports.

“I mean, how many times have I talked to him this week?

‘The Boss of bosses’

“He’s The Boss of bosses.

“He’s the reason that New Jersey rock and roll is what it is today.

“He is our most prolific songwriter, he’s our greatest performer.

“Granted Frank Sinatra is still the Chairman Of The Board, but Frank didn’t write those songs.”

She believed in me, she is legendary. She is a pillar, a dame

Jon on wife Dorothea

This brings us to the love of Jon’s life, his wife Dorothea — childhood sweetheart, mother of his four children and a steadying, supportive influence.

In 1989, not long after Bon Jovi became rock’s biggest box office draw, he eloped to Las Vegas and married her at the Elvis-themed Graceland Wedding Chapel.

Legendary, the effervescent opening blast on the new album, references Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and is dedicated to his partner.

“My Dorothea with her brown eyes has been with me through it all, so that song is for her,” says Jon.

“She believed in me, she is legendary.

“I see that word as one of your English slang terms and I went, ‘That’s a song title.’”

I suggest to Jon that, as we might also say on this side of the Atlantic, she comes over as “a brick” in the Bon Jovi documentary.

“Brick? Absolutely, I love that,” he decides.

“She’s a pillar, she’s a dame, she’s a broad.

“To me, those are the highest compliments you could pay to someone who is the greatest — someone you look up to.”

Aside from the issue with his voice, the past ten years have not been plain sailing for Jon Bon Jovi for other reasons.

In 2013, his chief partner in crime, guitarist Richie Sambora, walked out of the band that had been his life since 1983 amid rumours of discontent — even though he claimed he wanted to spend more time with his family.

It has caused a lot of angst and a lot of heartbreak, but I still love him all the same.

Jon on Richie Sambora quitting

In the Thank You, Goodnight documentary series, Sambora is given a fair hearing but his departure, despite the guitar heroics of his replacement Phil X, has been a bitter pill to swallow.

Jon says: “It has caused a lot of angst and a lot of heartbreak, but I still love him all the same.”

As for his participation in the documentary, he adds: “I knew his mother would be watching and, out of loyalty to his 30 years in the band, I couldn’t deny him his say.”

In 2016, Bon Jovi released their first album without Sambora, the defiant This House Is Not For Sale.

“It was a statement record,” says Jon.

“I went in there full of p**s and vinegar, to show everybody that we were still a rock-solid unit.

“No fault of Richie’s but he left the band, so I had to say, ‘This house is not for sale and it will not crumble.’”

Then, just when the follow-up record, titled 2020, was due, “you and I were in lockdown, suffering through that thing called Covid”.

It was delayed to include two new songs close to Jon’s heart, American Reckoning, which deals with the death of George Floyd, and Do What You Can, a pandemic call-to-arms.

“I’m very, very proud of that record,” says Jon.

“I’m far enough away from it now to go, ‘That was good songwriting.’”

Now he’s back with Forever, which, he says, “represents the return of joy”.

He continues: “It’s about coming through the surgery, seeing light at the end of the tunnel, looking at the 40th anniversary and feeling great about life with my wife and family.”

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With his voice improving by the day, Jon is “looking forward to singing live again”.

“I’m almost there,” he says.