Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

My thanks as always for clicking and listening along, very, very excited to bring you my

conversation today with an honest to goodness rock and roll icon, Mr. John Bon Jovi.

I should disclose up front, I am from New Jersey.

Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen are in my blood. It's part of the charter of our state. For God's sakes, John Bon Jovi now has a rest stop named for him on the Garden State Parkway. In our land, that is the highest compliment you can

receive. It actually is a really big deal. So John and I got together ahead of the release of the

band's new album. It's called Forever. It's Bon Jovi's 16th studio album. We got together at home.

He invited us down to his place in New Jersey, a beautiful

spread, as you can imagine. And just so you can kind of picture where we are, we're in a building

on his property that's called a man cave. It's a bar lounge, really. So we're seated at the bar.

You got your pool table. You got your hangout area. Sort of memorabilia from his

film career in there. The music stuff, which I'll tell you about a little bit later, is in a

studio where they record their album. So we're chilling at the bar. We popped a bottle of Hampton

water, which is a rosé put out by his son, a very successful brand that John is

also behind. So you might hear us clinking glasses there, drinking a little of that, and sat down

and talked about his career around the release of this album Forever and also the recent Hulu

docu series, Thank You Good Night, the Bon Jovi story, which tells the 40-year history of the band.

So a great conversation about the music, starting with a kid growing up in New Jersey with this

guitar that he sold off in 1979 and recently got back from the guy. He sold it to. You hear more

about that in a bit. But his rise and the grind.

And, you know, the success he got was slippery when wet, 12 times platinum, living on a prayer, bad medicine, all that.

But also surviving all that and all these sort of reincarnations and navigating this career.

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