Bon Jovi’s “Keep the Faith”: 32 years after a new beginning

The group’s fifth LP was released on November 3, 1992 and found them renewing themselves in the midst of a new context in rock.

Bon Jovi’s “Keep the Faith” was released 32 years ago, on November 3, 1992, and marked a new era for the New Jersey band.

In many ways, this was inevitable. After spending most of the ’80s on the road, Bon Jovi took a break after the touring cycle concluded for 1988’s “New Jersey” giant. During this break, musical trends had shifted from the kind of hard rock and shiny metal that Bon Jovi excelled at. Separately, the band members explored different sonic pathways. Jon Bon Jovi scored a number one solo hit, “Blaze of Glory”, from the film Young Guns II; guitarist Richie Sambora released a solo album, 1991’s “Stranger in This Town,” featuring guests such as Eric Clapton; and keyboardist David Bryan dabbled in the work of the soundtrack.

In a 1993 interview with The Georgia Straight, Richie Sambora credited this breakup, and the band’s individual creative detours, for rejuvenating Bon Jovi. “We needed to find ourselves individually. Bon Jovi’s situation was extremely successful, and I was very happy to be in a band of that stature, but there was almost nothing left to write about at the time, we were all so tired and burnt out. All we were writing about was being on the road and being in a hotel room and being alone and talking to your girlfriend on the phone. They miss you and you miss them, that’s what our life was about at the time,” he said.

“So taking a step back and seeing what was going on in our lives gave us more things to write about. Also, all of a sudden I was working with people like Eric Clapton and Tony Levin from Peter Gabriel, and Jon was working with Elton John and Jeff Beck, so working with all these different artists gave us different influences, which we brought back. to Bon Jovi. It made it fresh and completely new, and we were excited to be together again,” he added.

Still, in the time between “New Jersey” and “Keep the Faith,” the members of Bon Jovi also nurtured their emotional and personal lives. And they addressed the fissures and tensions that contributed to the band’s burnout. Jon Bon Jovi fired manager Doc McGhee and took control of the band himself. And he formed Bon Jovi Management. Most notably, after chatting with Aerosmith manager Tim Collins, Jon Bon Jovi decided to enlist the help of an impartial, outside mediator to help get to the bottom of the act’s deep-seated disagreements.

“That was a saving grace for the band because we finally had a place where we could be honest and talk to each other about what was good, what was bad and what was indifferent. And when you cleared the air and realized, ‘Wow, that was nothing, let’s go and make the next record,’ everyone came back with a clear head. We came in two years later and did ‘Keep the Faith,'” he told NPR in 2009.

Making “Keep the Faith” involved a leisurely process that made them return to their roots by spending time chopping wood in Bon Jovi’s basement. The band later moved to Vancouver to work with Bob Rock, who had designed and mixed “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey”. Asking Rock to produce “Keep the Faith” was an inspired move. The studio guru had just come off Metallica’s “black album.” So I had experience helping hard rock bands navigate the dirtiest landscape of the nineties.

And Bon Jovi took it in pretty well, mainly because they stuck to what they knew best. “Little Bit of Soul” and Desmond Child co-wrote “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” are laid-back blues mainstays, like the Stones playing in a bar in Jersey; “Blame It on the Love of Rock & Roll” is a note of mash glamour for (what else?) Rock ‘n’ roll; and “Woman in Love” is a classic Bon Jovi barn burner with shimmering guitars, stacked harmonies, and slippery beats. On the softer side is “I Want You.” In which a protagonist pines for an ex and almost begs him to rekindle their relationship. And “In These Arms” is a rising pop rocker that’s not too far from U2’s high-anthemic heaven.

However, “Keep The Faith” also took some pretty impressive risks. “If I Was Your Mother” begins as a thrash of the caliber of the “black album”. And it quickly moves on to a quieter section with strings and distorted vocals. The title track is a fierce mission statement with a propulsive backbeat that leaned into the contemporary Top 40. It is no coincidence that the then popular electronic band Jesus Jones remixed the song. The seemingly odd combination made perfect sense. “Dry County,” a mid-tempo power ballad with moody piano, searing electric guitar, and acoustic desert blues accents, is nearly 10 minutes long.

But “Keep The Faith’s” biggest hit, the Billboard Top 10 hit “Bed of Roses,” was the most dramatic outing of all.

A powerful ballad bolstered with Hollywood-caliber melodrama (waltz piano, guitars howling at seagulls, an anguished chorus) provided a model for the band’s move into contemporary adult circles. Not that Jon Bon Jovi was necessarily thinking that far in advance when he wrote it.

“I think the best songs that come out of honesty are the ones that you’re quick enough to write. For example, ‘Bed of Roses’. When I was writing that song in ’92, I wasn’t in the mood to write a song because of the circumstances. And instead of putting down the pen and walking away from the piano, I sat down and wrote, ‘Sitting here, shattered and hurt with this old piano…’ and the pain I felt physically that day,” he told Cosmopolis in 2002.

“Keep the Faith” peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard chart. But it only went double platinum. A far cry from the band’s sales milestones in the 80s. Still, in the UK, the album was even more successful; six singles landed in the Top 20 of the chart.

And, more importantly, the record showed Bon Jovi that they could survive anything — changing musical trends, commercial turbulence, personal bickering — and pull through.

“The genre of music we are part of was now disappearing. And, you know. Here was this sign of faith. Which is all we really had to move forward. We entered the 90s with a clear objective. And that was believing in each other and having in who we were,” Bon Jovi told NPR in 2009.

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