It’s something we are going to be very proud of.” “Also my trying to buy the Bills, and now this with the label. Foremost on his mind: the “sudden departure” of guitarist and longtime collaborator Richie Sambora. “It broke my heart, but it was time to leave.”Īs for what the band does next and whether it takes the independent route, Bon Jovi says he hasn’t yet decided, though he adds he has plenty of new emotional terrain to mine. “I’ve been in three buildings and countless presidents and CEOs,” he says. To hear Bon Jovi tell it, he has seen it all. The act also has notched 25 Billboard Hot 100 hits, with 10 top 10s and four No. Since forming in 1983, the band has sold 37.8 million albums in the United States, according to Nielsen Music and the RIAA, including five No. Indeed, Bon Jovi’s history at the label, which at its 1980s height included such acts as Def Leppard, Scorpions and John Mellencamp, has been fruitful. “Jon doesn’t need to give up anything to any label ever again. “The labels want everything now, no matter who you are,” says an insider. “We wish Jon only the best.”Īccording to a source, the impasse involved adjusted terms to the band’s recording contract. “Jon is a rock ‘n’ roll icon, and we are so proud of his 30-year collaboration with Mercury, which brought extraordinary commercial and creative success,” says a Mercury representative. “After 30 years of loyalty, they let you dig the grave,” he sings on “Burning Bridges.” “Now maybe you can learn to … strum along/Well I’ll give you half the publishing/You’re why I wrote this song.” Says Bon Jovi: “It hits the nail on the head.” But my deal was up, and that’s that.”īon Jovi alludes to tension with the Universal Music Group subsidiary, which effectively operates under the Island banner, in the title track to the band’s self-proclaimed “fan album,” one he readily admits is meant to fulfill the group’s contractual commitment. I am the longest tenured artist on Mercury, or whatever they are called this week. “I’ve stayed at that label my entire life - 32 years. “It’s the end of an era,” singer Jon Bon Jovi, 53, tells Billboard. Graham Parker skewered his former label in 1979’s “Mercury Poisoning.” Now Bon Jovi joins the ranks of the wronged with Burning Bridges, the band’s 13th and final studio album for Mercury Records. Back in 1977, the Sex Pistols dedicated their raucous kiss-off song “EMI” to the record company that dropped them.
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