The jovial rock star

Outside a luxury hotel in London a horde of wide-eyed young girls and a smattering of boys in leather jackets stand patiently waiting.

Their excitement is palpable, for inside the hotel is none other than their hero Jon Bon Jovi, bona fide rock idol and frontman of one of the most successful rock bands of the last 20 years.

Dressed in his trademark cowboy boots and tight jeans with a trendy denim shirt, Jon, who turned 40 last March, tops off his rock star chic with the required pair of sunglasses. He’s not even wearing them to hide tired eyes for, despite being out until the early hours celebrating at an aftershow party, when he takes his glasses off, his blue eyes are sparkling.

He lounges on a sofa swigging from a bottle of water and is funny and warm, happily talking about himself despite saying that talking about last week’s chart battle for the No 1 spot with Pink was a relief as it gave him “a break from talking about me for eight hours”.

Pink won out in the end and Bon Jovi’s latest single Everyday, the first to be taken from their new album Bounce, had to make do with a No 5 position. But Jon doesn’t seem bothered, as for nearly two decades his band have been on the top of the pile.

It was 20 years ago that Jon wrote his first song Runaway and went to a New York radio station to get it played. The station loved it and played it incessantly, garnering the young singer some record company interest. Gathering together guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboard player David Bryan and drummer Tico Torres from local bands, he chased after a record deal.

“I got them together I said ‘Can you give me three weeks to take advantage of this opportunity and try and get a record deal’.” he remembers. “They all cleared their schedules and those three weeks have turned into 20 years.”

While other 80s rock bands such as Poison, Whitesnake and Europe failed to forge a career past the decade that taste forgot, Bon Jovi have become legends in their own time, remaining as relevant a band as they’ve ever been. Jon gives a simple reason for their longevity.

“The thing is we do actually like each other,” he says. “Everyone plays a role in the band and in doing so the sum of the parts makes a whole. It’s difficult enough to get a record deal and it’s difficult to remain successful. The worst thing would be to have fighting on the inside because it’s hard enough on the outside.”

Jon can also boast one of the longest marriages in showbiz. He’s been with Dorothea since he met her at school, they married in Las Vegas in 1989, and now have three children - Stephanie Rose, aged nine, Jesse James, seven, and Jacob Hurley, who was born last year. Although Jon has admitted to playing away in the past, that particular trapping of fame no longer holds any appeal for him.

“It’s another misconception of the business, that marriages can’t last,” he says, suddenly serious. “If two individuals get on, like my wife and I do, it’s a bond. I think if there’s a mutual respect, a friendship and a trust then it’s not difficult to keep a marriage together.

“Sure there are things in this business that affect marriages – those beautiful girls waiting outside!” he laughs “I could have got laid 10 times last night. But do I want to wake up with it in the morning? Been there done that. I wouldn’t lose my wife for 10 ‘fill the blanks’, it’s just not worth it.”

Jon seems to have the showbiz game worked out, keeping both his marriage and band intact in a notoriously fraught industry. Another secret to keeping his band together, he tells me, is allowing each member to go off and do their own thing, which for Jon is the occasional solo record and some acting.

He’s found acting difficult to balance with his singing career, having to focus on one or the other at a time, but finds the time to indulge in it as he says it makes him “feel like a student again”.

He got into acting by chance, befriending Emilio Estevez when he wrote the soundtrack to Young Guns II and discovered that actors got to learn how to “ride horses, shoot guns and jump out of aeroplanes”. He’s had small roles in a number of films such as Pay It Forward and U-571, but his biggest role to date is as a love interest for Ally in Ally McBeal.

“The first scene on the first day was me bent over with Calista Flockhart, who plays Ally sniffing my rear end,” he grins. “That was the first time we met and I said ‘You’ve got a tough gig, I wouldn’t be doing it if the roles were reversed.’ She goes ‘Believe me, I’m used to it, I’m Ally McBeal.’ She understood the quirkiness, but I’d never seen the show prior to this.

“Calista is a sweet little demure girl that you just want to hug, she needs it. It’s very difficult being that person. You’re Ally, you’re not on Friends - six people on a half hour show – she’s Ally on a one hour show. That’s tough.”

Jon won’t be acting for a while as much of the next year will be taken up with touring the new album around the world. Although he’s now, he says the band are far from getting tired of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.

“You could say that when The Rolling Stones quit, that’s as far as you’re allowed to go. I still enjoy what we do and I feel it’s valid and it’s something that I can continue to do as long as it’s not nostalgic. I wouldn’t do it at the dinner club as part of the package for the vacationers, I’d have to walk away.”