Richie Sambora left Bon Jovi in 2013, but he gives the impression that he was squeezed out of his creative contributions to the band just prior to his exit.
The guitarist explained in a recent appearance on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast that after he finished touring in support of his 2012 solo album Aftermath of the Lowdown, he reached out to Jon Bon Jovi to start working on songs for the next Bon Jovi album. To Sambora’s surprise, the Bon Jovi frontman had already written a bunch of songs with producer/guitarist John Shanks.
Sambora admits that JBJ writing Bon Jovi songs without him “shook” him, especially considering their long history of writing together. However, he rolled with the situation and gave these new songs a listen, but he wasn’t impressed.
” … It didn’t sound like Bon Jovi. It didn’t sound like the band, ” said Sambora. “It sounded like every song that I didn’t want to write.”
Despite leaving the band over a decade ago, Sambora said he would be open to returning to the band. In May 2024 during an appearance on The Allison Hagendorf Show, Sambora touched on how Bon Jovi underwent vocal surgery to help strengthen and repair a vocal cord that had atrophied. If JBJ can recover and get to a place where he could tour again, Sambora is all in and said, “If he gets [his voice] back, I’ll go play.” He also stressed that if he returned to Bon Jovi how much the fans would love it.
At the same time, Sambora says that if he could go back in time, he likely would have exited the band sooner. He said, “I might have left a couple of albums before, because I think Jon was moving into a place where he wanted to not really be a band.”
That’s a sentiment Sambora echoed in conversation with Corgan: “I felt like Jon was changing his focus and he often wanted to be a solo artist. And I go, ‘Go make a solo [album]’ … He was definitely changing directions.”
