Thank You, Good Night: The Bon Jovi Story Paints the Superstar with an Earthbound Face
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B
Director Gotham Chopra’s four-part docuseries Thank you, Good Night: The Bon Jovi Story is, as the title promises, the history of the American superstar pop-rock band that rose to fame in the 1980s and has maintained a career for more than 40 years.
But that story isn’t the centre of the series. Its focus is the band’s founder, leader, and manager, Jon Bon Jovi.
He’s the working-class Jersey guy with the be-true-to-yourself-and-loyal-to-your-friends values, who has never relented, made the tough decisions, and came out ahead. The series investigates the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, and still feels like a hagiography. Fair enough.
The devoted fans will get the full history of the band. And perhaps some insights. The Bon Jovi we get to know here seems like a mensch: successful but grounded, and relatively unchanged by being a superstar.
There is no false modesty. He’s been successful for decades and owns it. He has set standards that he’s demanded of himself, and achieved, and feels proud of that. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been challenges.
As the series begins, Bon Jovi is about to face a biggie: He’s now (gulp) 60. He’s in terrific physical shape. He has aged well, and with no evidence of plastic surgery, looks fantastic, and still oozes charisma.
But success isn’t a bulwark against the aging process. Years on the road plus Covid have taken their toll on his voice. The band is on a special 20-date tour making their fortieth anniversary and Bon Jovi’s voice is failing him. He knows it. His trusted advisors — including his wife Dorothea and his brother Matt Bongiovi, who is a key member of the band’s management team — have told him straight up that it’s not good.
His options are quitting or surgery on his vocal cords, which comes with no guarantees of success. Bon Jovi, ever the realist, faces the situation with a mix of pragmatism, resignation, and determination. But the question that hovers over the documentary is will it work? Will the surgery restore his voice enough to allow him to record and tour again, or will he be forced to retire?
It’s against that crisis that director Chopra takes us back through Bon Jovi’s story, growing up as a kid in Jersey. Falling in love with music, during that vibrant New Jersey music period where Southside Johnny and the Ashbury Jukes and Bruce Springsteen had defined a new New Jersey sound.
Through a relative, Bon Jovi gets a job at New York’s legendary Power Station recording studio as a gofer, and they allow him to record in the studio at nights if the studio is empty. With his high school friend, classically trained piano player David Bryan, he makes a demo, shops that demo around, endures rejection after rejection until he finally lands a deal.
Needing to go on tour, he assembles the group that becomes Bon Jovi, including Bryan. Then comes relentless touring, and several albums before they hit the big time with their third album, Slippery When Wet, recorded in Vancouver, produced by Canadian Bruce Fairburn, engineered and mixed by Bob Rock.
Forty years later, many tours, records, ups and downs, the band is still relatively intact. Two of the original band members, Bryan and drummer Tico Torres are still in the band. Bass player Alec John Such left in 1994 after alcohol and the strain of the road got to be too much. (Such died in 2022. The series is dedicated to him).
But the major blow to the band, and the source of what still seem like regrets and hard feelings, was the departure of lead guitarist Richie Sambora in 2013. Losing Sambora was a blow.
He was Bon Jovi’s key songwriting partner, and his voice meshed with Bon Jovi’s and shaped the sound of the band. Chopra holds off any appearance by Sambora until the end of the first episode, where he comes in like a bit of a spoiler to the story of camaraderie.
It’s clear from the way Sambora talks about why he left that there’s still has lingering resentment. Sambora doesn’t seem completely at peace with either himself or the way things shook out. His presence adds tension to the series, a counterpoint to all the positive comments and conversations about brotherhood. But he’s not a downer.
Chopra is following a number of threads through the series, from Bon Jovi’s medical issues to the band’s origin story, and trajectory through the music industry and the decades. The episodes are long; arguably too long unless you’re a fan.
But he’s made a stylish-looking series, breaking up interview clips with fast cut collages of the band at various stages to keep things moving. The series is intimate, by which I mean there aren’t many outside voices. There are no music writers assessing the band’s musical legacy.
Bruce Springsteen talks about meeting Bon Jovi as an up-and-coming young musician and now a peer. The two have become close friends. It’s a flattering portrait of everyone. Even the band’s legendarily contrarian first manager Doc McGhee is honest if circumspect.
We also get a glimpse of who Bon Jovi is personally. The family man, who married his high school sweetheart, whose opinions he clearly values, and with whom he shares four kids. He regrets some of the losses, respects and celebrates the lives and accomplishments of his band mates and friends.
Where some superstars move away from their former lives, his success and profile seem to have done the opposite. He’s more plugged into community through his foundation. He’s been politically involved since Al Gore ran for president.
It's an admiring portrait, which could have become over the top. But a big part of what makes this series compelling is the way Bon Jovi shows up: straight up and no B.S. He is grounded, self aware, and has values and an ethic he aims to live by. He is willing and able to look himself in the mirror.
Thank you, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. Directed by Gotham Chopra. With Jon Bon Jovi, David Bryan, Tico Torres, Richie Sambora, and Alec John Such. Airing now on Disney+.