Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's great to be back at the table today.
Speaker 2: We're at twotel little.
Speaker 1: Journo in sag Harbor, New York with one of the
Speaker 1: biggest rock stars of all time. Okay, I just spotted
Speaker 1: out the window mister bon Jovi, and when rock and
Speaker 1: roll comes into the room, it's epic.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, thank you for doing this.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 1: He's a multi platinum selling artist. He's toured the world
Speaker 1: countless times. His band is celebrating their fortieth anniversary this year.
Speaker 2: Why are you hungry? We're hungry.
Speaker 3: We're eating it. Okay, I don't mind eating. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think I'm gonna do the chicken milonnaise. I think I'll
Speaker 3: just do the tunit or tar.
Speaker 1: So pull up a chair, grab a bite to eat,
Speaker 1: maybe even pour some Hampton water rose. Because we're having
Speaker 1: lunch with John Bond Jovie. I'm Bruce Bosi and this
Speaker 1: is my podcast Table for two.
Speaker 3: John.
Speaker 2: I have been a huge fan.
Speaker 3: We're peers.
Speaker 1: We're just a couple of years apart, like so I
Speaker 1: kind of feel John that we have sort of the
Speaker 1: same time next year relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, that's correct. So if you don't know that
Speaker 3: the movie is.
Speaker 1: I get to see John Dorothya over the summers like
Speaker 1: two or three times. And you know two significant people,
Speaker 1: which was Sandy Gallon the Buffets, and they both have
Speaker 1: magical quality put people together. Friendship and family is a
Speaker 1: huge thing. I mean, you're a New Jersey guy, I'm
Speaker 1: a New York born. We're Try State guys. I really
Speaker 1: think it plays so much into who you are and
Speaker 1: why you have such a huge not only presence, but
Speaker 1: what you give back.
Speaker 4: Talk about friendship in your life. How did that become
Speaker 4: such a bad roby. I'm not in the market for
Speaker 4: fifty new friends. You know, like Dorothys, that someone has
Speaker 4: to die to get on. But I love that when
Speaker 4: we do have friends, they're the same friends. And someone
Speaker 4: like the Buffets, for example, Janie is that great conduit, right,
Speaker 4: She's always interested in your story, and then she introduces
Speaker 4: you to other people who you find intriguing. And Janie's
Speaker 4: also no bullshit. Jimmy Buffett is no bullshit there. They
Speaker 4: don't have the patience for any of that stuff. So
Speaker 4: when we first came here to the Hampton's and oh
Speaker 4: my god, eighteen years ago or so twenty years ago,
Speaker 4: music brought Jimmy and I, you know, the obvious thing
Speaker 4: to talk about.
Speaker 3: But then it was Janie, who's the camp counselor, yeah.
Speaker 4: And the residents shrink and the den mother and all
Speaker 4: of those things, and if you needed a dentist to
Speaker 4: a caterer, and Janie was.
Speaker 3: The one that knew everybody. And then you know, over
Speaker 3: the years her.
Speaker 4: And Prothy have just gotten closer and closer and closer.
Speaker 4: So that's a year round, all the time relationship. But
Speaker 4: Janie is that den mother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she really she kind of and she brings a
Speaker 1: really nice mix of people together always. She knows the
Speaker 1: art of it, you know, your wife to me every
Speaker 1: time it might feel weird or you might think this
Speaker 1: is weird. But when I see Dorothea and I'm in
Speaker 1: the same room as her, I feel immediately safe. I
Speaker 1: feel there. She iss very lovely. There's something that's so
Speaker 1: warm and welcoming and truthful and real about Dorothea. And
Speaker 1: when I you know, have a good fortune to be
Speaker 1: around a lot of people, but when I look in
Speaker 1: her eyes, I feel like I get her. She gets
Speaker 1: me there, and I think it's salt of the earth.
Speaker 1: You guys are salt of the earth. Thanks, She's an
Speaker 1: amazing woman. She's all right.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know what, we were going last night
Speaker 4: out to dinner and I sit to her in the
Speaker 4: driveway when we got in the car, sat just want
Speaker 4: you to know when you came down the stairs, my
Speaker 4: brain said to my mouth, wow.
Speaker 3: And you know, to say something like that.
Speaker 4: To her, like, you know, forty two years into our relationship,
Speaker 4: I say, I just like to tell you that all
Speaker 4: the time, so I'll never have had a regret of,
Speaker 4: oh I didn't tell her. I didn't because she The
Speaker 4: highest compliment I love to pay a woman.
Speaker 3: Is that she's abroad. And I mean that in the frankstin.
Speaker 4: I guess a sense of you know, Shirley Maclain, that
Speaker 4: Janeye Buffett kind of a woman that is smarter than
Speaker 4: everyone in the room, and cooler than everyone in the room,
Speaker 4: and sexier than everyone in the room in their way.
Speaker 3: And so my wife is abroad. I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, my parents are celebrating their sixtieth n worry
Speaker 1: in about a week, and I feel similar to your
Speaker 1: story with Dorothya. They met in high school and they
Speaker 1: ow this you know, journey together. And my father always said,
Speaker 1: this is a journey that we were on. It was
Speaker 1: never there was never even a thought that he would
Speaker 1: not be with her.
Speaker 3: This was whom he loved and this was you know,
Speaker 3: through this, through then, through the.
Speaker 2: Good times through bad times. Yeah, this was the woman.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people forget that, They
Speaker 1: take that for granted to make their wife and say, hey, no,
Speaker 1: not great.
Speaker 3: You know, I talk about you being a rock star.
Speaker 2: You know, what is your definition of a rock star?
Speaker 3: Does? Do rock stars exist today?
Speaker 2: And when you were grown, when you were.
Speaker 3: Thirteen or twelve, who were the rock stars?
Speaker 2: You were like, oh, yeah, that's an aspiration.
Speaker 3: Or a definition.
Speaker 4: It is something that is that That word is thrown
Speaker 4: around now like it's nothing. You know, you could be
Speaker 4: the rock star of the office, or the rock star
Speaker 4: of the you know, production line, or the you know whatever, right,
Speaker 4: and it's bandied about in music, that terminology is also
Speaker 4: bandied about. But when I was a kid, the aspiration
Speaker 4: of what that meant was that poster on your wall
Speaker 4: of Queen and led Zeppelin and the Stones and in
Speaker 4: Jersey of course Bruce and those bigger in life.
Speaker 3: Holy Christ, I could never grow up and be that.
Speaker 4: You know, those are the posters on your wall, and
Speaker 4: a lot of that was the mystery. I think the
Speaker 4: songs were incredible and they still stand up fifty years later.
Speaker 4: When you're talking about the Stones dead catalog of music
Speaker 4: is le Jit you know, and Queen or Elton or
Speaker 4: Bruce or you know those kind of things that hold
Speaker 4: up today fifty.
Speaker 1: Years Do you have a Stone songs one of the
Speaker 1: Stone songs that just like hits you hard.
Speaker 3: There's so many. I mean, there's so many, but if
Speaker 3: you think about more.
Speaker 4: I just was watching Who the Epics special, right, and
Speaker 4: I did a voiceover kind of you know.
Speaker 3: I was interviewed for not only could they write a
Speaker 3: pop song?
Speaker 4: Not only did they realize that they had to learn
Speaker 4: to write a pop song because they weren't writers initially, right,
Speaker 4: and the Beatles wrote their first song and for John
Speaker 4: and Paul give them a song, and then I want
Speaker 4: to be your man, and then Andrew says, you.
Speaker 3: Guys better start writing zones. Oh fuck.
Speaker 4: They ramped up quick, and then before you know it,
Speaker 4: in the next five six years, they're writing Give Me Shelter,
Speaker 4: and they're writing Sympathy for the Devil and this isn't
Speaker 4: Moonjune and spoon and she loves you. Yeah, this is
Speaker 4: some deep, socially conscious stuff wild. They're incredibly cool and
Speaker 4: incredibly fuckable and incredibly its socially.
Speaker 3: Conscious and dangerous. And that was what, you know, the rock.
Speaker 4: Stars that I grew up aspiring to be, you know,
Speaker 4: and to this day, the bar for me is there
Speaker 4: are two bands on the planet that I would open for,
Speaker 4: and the Stones are wonderful.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's like I never miss a YouTube show if they
Speaker 4: come to town because I'm a groupie for Bono's voice.
Speaker 4: And I never miss a Stone show because that is
Speaker 4: the band that I would open for any day. Yep,
Speaker 4: you know, the other one being the EA Street Band
Speaker 4: because there, you know, are are Beatles in New Jersey.
Speaker 4: But I mean humbly. I say that humbly because she think,
Speaker 4: oh my god, they're just so. I just saw the
Speaker 4: Stones in Thanksgiving and I went to a show in Florida.
Speaker 3: I was in awe. I was just you know, Gaga,
Speaker 3: It's amazing. It's like a religious experience for me. Find it, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I find it to be that.
Speaker 1: You know, when I've seen you in concert, when I've
Speaker 1: seen you two, when i've seen stones. You know you
Speaker 1: lose yourself recently. Yeah, you just go, you go something
Speaker 1: you guys take.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, the question to you is when you're
Speaker 1: up there and you are looking at eighty thousand people
Speaker 1: and you you know, you start your I when you're sixteen,
Speaker 1: you're seventeen year in your room, it's fifty people, it's sixty.
Speaker 1: What are you looking at? What are you relating to
Speaker 1: the group as because it feels like you're saying to me, surely,
Speaker 1: so how does that work for you?
Speaker 4: Numbers never mattered to me. I wanted to be great
Speaker 4: for fifteen or fifty thousand. I always just wanted to
Speaker 4: be the best I could possibly be in a club.
Speaker 4: I wanted to kill you in a stadium. I want
Speaker 4: to kill you.
Speaker 3: Numbers. Never never wear.
Speaker 4: Anything other than, you know, impressing yourself, because truthfully, you
Speaker 4: can't see every face and you can't hear anything more
Speaker 4: than a dull roar. It's glorious. I love stages. People say, oh,
Speaker 4: you want to play the small venue.
Speaker 3: Fuck no, I.
Speaker 4: Like playing in the desert. Yeah and selling it out.
Speaker 4: You know, it'st that was always the aspiration to be big.
Speaker 1: Energy that flies back and what does that feel like,
Speaker 1: to be honest, honest to god truth, it gets dark,
Speaker 1: you can't see them.
Speaker 4: The sound goes up into the air and you can't
Speaker 4: necessarily hear them. Really, Oh it's rolling hills of people
Speaker 4: in outdoor fields, or it's a stadium where they're packed
Speaker 4: to the rafters.
Speaker 3: But it's gonna get dark by the time I'm going on.
Speaker 4: So chances are twenty minutes into the show it's dark, right,
Speaker 4: I might as well be in my bedroom, you know,
Speaker 4: I know what's out there, sure, but it's all I
Speaker 4: care about is waking up in the morning and being great,
Speaker 4: getting on the stage and wanting to be great, leaving
Speaker 4: and putting my head down on that pillow again at
Speaker 4: night and going was I great? And what can I
Speaker 4: do to be great tomorrow? So the rest of it
Speaker 4: is just what it is.
Speaker 1: What was the bridge that was that you considered to
Speaker 1: be that first big concert that.
Speaker 2: You were like, oh shit, guys, we're going to now be.
Speaker 4: Our story is ours and everyone's is different. When I
Speaker 4: was sixteen, and this is important to you and I
Speaker 4: is that eighteen was the drinking age.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was so you could sneak into a bar.
Speaker 4: This is very important, yep, because at sixteen, if you
Speaker 4: think about it, you don't have responsibility, you don't have family,
Speaker 4: probably don't have a real job, you know, so.
Speaker 3: You could hone the craft.
Speaker 4: Therefore, convincing your parents if I'm going to be in
Speaker 4: a bar, at least they know where I am.
Speaker 3: This was very important.
Speaker 4: So I could go and start cutting my teeth at
Speaker 4: sixteen and seventeen, so that by the time I just
Speaker 4: barely turned eighteen, I knew that the only future for
Speaker 4: me was having your own music.
Speaker 3: Because playing other people's music was at dead end Street.
Speaker 3: And I knew that at eighteen.
Speaker 2: That's amazing that.
Speaker 3: You never did anyone else's material.
Speaker 2: Most people at that age were just doing cover.
Speaker 4: Quit my own band, walked out on my own band
Speaker 4: and said I'm out, And I went and became the
Speaker 4: singer in a guy's band because it was original music
Speaker 4: and the very very beginning.
Speaker 3: So I knew at eighteen.
Speaker 4: So therefore at sixteen, when you're still in high school,
Speaker 4: seventeen eighteen, i'd go to high school. Technically, I thought
Speaker 4: I made it because I wasn't playing the dance anymore.
Speaker 3: I was playing the nightclub.
Speaker 4: When I was twenty one, I got a record deal,
Speaker 4: so I thought that was it. Do you remember the
Speaker 4: name of the first night club, Well, not the first
Speaker 4: I was up placed. It was my home was called
Speaker 4: the Fast Lane in Asbury Park. Okay, they let me
Speaker 4: in when I was sixteen, We let us open for people.
Speaker 4: Even as a cover band, worked my way up to
Speaker 4: then being in a guy's original band, and then that
Speaker 4: was six months and I had.
Speaker 3: My own original band. Never looked back.
Speaker 4: By the time I was twenty twenty, I had written Runaway,
Speaker 4: so there was no looking back.
Speaker 3: I mean, holy shit.
Speaker 4: And so by twenty one I had a record deal
Speaker 4: and it's the same record deal, and I'm sixty it's
Speaker 4: the same deal, same company.
Speaker 3: I'm very proud of that too.
Speaker 1: I think that that is also I think something so
Speaker 1: amazing is loyalty, loyalty to life and people, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really important.
Speaker 3: So why that right, right? You know it is.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very important attribute and for success too,
Speaker 1: that you stick with the people and you talk about
Speaker 1: at that point in your life you do make reference
Speaker 1: to perform in a club and Springsteen comes up, and
Speaker 1: you know, of course.
Speaker 3: Springsteen Jersey, you Jersey like the Kings of they were bigger.
Speaker 4: There were four albums in at this point because he's
Speaker 4: twelve years older.
Speaker 3: These are big brothers. Yeah, but they were also.
Speaker 4: Icons in New Jersey. Yes, right, but I guess you're right.
Speaker 4: I'm seventeen, eighteen years old. First time ever when Bruce
Speaker 4: jumps on the stage with me?
Speaker 2: Is that all documented?
Speaker 3: You have that in videos? Photographs?
Speaker 4: There was no There was no video in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 4: Who had a big old camera back in those days?
Speaker 4: There's photographs some Fortunately for me, somebody had a camera.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to table for two. We're having lunch with
Speaker 1: John bond Jovi. As I said earlier, he's been in
Speaker 1: the spotlight for forty years, and I'm wondering how is
Speaker 1: the music industry different today? So for people coming up
Speaker 1: for people like doing what you are, what you did,
Speaker 1: is it possible to do the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'll give you a little two stories about that.
Speaker 3: I remember about twelve.
Speaker 4: Years ago now, I was at a rock and roll
Speaker 4: Hall of Fame and it was on the red carpet
Speaker 4: and Little Stephen was in front of me and he
Speaker 4: was saying rock and roll is dead.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking to myself, this hurts my heart
Speaker 3: in more ways than one, because not only was he
Speaker 3: in the E Street bandy had his own solo career.
Speaker 4: He's the DJ on Serious Radio and he's my buddy, right,
Speaker 4: And I'm going, oh, this hurts my heart, you know,
Speaker 4: to be hearing these kinds of words.
Speaker 3: Well, we're all struggling to get our new songs.
Speaker 4: On the radio, not just your catalog, right, and you're
Speaker 4: at a Hall of Fame induction blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And then it.
Speaker 4: Started to be processed for me. And here's how I
Speaker 4: framed it. The advantages of being born much later making
Speaker 4: a record today.
Speaker 3: You have the Internet? Now, is that good or bad?
Speaker 4: It's good because terrestrial radio, as we know at iHeart
Speaker 4: our friends here who are broadcasting this, have very limited
Speaker 4: playlists on every for amount of radio that they have.
Speaker 3: They have access to the universe.
Speaker 4: But yet they still play the same songs that they
Speaker 4: played fifty years ago in that same order at eight
Speaker 4: o'clock every single night, and you're like, why do you
Speaker 4: do this?
Speaker 3: But they do.
Speaker 4: And then the Internet comes along, and therefore it allows
Speaker 4: the next Bob Dylan to be born. Because if you
Speaker 4: don't sound like one of those pop kids today, the
Speaker 4: boys or the girls that all end up sounding the same.
Speaker 4: How is a let's call them the stylist. Let's go
Speaker 4: back to the Nick Jagger conversation. How is that kid
Speaker 4: with that voice getting on top forty radio at twenty
Speaker 4: one years old?
Speaker 3: Chances aris not right? Right? They want you to sound
Speaker 3: like the.
Speaker 4: Pop kid or you know, the R and B slash
Speaker 4: god that's in his own I listen to, like want
Speaker 4: the whole package developed, and he just look that too.
Speaker 4: That's a whole nother story. But those playlists are so
Speaker 4: limited and limiting, and if you don't fit the format,
Speaker 4: you're not going to get that record on the radio.
Speaker 3: Boom.
Speaker 4: Then, if you hit forty, getting on top forty radio,
Speaker 4: no chance, you're done. Then if you're sixty and you
Speaker 4: can still sell out a stadium. But I want my
Speaker 4: new song on classic radio. Really, if I'm lucky, it's
Speaker 4: there for a minute and then they go, well, let's
Speaker 4: play Living on a praide and go yeah, but it's
Speaker 4: been playing a billion times. This is a good new song,
Speaker 4: give me it, you know. And Bruce is doing YouTube,
Speaker 4: doing it, Eltman's doing. People are still making great new music. Yes,
Speaker 4: that radio won't program, so we go back to the
Speaker 4: Internet avenue to get your music. Hurt a kid that's
Speaker 4: going to have grow up and be twenty and have
Speaker 4: Bob Dylan pen But Bob Dylan's voice hasn't have au
Speaker 4: right called the internet right now. Opposite side of that
Speaker 4: argument is the past ocean doesn't have the marketing of
Speaker 4: the record company and the and the focus of you know,
Speaker 4: and now Unfortunately, if you're a kid at the record company,
Speaker 4: you'll say how many likes do you have on your
Speaker 4: YouTube channel?
Speaker 3: And you go, fuck face, here's my song. Oh no,
Speaker 3: how many likes do you have? How many social media followers? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what it seems like. They want to know how many.
Speaker 3: They're not signing the kid to go.
Speaker 2: To the song completely completely, they're not.
Speaker 3: That's wrong.
Speaker 4: That's the good and the bad of the Internet, and
Speaker 4: the good and the bad of terrestrial radio.
Speaker 3: Sure, so it ain't easy now.
Speaker 1: And I feel like because of social media and these platforms,
Speaker 1: like everybody who has a creative gene.
Speaker 2: Which is great, but a lot of people don't have
Speaker 2: creative genes. But everyone's out there, so that is crazy, sure,
Speaker 2: crazy crazy, It's just insane.
Speaker 3: The word influencer. What the money we have to give
Speaker 3: them and.
Speaker 2: Spend and do you play into that?
Speaker 4: The kid Jesse has to you know, in the wine business,
Speaker 4: I'm like, we do what we have to fly influencers
Speaker 4: into this place because they're going to post about the
Speaker 4: wine and you go, really, I don't know what, you know,
Speaker 4: what do they do?
Speaker 3: They just talk about the wine. So these people have
Speaker 3: you know, it's a million, it's a yeah thing, It's
Speaker 3: a thing.
Speaker 1: The thing that is so hysterical is you know, I
Speaker 1: asked you about your growing up.
Speaker 3: So when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: I was not the coolest music guy.
Speaker 3: I sort of was. You know, my sister was into.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 1: She was into Frampton, she was into all these and
Speaker 1: she'd go buy my room and she'd hear like Olivia
Speaker 1: and Johnson and you know, she'd hear she'd hear Beg's.
Speaker 4: You know, I was that was it Top forty that
Speaker 4: you were just to to? I listened to the Beg's.
Speaker 4: I remember how big bad record was. Here's an op soong.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So you write this album, you know, in twenty twenty and.
Speaker 1: One of and you hit upon real really pressing things
Speaker 1: that we're all going through. You talk about that sort
Speaker 1: of as you as we're sitting as your home, as
Speaker 1: you're with your family, the inspiration and as we watch
Speaker 1: the world crumble in front of us, and this monster
Speaker 1: sort of tell lies and say, oh, this thing COVID's
Speaker 1: not coming your way, and oh guess what yeh?
Speaker 2: Talk about that part of the.
Speaker 3: Joan bonjo name.
Speaker 4: As you get older, I don't have the desire to
Speaker 4: write you give love a bad name. Even if I could,
Speaker 4: I don't have the desire. I'm sixty years old. I
Speaker 4: don't want to pretend to be twenty five. One thing,
Speaker 4: and I that you've known me, happy that you've known
Speaker 4: me long enough, right that that's not me.
Speaker 3: My hair has gone great.
Speaker 4: I just say, at least I still have it right,
Speaker 4: because all I care about.
Speaker 3: Is telling my truth.
Speaker 4: I can't pretend to be something I'm not, and I
Speaker 4: can't go out and you know, keep dyeing my hair,
Speaker 4: not whatever else you know you want me to do.
Speaker 4: Paint my fingernails. I used to say, I'll never become
Speaker 4: fifty painting my fingernails black and writing bitch on my
Speaker 4: belly because it was just like it wasn't a part
Speaker 4: of what I wanted to be. When I grew up,
Speaker 4: you know, you just had to grow and it it'll again.
Speaker 3: It cost me, but it's okay. When I put my
Speaker 3: head down on the pillow, it cost you. It cost me.
Speaker 4: When I walk down the street now and the girl says,
Speaker 4: my mom likes you, and I go, fuck you.
Speaker 3: It's very funny. But you to pretend to be something.
Speaker 4: That that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing, then I believe
Speaker 4: that I was a liar, and I'm not a liar.
Speaker 3: You may have liked our music. You may not have
Speaker 3: liked our music. It may like me or not like me.
Speaker 3: That's all cool. Yeah, But I was what I was,
Speaker 3: and I am what I am, and it's what I
Speaker 3: do period. And I grew up in public and I
Speaker 3: stayed there.
Speaker 4: So an album like twenty twenty comes along and it
Speaker 4: became topical, and I have to go into those rooms
Speaker 4: and have people say it's political.
Speaker 3: I go, it's not political, it's topical. It's see.
Speaker 4: If you can't do what you do, do what you can.
Speaker 4: Is that political? No, I think it's topical. Let me
Speaker 4: tell you something. When I tried to get that record
Speaker 4: played top on country radio, we didn't even last until
Speaker 4: this end of the song came up, they were like,
Speaker 4: fuck you and your song get.
Speaker 3: Out yeah wow.
Speaker 4: So that blew my mind that people couldn't come together
Speaker 4: over a wee song, you know nobody, and this made
Speaker 4: me happy. But it's sad that I had to write
Speaker 4: the song. But when I wrote American Reckoning, I certainly
Speaker 4: expected more blowback on that, And no where did I
Speaker 4: hear read or hear people say that song about.
Speaker 3: They embrace the song.
Speaker 4: And you know, I wrote it in the wake of
Speaker 4: George Floyd and watching out on television and it resonated,
Speaker 4: maybe because we were all locked in our homes, but
Speaker 4: that same tragedy that we've seen over and over again
Speaker 4: this time.
Speaker 3: Just forced me to sit down and write the song.
Speaker 4: And it still works for me today. But I can't
Speaker 4: write you give up in bad name and good conscience.
Speaker 4: There's just too much more.
Speaker 3: I can today.
Speaker 1: Who are the people that really light you up today?
Speaker 4: Harry Styles is the biggest stars.
Speaker 3: Full package.
Speaker 4: His ability to be deeper, thinker than a pop boys singer,
Speaker 4: His sexuality, which is you know, the whole androgyny paying,
Speaker 4: his ability to cross over into film, which is never
Speaker 4: easy for anyone who's a singer. It's not gonna be
Speaker 4: an easy road for him, but he's got a shot.
Speaker 4: I love what he's doing musically. He's challenging himself and
Speaker 4: then he comes up with a pop song. It has
Speaker 4: a deeper meeting, you know, as it was. It's not
Speaker 4: going to be the same as it was, folks.
Speaker 3: And I love that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because he gave you a slap outside the head
Speaker 4: and said I'm here with you, but doing it on
Speaker 4: my terms. So all of those things to me make
Speaker 4: him one of one. He really is one of He's
Speaker 4: one of one.
Speaker 1: What has been some of your favorite venues that you've
Speaker 1: performed that you go holy because you would. You did London,
Speaker 1: you were the last to do when they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wembley when they knocked out Baby, that's a big deal.
Speaker 3: The deal was that we closed Wembley.
Speaker 4: I think we did three nights, and then the deal
Speaker 4: was we were opening the new one. And as an American,
Speaker 4: that was pretty big deals. You know that they gave
Speaker 4: you both bookends and we sold the tickets. Two nights
Speaker 4: sold out and I went there on the train, I remember,
Speaker 4: and I got off and I was outside because they
Speaker 4: wanted to take a photograph with the arch and I
Speaker 4: took the photograph with the archsm go back on the
Speaker 4: train to go back to the hotel, and a week
Speaker 4: or two later I could word we're postponing the show
Speaker 4: and having to move it to another location.
Speaker 3: You should have looked inside. It's not built and.
Speaker 2: It was like those motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: So we had two nights. Books looked well. It was
Speaker 3: like the joke was that they had they couldn't open
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 4: It was a year or two years later, and so
Speaker 4: we've moved and then by that time we weren't on
Speaker 4: the road at that time. Somebody else played the first shot,
Speaker 4: so we didn't get the other bookend.
Speaker 3: But Wembley Stadium is the place that you saw live age,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: It's so we've played there a bunch of times, playing
Speaker 4: our home stadium which was then Giants Stadium, phenomenal for me.
Speaker 3: We opened Met Life, I think I did four nights
Speaker 3: there because it's just amazing to be in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're the people, right, You're right.
Speaker 4: I've played you know, every venue there is in Dublin,
Speaker 4: which is always a place I had lived for some
Speaker 4: of the Italians show, some of the South Americans show,
Speaker 4: some of the Australian shows over the years.
Speaker 3: No one's played the Tokyo Dome.
Speaker 4: More than I have, and unfortunately the sound is still
Speaker 4: reverberating around that room.
Speaker 3: Forty years later.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us today on Table for two. John
Speaker 1: and I are having a delicious lunch talking about music
Speaker 1: and family. But there's another incredibly important part of his
Speaker 1: life JBJ Soul Kitchen. Let's jump back in and learn
Speaker 1: more about it.
Speaker 2: My background, as you know, for many years, was the Calm.
Speaker 2: It was a family business.
Speaker 1: You know, it went away a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: and sort of a big explosion, but that's a life.
Speaker 1: And it was ninety four years of an incredible two
Speaker 1: family store.
Speaker 2: And recently I was outside.
Speaker 1: I left for a restaurants having dinner with Brian and
Speaker 1: two friends, and it was West Village via Corota and
Speaker 1: this guy is.
Speaker 2: I walk out and I don't notice, but there's a gentleman.
Speaker 1: There's a guy sitting on this lane on the street
Speaker 1: and he says to me, you're hot, So that's going
Speaker 1: to get my attention.
Speaker 2: I turned around and I was like, well.
Speaker 1: Hello, and he's like hello, and I walk over to
Speaker 1: him and he's like, what's your name?
Speaker 3: And I say I'm Bruce, and I go, what's your name?
Speaker 1: He goes, It's Matthew, and he smiles and he's missing
Speaker 1: like fire.
Speaker 3: You know, he's like three teeth. He's a guy of aids.
Speaker 1: I've been living on the streets, so I've been down
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know, are you getting medication?
Speaker 2: Are you being taken? Like how is it working for
Speaker 2: you here?
Speaker 1: And he's got just the best sort of energy about him.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm gay too, and I'm like, oh great,
Speaker 2: and then he's like.
Speaker 3: He's like who's that. I'm like, that's my husband.
Speaker 1: I had this full connection with him and it changed
Speaker 1: the course of the day, the night, like everything. And
Speaker 1: I think being seen is so important to people actually
Speaker 1: see you. And you tell a story where you saw
Speaker 1: a person and your line is if you do what
Speaker 1: you can right, you can yeah, which is a big
Speaker 1: deal because even at the moment, whatever, it was all
Speaker 1: I could do. Can you tell me about like that
Speaker 1: moment in your life coming from.
Speaker 4: I never intended to start some foundation and I never
Speaker 4: really had a that that was going to be my goal.
Speaker 4: In truth, you know, when you're a boy growing up
Speaker 4: in middle class New Jersey, We never didn't have shoes
Speaker 4: on our feet and food on the table, and so
Speaker 4: the family wasn't very philanthropic or politically even socially conscious.
Speaker 4: To be honest with you, it was a two parent
Speaker 4: working household, just living life.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, as I grew up and grew older, my initial
Speaker 4: focus selfishly was to go and make music. Yeah, what's
Speaker 4: wrong with that? Right, I'm twenty one, I'm twenty five.
Speaker 4: Check the boxes. As you get older, you know, and
Speaker 4: you're growing and growing up, your priorities or they don't change,
Speaker 4: but you see the world differently, and you've traveled, and
Speaker 4: you see cultures, and you see haves and have nots, and.
Speaker 3: You're more aware.
Speaker 4: So, strangely enough, and under the guise of what was
Speaker 4: once sports ownership, I owned an arena football team.
Speaker 3: So where does these two you know, roads intertwined?
Speaker 4: But I said, the only way that we can endear
Speaker 4: ourselves to the city of Philadelphia was to be more
Speaker 4: philanthropic than anyone My one partner was strange, but I
Speaker 4: get it, and I says, we just have to be bigger,
Speaker 4: better than baseball, basketball, football, and hockey in Philadelphia being
Speaker 4: more philanthropic.
Speaker 3: Initially we were robinhood.
Speaker 4: We were little things to each and everybody who wanted something.
Speaker 4: One night, when I was looking out the window and
Speaker 4: I saw a homeless guy getting ready to cuddle up on.
Speaker 3: A grate in the middle of winter, it all came
Speaker 3: together in my head.
Speaker 4: I said, Oh, my God, doesn't matter if you're a
Speaker 4: white or black, young or old, Republican or Democrat, Yankee
Speaker 4: fan or Phillies fan. You know, I said, this issue
Speaker 4: could hit anyone. Those two pet shakes away. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's life in America.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I called a buddy of mine who was born
Speaker 4: and raised in Philly, and I says, if you could
Speaker 4: find me somebody in the.
Speaker 3: Field to get some advice, tell him that, you know,
Speaker 3: we'd like to do something.
Speaker 4: Little did I know that the Michael Jordan of the
Speaker 4: issue was in Philadelphia. She's a nun, a sister, a
Speaker 4: sister of mercy, so they don't wear habits. She is
Speaker 4: on the street. She is not in the church. She
Speaker 4: is down that alleyway. She's the I want to talk
Speaker 4: into that guy on the street. She's the one that's,
Speaker 4: you know, telling him you need service provided. Go over here,
Speaker 4: go over here. My buddy goes to her and says,
Speaker 4: you know, I work with job bon Joe. She's like, yeah, great,
Speaker 4: I work with the Pope.
Speaker 3: Oh I got the greatest comeback Emerald.
Speaker 4: And Sister Mary says, well, that's sweet, you know, and
Speaker 4: bring him around. So I go, I explain who we are,
Speaker 4: what we've got, you know, a few bucks here and there,
Speaker 4: and she says, well, maybe you guys could raise enough
Speaker 4: money to help us repair one of these row homes.
Speaker 4: And I was not being a wise answer, and I said,
Speaker 4: but Sister Mary, what it cost to redo the block?
Speaker 3: And she said, I like you.
Speaker 4: And the reason I said that was I said, if
Speaker 4: I can get a dollar sign, then I know that
Speaker 4: we can bring back a street. We can back up
Speaker 4: a street, we can bring back a neighborhood. We can
Speaker 4: bring back a neighborhood, we can have an influence. We
Speaker 4: hit it off. She taught me everything that I'm now.
Speaker 3: No, I don't know if.
Speaker 4: Over many years later, fifteen sixteen years later, I learned
Speaker 4: from her because you teach a manificient, you know, or
Speaker 4: you give him a phicians. In this instance, service providing
Speaker 4: is the key, because you could give Zoo money a
Speaker 4: home habitat for humanity, which was our first for rank
Speaker 4: before I met her.
Speaker 3: But how are they keeping the lights on? Yeah? Long
Speaker 3: and short of it right there. Sister Mary's whole thing was.
Speaker 4: Service, providing, job training. You know, I'd vote those things
Speaker 4: were key. So we raised a.
Speaker 3: Little bit of money. We built up a block with her.
Speaker 4: And this is even as deep as her teaching me
Speaker 4: about text credits and government involvement in these things. President
Speaker 4: Clinton came himself and cut the ribbon on our foundation
Speaker 4: with her in Philly. Wrote about it in one of
Speaker 4: his books called Giving, because he'd never imagined a sports
Speaker 4: theme foundation, a non a.
Speaker 3: Rock star, blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Since then, about a thousand units of affordable housing, three restaurants,
Speaker 4: things like the food bank.
Speaker 3: So we're making our little more.
Speaker 4: It's not Jose Andres God bless SoSE he's a saint, yes, But.
Speaker 3: What we do in our little way is working.
Speaker 4: And then things like the Soul Kitchen, our unicorns, m tourthy.
Speaker 4: You created something that didn't exist anywhere.
Speaker 5: So I mean, I know what the soul kitchen is,
Speaker 5: but if you could give, right, So we're building houses.
Speaker 4: We meet sister Mary, we start building houses a block
Speaker 4: at a time. We're in different towns. We're doing our
Speaker 4: things all that same circle that our conversation began with
Speaker 4: gave me a.
Speaker 3: Lot of At a boy, that's what I get at
Speaker 3: a boy.
Speaker 4: They're like, yeah, you know, so okay, Oh, the economic
Speaker 4: downturn happens. And my wife on the couch one evening
Speaker 4: watching the evening news, sees this restaurant and she goes,
Speaker 4: that's the next phase of the foundation, because the people
Speaker 4: who we put in these houses have to eat now
Speaker 4: that the economy is going to take them, you know,
Speaker 4: and we're not going to get text credits to build
Speaker 4: more housing. Stream of consciousness, she says, I've got this
Speaker 4: idea restaurant, no prices on the menu, people volunteer for
Speaker 4: their meal, or you and I go. They're an effect
Speaker 4: change directly by putting money on the table.
Speaker 3: You or I go there, you leave.
Speaker 4: Twenty bucks on the table, paid for your meal, and
Speaker 4: it paid for someone else's meal. You have directly and
Speaker 4: immediately affected change those who are in need, which you
Speaker 4: would never know the differentstween you and the man in
Speaker 4: need going in there.
Speaker 3: Get out of your mind's eye, down and out in
Speaker 3: Beverly Hills. This is not nicking old in this ship.
Speaker 4: This is people who were coming in because of the
Speaker 4: economic downtern and you had a job yesterday yesterday.
Speaker 3: Now are coming in there because they were in need.
Speaker 4: But you would know they are talking to what you
Speaker 4: think as a hostess, but she's really a social worker.
Speaker 4: She's asking you've been here before, you know the model,
Speaker 4: making it something that you want to feel a part of,
Speaker 4: and therefore you've turned your meal. There's pride in that.
Speaker 4: There's pride and empowerment. The twelve year old could come
Speaker 4: in sweep the floor for twenty minutes. We call it
Speaker 4: a job, and it's twenty minutes. Just come in and
Speaker 4: push that broom for a minute. Here's a certificate.
Speaker 3: Go bring mom and dad and the brothers and sisters. Fat.
Speaker 3: I'm feeding everybody tonight.
Speaker 4: Now that little boy goes home with such a feeling
Speaker 4: of empowerment.
Speaker 3: They're not at a soup kitchen. There's no institutionalized food here.
Speaker 4: There is no soda pop and there is no you know,
Speaker 4: fried this, and it's like a real farm to the
Speaker 4: table menus, servers, plates, silverware, good and good for your food.
Speaker 4: The only difference is there's no prices on our menu
Speaker 4: and there's no government subsidies. I do not take government subsidies.
Speaker 1: That's a huge thing. To your point, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to actually do. It's easy to see it, it's easy
Speaker 1: to feel it. It's easy to maybe write there whatever,
Speaker 1: But it's hard to do. What you said is because
Speaker 1: you create the blasts a year and create the community.
Speaker 1: And that's when and every time I think about you, guys,
Speaker 1: I think about family and community. You know your father
Speaker 1: for comformist family is Italian family. It's about community, the
Speaker 1: community you build. You're super connected to Long Island and
Speaker 1: New Jersey.
Speaker 2: These are your homes.
Speaker 3: It's the big deal.
Speaker 2: And what you're doing on Long Island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did it here, you know. That was another
Speaker 3: point to your point. People will write a check.
Speaker 4: They're either too busy or as many things in life,
Speaker 4: it's born out of fear. I'll give you a story
Speaker 4: from the Soul Kitchen. The Soul Kitchen, the flagship, the
Speaker 4: first one. It's a thirty three seat restaurant. It's teeny weenie.
Speaker 4: A third of this room that we're sitting in it
Speaker 4: was an autobody shop when the man who got it
Speaker 4: for us showed Dorothea. So the three bays are still
Speaker 4: cut into the cinderblock right we walk in.
Speaker 3: It's three walls and three bays.
Speaker 4: He says, if you want to rent this joint, my wife,
Speaker 4: being the visionary as she is, just as.
Speaker 3: I see it, we could do that. We do it.
Speaker 3: We couldn't get.
Speaker 4: The affluent in the community to come. No way, no help,
Speaker 4: and it was fear. And I love the honesty. There's
Speaker 4: no booze. I go, okay, well go somewhere else because
Speaker 4: I need to feed people. Another guy says, I really
Speaker 4: don't want to sit next to a homeless person.
Speaker 3: There is people with a lot of money, and I go,
Speaker 3: we have communal seating. You would never know who was
Speaker 3: and who was not, and explaining that all to them.
Speaker 4: The idea that there was no prices on the menu
Speaker 4: freaked people out there, like I don't know if I'm
Speaker 4: supposed to come in and give you ten dollars or
Speaker 4: one thousand dollars, and what if I, you know, don't
Speaker 4: have a thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: It's not about that, it's communities. Meeting the guy next
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 4: You'd never know that that guy who is currently in
Speaker 4: dire straits worked on Wall Street last year. You know
Speaker 4: he got divorced. He just decided fuck all this. Now
Speaker 4: he's living with two other guys that are not doing
Speaker 4: as well as they used to.
Speaker 3: But don't think he's not.
Speaker 4: Educated and smart and passionate and everything else. Needless to say,
Speaker 4: most of those people never came back. Interesting never came back,
Speaker 4: and we just shake our heads and go, that's cool.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't need them to come back. We
Speaker 4: don't need them to come back. We'd rather feed the people,
Speaker 4: but we'd like to get the.
Speaker 3: Community more involved.
Speaker 4: They have because we've been there for eleven twelve years now.
Speaker 4: It's about a fifty to fifty mix, so it's sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, within reason, we're covering our overhead because you know,
Speaker 4: the short was paid by the foundation, and we're meeting.
Speaker 1: Sure, your children must look at you and your wife,
Speaker 1: and what great.
Speaker 2: Role models to sort of see because.
Speaker 3: You know, the rest of my day is shitty. I'm
Speaker 3: back to being an arrogant Rocks.
Speaker 2: Well that's good.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, really really have to just note that you
Speaker 1: really are She's the one.
Speaker 3: Dirthy is the one. She's the one.
Speaker 1: I've had a wonderful time talking with John, learning more
Speaker 1: about his family, his band, and on this beautiful summer day,
Speaker 1: I just wonder what's he going to be up to?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I just want to hit on a couple of things
Speaker 1: that no nuggets of JBJ that I don't know, which
Speaker 1: is what.
Speaker 2: Kind of books turn you on?
Speaker 3: What kind of music when you're.
Speaker 1: Home and you're just chilling out now and you're just
Speaker 1: you know, you're resting, and what do you dig?
Speaker 3: I can't put down open the Andre Agacy.
Speaker 4: Okay, I have a new passion or a sickness. It's tennis.
Speaker 4: I never played tennis in my whole life. I never
Speaker 4: swung a racket. Fifty nine years old, I pick up
Speaker 4: a racket.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed. It's like my days tennis just.
Speaker 2: To hire the competition.
Speaker 3: It's a different workout. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I got so tired of just running and lifting weights
Speaker 4: that I needed something new, and so tennis is doing
Speaker 4: that for me.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: But then there was a book called Late to the Ball,
Speaker 4: and it's about a fifty nine year old guy who
Speaker 4: finds tennis. I'm like, yeah, but now I'm obsessed. And
Speaker 4: so but I knew who andre Agassi was, but I
Speaker 4: didn't know, you know, And so I'm reading this book
Speaker 4: another summer book that I read this year and got
Speaker 4: to know. The author was Ryan Holiday, and the.
Speaker 3: Obstacle is the Way, and it's.
Speaker 4: You know, life gets thrown at you and shit happens,
Speaker 4: and the titles says it all right, the obstacle was
Speaker 4: there on purpose to teach you the right way.
Speaker 3: It's funny. Brian always says too.
Speaker 2: If you're in the game long enough, no matter who.
Speaker 3: You are, it's gonna sure.
Speaker 1: That's just the way it gets your for everybody long enough,
Speaker 1: it gets hard.
Speaker 2: So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 3: Very helpful book.
Speaker 4: I've read every self help book there is, but the
Speaker 4: latest things are the stoics, which these philosophers that are,
Speaker 4: you know, thousands of years old, gave the guy enough
Speaker 4: material to write about it and I explained properly. But
Speaker 4: this little one, it's just that philosophy helps you be
Speaker 4: a better leader.
Speaker 3: So the Obstacles the Way. It's been another one.
Speaker 4: So like this afternoon, will you you're going to go
Speaker 4: to work on my andre book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because yesterday was a rainy morning. If you remember
Speaker 3: set sports reading loving it.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone enjoyed pulling up a chair today. I
Speaker 1: certainly did. I really appreciate the Times police sent a
Speaker 1: big hugging against to Dorothea. She truly is a very
Speaker 1: special human and I I.
Speaker 3: Really appreciate you, John, Thank you, Thanks brother. This is great,
Speaker 3: right everyone?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Table for two with Bruce Bozzi is produced by iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: seven three seven Part and Airmail. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Bruce Bosi, Jonathan Hass Dressler and Nathan King. Table for
Speaker 1: two is edited and written by Tina Mullen and researched
Speaker 1: and written by Bridget arsenalt Our sound engineers are Emil B. Klein,
Speaker 1: Paul Bowman and Alyssa Midcalf. Table for two's la production
Speaker 1: team is Danielle Romo and Lorraine Verrez. Our music supervisor
Speaker 1: is Randall poster. Our talent booking is by James Harkin.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Cher, Kevin Yuvane, Bobby Bauer,
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