Jon Bon Jovi and his eponymous band have contributed some of the most iconic classic rock anthems of the 1980s, including “Runaway”, “Livin’ On A Prayer”, and “You Give Love A Bad Name”. Countless artists, frontmen or otherwise, wish they could have just one enduring single like the ones Bon Jovi boasts. But that doesn’t make the rock singer immune from wishing he wrote other world-famous songs—and wishing the world could forget others he worked on.
During a 2024 installment of The Guardian’s “Honest Playlist” series, the Bon Jovi frontman pulled back the curtain to his personal music taste. He admitted that he wished he could have written the “lyrics and melody” to Don Henley’s “The Boys Of Summer”. “I ran into Don last week, put my arm around him after he had just sung that song, and said, ‘I really wish I’d written that.’”
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To be fair to Bon Jovi, he’s not the only one who felt that way. As fate would have it, the song’s original composer, Mike Campbell, first tried to pitch the song to his Heartbreakers bandleader, Tom Petty. Petty refused, after which Campbell gave it to Henley—a decision Petty would kick himself for after hearing “Boys Of Summer” on the radio for the first time.
There Are Other Songs Jon Bon Jovi Wishes the World Would Forget
When you have as prolific a career as Bon Jovi, not every album cut will be a winner. There will be some stinkers here and there, some of which the band can quietly omit from their live performances, and some others that the band plays because the audience still enjoys them. But during his interview with The Guardian, frontman Jon Bon Jovi revealed that the one song he simply can’t stomach is from his early days as a recording studio gopher.
Bon Jovi got his start in the music industry as an underling at his cousin’s recording studio in Manhattan. One day, producer Meco Menardo was in the studio working on a Star Wars Christmas album. He needed the voice of a young boy for the track “R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas”. Since Bon Jovi was around—and eager for opportunities outside of floor-sweeping and errand-running—he volunteered to record the vocal part.
“People have only just recently rediscovered I was the singer,” Bon Jovi told The Guardian. “Now it gets played to me all the time.”
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