Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, review: intimate rock-doc epic is halfway there
Music documentaries are ten-a-penny at the moment. Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams and Wham! have been the subjects of recent tell-all films, while a major Beach Boys documentary comes out next month. To this line-up you can add Bon Jovi, the hair-metal titans behind anthems such as Livin’ on a Prayer and Bad Medicine. After touring the world for 40 years and selling 120 million albums, the band are giving us a glimpse behind the hairspray. More than a glimpse, in fact; at five hours long, this four-parter on Disney+ is a full-on hard rock marathon.
The band’s trajectory is familiar: struggle, success, megastardom, burnout, fallout, reinvention. As with most “rockumentaries”, the story is told through talking heads and archive clips. But there’s a major difference here. Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story is interspersed with footage of lead singer Jon Bon Jovi’s recent vocal struggles.
We see the pin-up with the Superman tattoo on his arm attempt everything – massages, acupuncture, lasers, surgery – to restore his crocked voice. It’s brutal to watch this once-all-conquering belter of power ballads – now 62 – straining to hit the notes, like witnessing Achilles realise that the arrow lodged in his heel could be terminal. The jeopardy, I should add, is never fully resolved.
The doleful edge tempers what’s otherwise an orgy of primary-colour optimism. Born into JFK’s America, the Bon Jovi boys rode the MTV wave of the 1980s. Poodle-haired keyboard player David Bryan says the band embody the American Dream because they’re five guys who came from nowhere. We see Bon Jovi’s rise from humble New Jersey beginnings (fellow New Jersey-ite Bruce Springsteen is a contributor here). Success supersized everything: the barnets and the frockcoats; the songs; the stadia; the ambitions; the partying and the wealth (“You buy me a Ferrari and I’ll buy you a Porsche” was typical of the backstage one-upmanship).
Nicely captured is the bubbling rivalry between Jon and guitarist Richie Sambora (the singer was always top dog and Sambora quit in 2013). We also meet manager Doc McGhee, who drags the band into his prison-avoiding deal with prosecutors after he’s charged with smuggling drugs in cahoots with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. It’s a trip.
But crucial details are skated over. Jon’s early band Atlantic City Expressway featured horns and epitomised the soulful, blue collar “Astbury sound”, best showcased by Springsteen’s E Street Band. What made him transition from this to the glam rock stylings of Bon Jovi? We’re never really told.
Equally, there’s an unnecessary editorial sleight of hand when it comes to grunge, the music genre that killed hair metal in the early Nineties. Bon Jovi dodged the grunge bullet by cutting their hair and introducing funky basslines on 1992 album Keep the Faith. But this album is dealt with in the documentary before grunge is ever mentioned when, in reality, Nirvana’s Nevermind came out in 1991.
In other words Keep the Faith was a reaction to, rather than a prelude to grunge. U2’s tortuous musical reinvention at the same time (for Achtung Baby) was captured in the 2011 documentary From the Sky Down, warts and all. I’d like to have seen far more about how Bon Jovi grappled (very successfully, as it turns out) with the greatest existential threat they ever faced.
Thank You, Goodnight is undeniably brave. Jon didn’t need to open himself up this much. But rather like a protracted heavy metal guitar solo, the documentary just goes on for a bit too long.
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi story is on Disney+ now