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With their catchy hooks, good looks, and irresistible pop-metal sound, Bon Jovi became one of the bestselling bands of all time. Bon Jovi: The Story is the first fully illustrated, comprehensive book paying tribute to the mega-popular group from the beginning in 1983 - soon after shooting to stardom with the release of their multiplatinum third album Slippery When Wet, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this August - to the present day.

This is also the first biography to include the early days of Bon Jovi through the words of people who were there - including early bandmates and associates like Jack Ponti, Wil Hercek, Bill Frank, and Bruce Stephen Foster. There are 25 sidebars throughout, covering solo and side projects, major collaborators like Desmond Child and Wayne Isham, the Slippery When Wet cover debate, the band’s Moscow festival performance, Jon Bon Jovi’s philanthropy and acting, the rise of tribute bands, and more.

Check out an excerpt below about how the classic BJ tune “Runaway” came about:

Enter George Karak to the saga in 1982.

Unlike the cover artists dominating the Jersey scene, George Karak says he always performed original tunes. His first group, Tony Romeo and the Sinners, played “mostly R&B à la Motown . . . with a splash of the British invasion of the 1960s,” says Karak during our interview. The group was active from 1972 until 1982, at which time he and some of the members formed an eighties AOR (album-oriented rock) band called Intruder that released two albums of catchy tunes in Europe and Japan via British-based Escape Records. Intruder lasted for a decade.

While performing with his side project George Karak and the Streethearts in 1982, George was approached by the young Bongiovi after a gig at the Fast Lane. George had seen Jon’s group once or twice and thought they were good. He did not know that Jon’s second cousin owned Power Station.

“He walked up to me,” recalls Karak, “and, I remember this clear as day, said: ‘I really like the way you write music. Do you want to write some songs together?’ That’s how it all started. He said, ‘Do you want to meet me at the Power Station? I want you to meet Tony and Lance [Quinn, who later produced Bon Jovi’s first two records.]’ I went up there and strummed out a bunch of songs for them. They picked some songs, and asked, ‘Do you mind if we record them?’ I go, ‘No, go ahead.’ I had nothing to lose because I was twenty or twenty-one years old. So they did. . . . We worked on ‘Runaway’ a little bit over at his [Jon’s] house in Sayreville. I had a lot of the song written, but he changed a couple of lines in the second verse. I pretty much wrote the whole thing, but I was a fair guy. I told Jon, ‘Whether you write two lines in a song or I write two lines in a song, we’ll split down the middle.’ That’s just the way it was back then. It didn’t really matter. We were all young and wanted to get something going. It was an agreement.”

Jack Ponti and Laura Giantonio attest that George had essentially written an earlier version of the song prior to meeting Jon. Funnily enough, George Karak (and Tony Bongiovi, for that matter) hardly ever gets mentioned in major television profiles on Bon Jovi, the man or the band. In June 1982, Jon recorded some demos at Power Station produced by Lance Quinn. George recalls that three of his songs were recorded, all of which he says he had written or co-written: “Talking In Your Sleep,” “All Talk And No Action,” and the epic “Runaway,” the iconic song that would launch the career of Bon Jovi the band. Recorded by a one-time group dubbed the All Star Review, “Runaway” featured future Bon Jovi bassist Hugh McDonald.

“Jon was sweeping floors and making coffee at the time and he had this song,” McDonald said to Scott Iwasaki of the Utah newspaper, the Park Record on September 13, 2013. “The producer [Lance Quinn] was in a band with one of my friends [and future Bon Jovi sound engineer] Obie O’Brien who I had known from Philadelphia.” One morning, Quinn called McDonald at 2am to do a session. “At that time, Bruce Springsteen was in one of the studios, so they asked his keyboardist Roy Bittan to play on the song. In one of the other rooms, John Waite was doing his first album, so they asked [drummer] Frankie LaRocka and [guitarist] Timmy Pierce to play. And that was the band.” Once “Runaway” was cut, John Bongiovi and the Wild Ones started performing it at their gigs.

Then twenty-three years old, Tim Pierce recalls the group recording at least six and possibly eight songs over a few days, including “Runaway” and “Talking In Your Sleep,” which he soloed on. “I met Jon when I was doing a John Waite record, and of course Jon was living upstairs [in Tony’s apartment],” Pierce tells me. “He liked my playing. He befriended me, and then when it became time to do his demos he flew me out a little early. I was already heading to New York on other stuff.” The session pros did not have long to learn the songs. Tim does not recall recording late at night but does recall Aldo Nova being there.

"Jon was absolutely laser focused on being a rock star, and I was pretty impressed by that fact,” says Pierce. “I had never really seen anybody that determined and that clear at that age.” He recalls that Jon and David [Bryan] later came out to Los Angeles “to find musicians to put together because I think he was tired of his bandmates. Maybe he was looking for a guitar player, but he was trying not to rely on his neighborhood dudes. I do remember that.” Tim and Jon crossed paths a decade later when the former performed a solo on a Christmas song that Jon and Don Felder contributed to for the 1992 compilation album A Very Special Christmas 2.

Interestingly, sometime in the first half of 1982, Jon appeared as a guitarist in two promo videos for Scandal—“Love’s Got A Line On You” and “Goodbye To You” (in which he lurks in the background)—that were shot to help get that band a record deal. Their debut EP came out that year. Some people think he was in the band briefly, but the more likely possibility is that he was filling in for another guitarist for the shoot(s). Certainly Bill Frank has no recollection of Jon being in Scandal.

However, Bill notes that Jon did get him auditions for both Scandal and Billy Squier. While neither gig panned out, the gestures were welcome. “I guess Jon thought pretty highly of me, and I always appreciated that,” says Frank. “If he could get me a gig that was going to get me what I wanted, he did the legwork for me.”

Around late 1982, frustrated by lack of label interest, Jon visited a burgeoning Long Island radio station called WAPP to try to get airplay for “Runaway,” and was encouraged to enter the song into their Rock to Riches contest at the behest of a DJ there. The winners would be included on their ten-song New York Rocks 1983 compilation of local talent released by the station. The song made the final cut, and when the collection was released, became its runaway hit, growing in popularity in select American markets because WAPP was part of the Doubleday chain of radio stations.

Some of those same labels that had originally said “no” to the young Bongiovi before were now proclaiming “yes,” as A&R men sought out the fresh new face with the hot tune.


 

The way in which the classic lineup of Bon Jovi was formed began with keyboardist David Bryan Rashbaum, who had been accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music. Jon lured his friend away from a life of classical music with the promise of fulfilling their rock ’n’ roll fantasies. David had toiled hard to get into Juilliard after beginning college at Rutgers University, but he took a chance on Jon again and recommended two older musicians to form their rhythm section—bassist Alec John Such and Cuban-American drummer Tico Torres, who had played together previously in the band Phantom’s Opera. Such had been playing in Richie Sambora’s band, Message, and Tico was playing for Frankie and the Knockouts, whose first two albums had broken the Top 50 in the United States and who had scored the Top 10 hit “Sweetheart” in 1981. Tico had joined the Knockouts after their big hit was released; now he was taking a chance on an unproven group after getting a good vibe from Jon, despite the latter being a few years younger than him.

The last piece of the puzzle was the guitarist position. Dave Sabo filled the six-string slot for a short time, playing live with the band as they capitalized on their burgeoning popularity, but then a hotshot young axeman—a cocky former bandmate of Alec with plenty of live experience—pestered Jon to join the band after witnessing a couple of their gigs. He was told by the singer to learn the group’s material.

Jon arrived late to the subsequent rehearsal to hear young Richie Sambora jamming harmoniously with his bandmates and immediately gave him the gig.

Bon Jovi the band was born.

(Reprinted with permission from Bon Jovi: The Story © 2016 by Bryan Reesman, Sterling, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.)