Jon Bon Jovi Is Telling Us that Sleeping Around Is the Secret to His ...

Jon Bon Jovi is making the rounds this week to promote a Hulu documentary about the history of his band, which looks like fun if you’re a fan but not particularly insightful. I like Jon Bon Jovi a lot, but he’s always had this sort of Tom Cruise quality about him: He has the ability to say a lot without really saying anything at all. I listened to him on the Smartless podcast and part of Conan’s podcast this week, and I’m always left with the feeling that either he doesn’t have a particularly active interior life, or he hides it well.

What he’s particularly good at is hiding behind idioms and cliches. On one of the podcasts, he was asked if he writes the lyrics or the music first, and he said that he usually comes up with the song title and works from there. That makes so much sense when you consider the titles of many of his songs: “Have a Nice Day,” “It’s My Life,” “Keep the Faith,” “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” “God Bless this Mess,” “Stick to Your Guns,” etc. My wife and I have a long-running joke about the inspiration for his songs coming from small talk he has with random people. “It Sure Is a Hot One,” or “You Have a Good One,” or “How About Them Yankees!”

That brings me to a particular cliche he’s been hiding behind during his promotional tour. Everyone — and I mean, everyone — eventually asks him how he’s managed to maintain a successful marriage to his wife Dorothea Hurley for 35 years. “Never Lying About Having Been a Saint,” he says, and that’s the quote that everyone is running with this week.

Everyone knows what he’s saying, right? I think that entertainment writers are so enamored with the idea that this man has been married for three-and-a-half decades to his high-school sweetheart that they don’t want to come right out and say it, but Jon Bon Jovi just told us all that the secret to a long marriage is fucking around with other people.

It’s unclear the manner in which he does so — do they have an arrangement, an open marriage, or does he just cheat on her and tell her afterward? — but what he’s probably actually saying is, “When I’m on tour, I bring a stack of NDAs. For my marriage” The man wrote a whole song about sleeping with other women. It was called “Bed of Roses,” and it was a top ten hit in the United States in 1993. It was all about how Jon Bon Jovi was thinking of his wife while he was sleeping with other people.

And that’s fine. No judgment from me (although, to be honest, my 1993 self was a little devastated). But I just want everyone to understand that Bon Jovi is being coy and disguising the truth with a euphemism. And the truth is: Jon Bon Jovi gets around.