April 18, 2023 • 42 mins
There was a time when the notion of an old—er, aging—rock star was laughable, a veritable contradiction in terms. And even now, precious few can legitimately claim such a title. Among that number is Jon Bon Jovi, who, it’s almost impossible to believe, is celebrating his band’s 40th anniversary this year. On this week’s episode of Table for Two, Bon Jovi reveals how he got his first record deal when he was a spry 21-year-old from New Jersey; what it was like to share the stage with Bruce Springsteen for the first time; why Harry Styles is the biggest star of our age; and how he’s still in love with his wife, Dorothea, after over 30 years of marriage. Hear a preview of the episode below, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, everybody, it's great to be back at the table today.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're at twotel little.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Journo in sag Harbor, New York with one of the
biggest rock stars of all time. Okay, I just spotted
out the window mister bon Jovi, and when rock and
roll comes into the room, it's epic.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh my god, thank you for doing this.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Please.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
He's a multi platinum selling artist. He's toured the world
countless times. His band is celebrating their fortieth anniversary this year.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Why are you hungry? We're hungry.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
We're eating it. Okay, I don't mind eating. Yeah, I
think I'm gonna do the chicken milonnaise. I think I'll
just do the tunit or tar.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
So pull up a chair, grab a bite to eat,
maybe even pour some Hampton water rose. Because we're having
lunch with John Bond Jovie. I'm Bruce Bosi and this
is my podcast Table for two.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
John.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I have been a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We're peers.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
We're just a couple of years apart, like so I
kind of feel John that we have sort of the
same time next year relationship.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah right, that's correct. So if you don't know that
the movie is.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I get to see John Dorothya over the summers like
two or three times. And you know two significant people,
which was Sandy Gallon the Buffets, and they both have
magical quality put people together. Friendship and family is a
huge thing. I mean, you're a New Jersey guy, I'm
a New York born. We're Try State guys. I really
(01:42):
think it plays so much into who you are and
why you have such a huge not only presence, but
what you give back.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Talk about friendship in your life. How did that become
such a bad roby. I'm not in the market for
fifty new friends. You know, like Dorothys, that someone has
to die to get on. But I love that when
we do have friends, they're the same friends. And someone
like the Buffets, for example, Janie is that great conduit, right,
(02:11):
She's always interested in your story, and then she introduces
you to other people who you find intriguing. And Janie's
also no bullshit. Jimmy Buffett is no bullshit there. They
don't have the patience for any of that stuff. So
when we first came here to the Hampton's and oh
my god, eighteen years ago or so twenty years ago,
(02:31):
music brought Jimmy and I, you know, the obvious thing
to talk about.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
But then it was Janie, who's the camp counselor, yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And the residents shrink and the den mother and all
of those things, and if you needed a dentist to
a caterer, and Janie was.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The one that knew everybody. And then you know, over
the years her.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
And Prothy have just gotten closer and closer and closer.
So that's a year round, all the time relationship. But
Janie is that den mother.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, she really she kind of and she brings a
really nice mix of people together always. She knows the
art of it, you know, your wife to me every
time it might feel weird or you might think this
is weird. But when I see Dorothea and I'm in
the same room as her, I feel immediately safe. I
feel there. She iss very lovely. There's something that's so
warm and welcoming and truthful and real about Dorothea. And
(03:21):
when I you know, have a good fortune to be
around a lot of people, but when I look in
her eyes, I feel like I get her. She gets
me there, and I think it's salt of the earth.
You guys are salt of the earth. Thanks, She's an
amazing woman. She's all right.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
I mean, you know what, we were going last night
out to dinner and I sit to her in the
driveway when we got in the car, sat just want
you to know when you came down the stairs, my
brain said to my mouth, wow.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And you know, to say something like that.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
To her, like, you know, forty two years into our relationship,
I say, I just like to tell you that all
the time, so I'll never have had a regret of,
oh I didn't tell her. I didn't because she The
highest compliment I love to pay a woman.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Is that she's abroad. And I mean that in the frankstin.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
I guess a sense of you know, Shirley Maclain, that
Janeye Buffett kind of a woman that is smarter than
everyone in the room, and cooler than everyone in the room,
and sexier than everyone in the room in their way.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And so my wife is abroad. I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
I mean, my parents are celebrating their sixtieth n worry
in about a week, and I feel similar to your
story with Dorothya. They met in high school and they
ow this you know, journey together. And my father always said,
this is a journey that we were on. It was
never there was never even a thought that he would
not be with her.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
This was whom he loved and this was you know,
through this, through then, through the.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Good times through bad times. Yeah, this was the woman.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And I think a lot of people forget that, They
take that for granted to make their wife and say, hey, no,
not great.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
You know, I talk about you being a rock star.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
You know, what is your definition of a rock star?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Does? Do rock stars exist today?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And when you were grown, when you were.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Thirteen or twelve, who were the rock stars?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You were like, oh, yeah, that's an aspiration.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Or a definition.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
It is something that is that That word is thrown
around now like it's nothing. You know, you could be
the rock star of the office, or the rock star
of the you know, production line, or the you know whatever, right,
and it's bandied about in music, that terminology is also
(05:41):
bandied about. But when I was a kid, the aspiration
of what that meant was that poster on your wall
of Queen and led Zeppelin and the Stones and in
Jersey of course Bruce and those bigger in life.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Holy Christ, I could never grow up and be that.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
You know, those are the posters on your wall, and
a lot of that was the mystery. I think the
songs were incredible and they still stand up fifty years later.
When you're talking about the Stones dead catalog of music
is le Jit you know, and Queen or Elton or
Bruce or you know those kind of things that hold
(06:23):
up today fifty.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Years Do you have a Stone songs one of the
Stone songs that just like hits you hard.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
There's so many. I mean, there's so many, but if
you think about more.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
I just was watching Who the Epics special, right, and
I did a voiceover kind of you know.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I was interviewed for not only could they write a
pop song?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Not only did they realize that they had to learn
to write a pop song because they weren't writers initially, right,
and the Beatles wrote their first song and for John
and Paul give them a song, and then I want
to be your man, and then Andrew says, you.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Guys better start writing zones. Oh fuck.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
They ramped up quick, and then before you know it,
in the next five six years, they're writing Give Me Shelter,
and they're writing Sympathy for the Devil and this isn't
Moonjune and spoon and she loves you. Yeah, this is
some deep, socially conscious stuff wild. They're incredibly cool and
incredibly fuckable and incredibly its socially.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Conscious and dangerous. And that was what, you know, the rock.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Stars that I grew up aspiring to be, you know,
and to this day, the bar for me is there
are two bands on the planet that I would open for,
and the Stones are wonderful.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
It's like I never miss a YouTube show if they
come to town because I'm a groupie for Bono's voice.
And I never miss a Stone show because that is
the band that I would open for any day. Yep,
you know, the other one being the EA Street Band
because there, you know, are are Beatles in New Jersey.
But I mean humbly. I say that humbly because she think,
(08:00):
oh my god, they're just so. I just saw the
Stones in Thanksgiving and I went to a show in Florida.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
I was in awe. I was just you know, Gaga,
It's amazing. It's like a religious experience for me. Find it, Yeah,
I find it to be that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
You know, when I've seen you in concert, when I've
seen you two, when i've seen stones. You know you
lose yourself recently. Yeah, you just go, you go something
you guys take.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So you know, the question to you is when you're
up there and you are looking at eighty thousand people
and you you know, you start your I when you're sixteen,
you're seventeen year in your room, it's fifty people, it's sixty.
What are you looking at? What are you relating to
the group as because it feels like you're saying to me, surely,
so how does that work for you?
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Numbers never mattered to me. I wanted to be great
for fifteen or fifty thousand. I always just wanted to
be the best I could possibly be in a club.
I wanted to kill you in a stadium. I want
to kill you.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Numbers. Never never wear.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Anything other than, you know, impressing yourself, because truthfully, you
can't see every face and you can't hear anything more
than a dull roar. It's glorious. I love stages. People say, oh,
you want to play the small venue.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Fuck no, I.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Like playing in the desert. Yeah and selling it out.
You know, it'st that was always the aspiration to be big.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Energy that flies back and what does that feel like,
to be honest, honest to god truth, it gets dark,
you can't see them.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
The sound goes up into the air and you can't
necessarily hear them. Really, Oh it's rolling hills of people
in outdoor fields, or it's a stadium where they're packed
to the rafters.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
But it's gonna get dark by the time I'm going on.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
So chances are twenty minutes into the show it's dark, right,
I might as well be in my bedroom, you know,
I know what's out there, sure, but it's all I
care about is waking up in the morning and being great,
getting on the stage and wanting to be great, leaving
and putting my head down on that pillow again at
night and going was I great? And what can I
(10:10):
do to be great tomorrow? So the rest of it
is just what it is.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
What was the bridge that was that you considered to
be that first big concert that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You were like, oh shit, guys, we're going to now be.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Our story is ours and everyone's is different. When I
was sixteen, and this is important to you and I
is that eighteen was the drinking age.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yes, it was so you could sneak into a bar.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
This is very important, yep, because at sixteen, if you
think about it, you don't have responsibility, you don't have family,
probably don't have a real job, you know, so.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
You could hone the craft.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Therefore, convincing your parents if I'm going to be in
a bar, at least they know where I am.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
This was very important.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
So I could go and start cutting my teeth at
sixteen and seventeen, so that by the time I just
barely turned eighteen, I knew that the only future for
me was having your own music.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Because playing other people's music was at dead end Street.
And I knew that at eighteen.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
That's amazing that.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
You never did anyone else's material.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Most people at that age were just doing cover.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Quit my own band, walked out on my own band
and said I'm out, And I went and became the
singer in a guy's band because it was original music
and the very very beginning.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So I knew at eighteen.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
So therefore at sixteen, when you're still in high school,
seventeen eighteen, i'd go to high school. Technically, I thought
I made it because I wasn't playing the dance anymore.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I was playing the nightclub.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
When I was twenty one, I got a record deal,
so I thought that was it. Do you remember the
name of the first night club, Well, not the first
I was up placed. It was my home was called
the Fast Lane in Asbury Park. Okay, they let me
in when I was sixteen, We let us open for people.
Even as a cover band, worked my way up to
(12:12):
then being in a guy's original band, and then that
was six months and I had.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
My own original band. Never looked back.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
By the time I was twenty twenty, I had written Runaway,
so there was no looking back.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
I mean, holy shit.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
And so by twenty one I had a record deal
and it's the same record deal, and I'm sixty it's
the same deal, same company.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I'm very proud of that too.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I think that that is also I think something so
amazing is loyalty, loyalty to life and people, and I
think it's really important.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So why that right, right? You know it is.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I think it's a very important attribute and for success too,
that you stick with the people and you talk about
at that point in your life you do make reference
to perform in a club and Springsteen comes up, and
you know, of course.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Springsteen Jersey, you Jersey like the Kings of they were bigger.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
There were four albums in at this point because he's
twelve years older.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
These are big brothers. Yeah, but they were also.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Icons in New Jersey. Yes, right, but I guess you're right.
I'm seventeen, eighteen years old. First time ever when Bruce
jumps on the stage with me?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Is that all documented?
Speaker 3 (13:24):
You have that in videos? Photographs?
Speaker 4 (13:25):
There was no There was no video in nineteen seventy nine.
Who had a big old camera back in those days?
There's photographs some Fortunately for me, somebody had a camera.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Welcome back to table for two. We're having lunch with
John bond Jovi. As I said earlier, he's been in
the spotlight for forty years, and I'm wondering how is
the music industry different today? So for people coming up
for people like doing what you are, what you did,
is it possible to do the same thing.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'll give you a little two stories about that.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I remember about twelve.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Years ago now, I was at a rock and roll
Hall of Fame and it was on the red carpet
and Little Stephen was in front of me and he
was saying rock and roll is dead.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And I was thinking to myself, this hurts my heart
in more ways than one, because not only was he
in the E Street bandy had his own solo career.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
He's the DJ on Serious Radio and he's my buddy, right,
And I'm going, oh, this hurts my heart, you know,
to be hearing these kinds of words.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Well, we're all struggling to get our new songs.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
On the radio, not just your catalog, right, and you're
at a Hall of Fame induction blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And then it.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Started to be processed for me. And here's how I
framed it. The advantages of being born much later making
a record today.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
You have the Internet? Now, is that good or bad?
Speaker 4 (15:05):
It's good because terrestrial radio, as we know at iHeart
our friends here who are broadcasting this, have very limited
playlists on every for amount of radio that they have.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
They have access to the universe.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
But yet they still play the same songs that they
played fifty years ago in that same order at eight
o'clock every single night, and you're like, why do you
do this?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
But they do.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
And then the Internet comes along, and therefore it allows
the next Bob Dylan to be born. Because if you
don't sound like one of those pop kids today, the
boys or the girls that all end up sounding the same.
How is a let's call them the stylist. Let's go
back to the Nick Jagger conversation. How is that kid
(15:47):
with that voice getting on top forty radio at twenty
one years old?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Chances aris not right? Right? They want you to sound
like the.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Pop kid or you know, the R and B slash
god that's in his own I listen to, like want
the whole package developed, and he just look that too.
That's a whole nother story. But those playlists are so
limited and limiting, and if you don't fit the format,
you're not going to get that record on the radio.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Boom.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Then, if you hit forty, getting on top forty radio,
no chance, you're done. Then if you're sixty and you
can still sell out a stadium. But I want my
new song on classic radio. Really, if I'm lucky, it's
there for a minute and then they go, well, let's
(16:35):
play Living on a praide and go yeah, but it's
been playing a billion times. This is a good new song,
give me it, you know. And Bruce is doing YouTube,
doing it, Eltman's doing. People are still making great new music. Yes,
that radio won't program, so we go back to the
Internet avenue to get your music. Hurt a kid that's
going to have grow up and be twenty and have
(16:57):
Bob Dylan pen But Bob Dylan's voice hasn't have au
right called the internet right now. Opposite side of that
argument is the past ocean doesn't have the marketing of
the record company and the and the focus of you know,
and now Unfortunately, if you're a kid at the record company,
you'll say how many likes do you have on your
(17:19):
YouTube channel?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
And you go, fuck face, here's my song. Oh no,
how many likes do you have? How many social media followers? Yeah,
that's what it seems like. They want to know how many.
They're not signing the kid to go.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
To the song completely completely, they're not.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
That's wrong.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
That's the good and the bad of the Internet, and
the good and the bad of terrestrial radio.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Sure, so it ain't easy now.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And I feel like because of social media and these platforms,
like everybody who has a creative gene.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Which is great, but a lot of people don't have
creative genes. But everyone's out there, so that is crazy, sure,
crazy crazy, It's just insane.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
The word influencer. What the money we have to give
them and.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Spend and do you play into that?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
The kid Jesse has to you know, in the wine business,
I'm like, we do what we have to fly influencers
into this place because they're going to post about the
wine and you go, really, I don't know what, you know,
what do they do?
Speaker 3 (18:19):
They just talk about the wine. So these people have
you know, it's a million, it's a yeah thing, It's
a thing.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The thing that is so hysterical is you know, I
asked you about your growing up.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I was not the coolest music guy.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I sort of was. You know, my sister was into.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
She was into Frampton, she was into all these and
she'd go buy my room and she'd hear like Olivia
and Johnson and you know, she'd hear she'd hear Beg's.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
You know, I was that was it Top forty that
you were just to to? I listened to the Beg's.
I remember how big bad record was. Here's an op soong.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So you write this album, you know, in twenty twenty and.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
One of and you hit upon real really pressing things
that we're all going through. You talk about that sort
of as you as we're sitting as your home, as
you're with your family, the inspiration and as we watch
the world crumble in front of us, and this monster
sort of tell lies and say, oh, this thing COVID's
(19:37):
not coming your way, and oh guess what yeh?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Talk about that part of the.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Joan bonjo name.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
As you get older, I don't have the desire to
write you give love a bad name. Even if I could,
I don't have the desire. I'm sixty years old. I
don't want to pretend to be twenty five. One thing,
and I that you've known me, happy that you've known
me long enough, right that that's not me.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
My hair has gone great.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
I just say, at least I still have it right,
because all I care about.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Is telling my truth.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
I can't pretend to be something I'm not, and I
can't go out and you know, keep dyeing my hair,
not whatever else you know you want me to do.
Paint my fingernails. I used to say, I'll never become
fifty painting my fingernails black and writing bitch on my
belly because it was just like it wasn't a part
of what I wanted to be. When I grew up,
(20:28):
you know, you just had to grow and it it'll again.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
It cost me, but it's okay. When I put my
head down on the pillow, it cost you. It cost me.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
When I walk down the street now and the girl says,
my mom likes you, and I go, fuck you.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
It's very funny. But you to pretend to be something.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
That that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing, then I believe
that I was a liar, and I'm not a liar.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
You may have liked our music. You may not have
liked our music. It may like me or not like me.
That's all cool. Yeah, But I was what I was,
and I am what I am, and it's what I
do period. And I grew up in public and I
stayed there.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
So an album like twenty twenty comes along and it
became topical, and I have to go into those rooms
and have people say it's political.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I go, it's not political, it's topical. It's see.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
If you can't do what you do, do what you can.
Is that political? No, I think it's topical. Let me
tell you something. When I tried to get that record
played top on country radio, we didn't even last until
this end of the song came up, they were like,
fuck you and your song get.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Out yeah wow.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
So that blew my mind that people couldn't come together
over a wee song, you know nobody, and this made
me happy. But it's sad that I had to write
the song. But when I wrote American Reckoning, I certainly
expected more blowback on that, And no where did I
hear read or hear people say that song about.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
They embrace the song.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
And you know, I wrote it in the wake of
George Floyd and watching out on television and it resonated,
maybe because we were all locked in our homes, but
that same tragedy that we've seen over and over again
this time.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Just forced me to sit down and write the song.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And it still works for me today. But I can't
write you give up in bad name and good conscience.
There's just too much more.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
I can today.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Who are the people that really light you up today?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Harry Styles is the biggest stars.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Full package.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
His ability to be deeper, thinker than a pop boys singer,
His sexuality, which is you know, the whole androgyny paying,
his ability to cross over into film, which is never
easy for anyone who's a singer. It's not gonna be
an easy road for him, but he's got a shot.
(23:12):
I love what he's doing musically. He's challenging himself and
then he comes up with a pop song. It has
a deeper meeting, you know, as it was. It's not
going to be the same as it was, folks.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
And I love that.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, because he gave you a slap outside the head
and said I'm here with you, but doing it on
my terms. So all of those things to me make
him one of one. He really is one of He's
one of one.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
What has been some of your favorite venues that you've
performed that you go holy because you would. You did London,
you were the last to do when they are. Yeah,
Wembley when they knocked out Baby, that's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
The deal was that we closed Wembley.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
I think we did three nights, and then the deal
was we were opening the new one. And as an American,
that was pretty big deals. You know that they gave
you both bookends and we sold the tickets. Two nights
sold out and I went there on the train, I remember,
and I got off and I was outside because they
wanted to take a photograph with the arch and I
took the photograph with the archsm go back on the
(24:13):
train to go back to the hotel, and a week
or two later I could word we're postponing the show
and having to move it to another location.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You should have looked inside. It's not built and.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
It was like those motherfuckers.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
So we had two nights. Books looked well. It was
like the joke was that they had they couldn't open
with me.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
It was a year or two years later, and so
we've moved and then by that time we weren't on
the road at that time. Somebody else played the first shot,
so we didn't get the other bookend.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
But Wembley Stadium is the place that you saw live age,
you know.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
It's so we've played there a bunch of times, playing
our home stadium which was then Giants Stadium, phenomenal for me.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
We opened Met Life, I think I did four nights
there because it's just amazing to be in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, because you're the people, right, You're right.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
I've played you know, every venue there is in Dublin,
which is always a place I had lived for some
of the Italians show, some of the South Americans show,
some of the Australian shows over the years.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
No one's played the Tokyo Dome.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
More than I have, and unfortunately the sound is still
reverberating around that room.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Forty years later.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Thanks for joining us today on Table for two. John
and I are having a delicious lunch talking about music
and family. But there's another incredibly important part of his
life JBJ Soul Kitchen. Let's jump back in and learn
more about it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
My background, as you know, for many years, was the Calm.
It was a family business.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
You know, it went away a couple of years ago
and sort of a big explosion, but that's a life.
And it was ninety four years of an incredible two
family store.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
And recently I was outside.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I left for a restaurants having dinner with Brian and
two friends, and it was West Village via Corota and
this guy is.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
I walk out and I don't notice, but there's a gentleman.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
There's a guy sitting on this lane on the street
and he says to me, you're hot, So that's going
to get my attention.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I turned around and I was like, well.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Hello, and he's like hello, and I walk over to
him and he's like, what's your name?
Speaker 3 (26:39):
And I say I'm Bruce, and I go, what's your name?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
He goes, It's Matthew, and he smiles and he's missing
like fire.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
You know, he's like three teeth. He's a guy of aids.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I've been living on the streets, so I've been down
and I'm like, you know, are you getting medication?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Are you being taken? Like how is it working for
you here?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And he's got just the best sort of energy about him.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
He's like, I'm gay too, and I'm like, oh great,
and then he's like.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
He's like who's that. I'm like, that's my husband.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
I had this full connection with him and it changed
the course of the day, the night, like everything. And
I think being seen is so important to people actually
see you. And you tell a story where you saw
a person and your line is if you do what
you can right, you can yeah, which is a big
(27:28):
deal because even at the moment, whatever, it was all
I could do. Can you tell me about like that
moment in your life coming from.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I never intended to start some foundation and I never
really had a that that was going to be my goal.
In truth, you know, when you're a boy growing up
in middle class New Jersey, We never didn't have shoes
on our feet and food on the table, and so
the family wasn't very philanthropic or politically even socially conscious.
(27:56):
To be honest with you, it was a two parent
working household, just living life.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Right.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
So, as I grew up and grew older, my initial
focus selfishly was to go and make music. Yeah, what's
wrong with that? Right, I'm twenty one, I'm twenty five.
Check the boxes. As you get older, you know, and
you're growing and growing up, your priorities or they don't change,
but you see the world differently, and you've traveled, and
(28:25):
you see cultures, and you see haves and have nots, and.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
You're more aware.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
So, strangely enough, and under the guise of what was
once sports ownership, I owned an arena football team.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So where does these two you know, roads intertwined?
Speaker 4 (28:44):
But I said, the only way that we can endear
ourselves to the city of Philadelphia was to be more
philanthropic than anyone My one partner was strange, but I
get it, and I says, we just have to be bigger,
better than baseball, basketball, football, and hockey in Philadelphia being
more philanthropic.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Initially we were robinhood.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
We were little things to each and everybody who wanted something.
One night, when I was looking out the window and
I saw a homeless guy getting ready to cuddle up on.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
A grate in the middle of winter, it all came
together in my head.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
I said, Oh, my God, doesn't matter if you're a
white or black, young or old, Republican or Democrat, Yankee
fan or Phillies fan. You know, I said, this issue
could hit anyone. Those two pet shakes away. I mean,
that's life in America.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
And I called a buddy of mine who was born
and raised in Philly, and I says, if you could
find me somebody in the.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Field to get some advice, tell him that, you know,
we'd like to do something.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Little did I know that the Michael Jordan of the
issue was in Philadelphia. She's a nun, a sister, a
sister of mercy, so they don't wear habits. She is
on the street. She is not in the church. She
is down that alleyway. She's the I want to talk
into that guy on the street. She's the one that's,
you know, telling him you need service provided. Go over here,
(30:06):
go over here. My buddy goes to her and says,
you know, I work with job bon Joe. She's like, yeah, great,
I work with the Pope.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Oh I got the greatest comeback Emerald.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
And Sister Mary says, well, that's sweet, you know, and
bring him around. So I go, I explain who we are,
what we've got, you know, a few bucks here and there,
and she says, well, maybe you guys could raise enough
money to help us repair one of these row homes.
And I was not being a wise answer, and I said,
but Sister Mary, what it cost to redo the block?
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And she said, I like you.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
And the reason I said that was I said, if
I can get a dollar sign, then I know that
we can bring back a street. We can back up
a street, we can bring back a neighborhood. We can
bring back a neighborhood, we can have an influence. We
hit it off. She taught me everything that I'm now.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
No, I don't know if.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Over many years later, fifteen sixteen years later, I learned
from her because you teach a manificient, you know, or
you give him a phicians. In this instance, service providing
is the key, because you could give Zoo money a
home habitat for humanity, which was our first for rank
before I met her.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
But how are they keeping the lights on? Yeah? Long
and short of it right there. Sister Mary's whole thing was.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Service, providing, job training. You know, I'd vote those things
were key. So we raised a.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Little bit of money. We built up a block with her.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
And this is even as deep as her teaching me
about text credits and government involvement in these things. President
Clinton came himself and cut the ribbon on our foundation
with her in Philly. Wrote about it in one of
his books called Giving, because he'd never imagined a sports
theme foundation, a non a.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Rock star, blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Since then, about a thousand units of affordable housing, three restaurants,
things like the food bank.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
So we're making our little more.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
It's not Jose Andres God bless SoSE he's a saint, yes, But.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
What we do in our little way is working.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
And then things like the Soul Kitchen, our unicorns, m tourthy.
You created something that didn't exist anywhere.
Speaker 5 (32:35):
So I mean, I know what the soul kitchen is,
but if you could give, right, So we're building houses.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
We meet sister Mary, we start building houses a block
at a time. We're in different towns. We're doing our
things all that same circle that our conversation began with
gave me a.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Lot of At a boy, that's what I get at
a boy.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
They're like, yeah, you know, so okay, Oh, the economic
downturn happens. And my wife on the couch one evening
watching the evening news, sees this restaurant and she goes,
that's the next phase of the foundation, because the people
who we put in these houses have to eat now
that the economy is going to take them, you know,
(33:15):
and we're not going to get text credits to build
more housing. Stream of consciousness, she says, I've got this
idea restaurant, no prices on the menu, people volunteer for
their meal, or you and I go. They're an effect
change directly by putting money on the table.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
You or I go there, you leave.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Twenty bucks on the table, paid for your meal, and
it paid for someone else's meal. You have directly and
immediately affected change those who are in need, which you
would never know the differentstween you and the man in
need going in there.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Get out of your mind's eye, down and out in
Beverly Hills. This is not nicking old in this ship.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
This is people who were coming in because of the
economic downtern and you had a job yesterday yesterday.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Now are coming in there because they were in need.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
But you would know they are talking to what you
think as a hostess, but she's really a social worker.
She's asking you've been here before, you know the model,
making it something that you want to feel a part of,
and therefore you've turned your meal. There's pride in that.
There's pride and empowerment. The twelve year old could come
(34:19):
in sweep the floor for twenty minutes. We call it
a job, and it's twenty minutes. Just come in and
push that broom for a minute. Here's a certificate.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Go bring mom and dad and the brothers and sisters. Fat.
I'm feeding everybody tonight.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Now that little boy goes home with such a feeling
of empowerment.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
They're not at a soup kitchen. There's no institutionalized food here.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
There is no soda pop and there is no you know,
fried this, and it's like a real farm to the
table menus, servers, plates, silverware, good and good for your food.
The only difference is there's no prices on our menu
and there's no government subsidies. I do not take government subsidies.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That's a huge thing. To your point, it's really hard
to actually do. It's easy to see it, it's easy
to feel it. It's easy to maybe write there whatever,
But it's hard to do. What you said is because
you create the blasts a year and create the community.
And that's when and every time I think about you, guys,
(35:19):
I think about family and community. You know your father
for comformist family is Italian family. It's about community, the
community you build. You're super connected to Long Island and
New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
These are your homes.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
It's the big deal.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
And what you're doing on Long Island.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, they did it here, you know. That was another
point to your point. People will write a check.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
They're either too busy or as many things in life,
it's born out of fear. I'll give you a story
from the Soul Kitchen. The Soul Kitchen, the flagship, the
first one. It's a thirty three seat restaurant. It's teeny weenie.
A third of this room that we're sitting in it
was an autobody shop when the man who got it
(36:08):
for us showed Dorothea. So the three bays are still
cut into the cinderblock right we walk in.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's three walls and three bays.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
He says, if you want to rent this joint, my wife,
being the visionary as she is, just as.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
I see it, we could do that. We do it.
We couldn't get.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
The affluent in the community to come. No way, no help,
and it was fear. And I love the honesty. There's
no booze. I go, okay, well go somewhere else because
I need to feed people. Another guy says, I really
don't want to sit next to a homeless person.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
There is people with a lot of money, and I go,
we have communal seating. You would never know who was
and who was not, and explaining that all to them.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
The idea that there was no prices on the menu
freaked people out there, like I don't know if I'm
supposed to come in and give you ten dollars or
one thousand dollars, and what if I, you know, don't
have a thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
It's not about that, it's communities. Meeting the guy next
to you.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
You'd never know that that guy who is currently in
dire straits worked on Wall Street last year. You know
he got divorced. He just decided fuck all this. Now
he's living with two other guys that are not doing
as well as they used to.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
But don't think he's not.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Educated and smart and passionate and everything else. Needless to say,
most of those people never came back. Interesting never came back,
and we just shake our heads and go, that's cool.
You know, we don't need them to come back. We
don't need them to come back. We'd rather feed the people,
but we'd like to get the.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Community more involved.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
They have because we've been there for eleven twelve years now.
It's about a fifty to fifty mix, so it's sort of,
you know, within reason, we're covering our overhead because you know,
the short was paid by the foundation, and we're meeting.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Sure, your children must look at you and your wife,
and what great.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Role models to sort of see because.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
You know, the rest of my day is shitty. I'm
back to being an arrogant Rocks.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Well that's good.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
I mean, really really have to just note that you
really are She's the one.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Dirthy is the one. She's the one.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I've had a wonderful time talking with John, learning more
about his family, his band, and on this beautiful summer day,
I just wonder what's he going to be up to?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
I just want to hit on a couple of things
that no nuggets of JBJ that I don't know, which
is what.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Kind of books turn you on?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
What kind of music when you're.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Home and you're just chilling out now and you're just
you know, you're resting, and what do you dig?
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I can't put down open the Andre Agacy.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Okay, I have a new passion or a sickness. It's tennis.
I never played tennis in my whole life. I never
swung a racket. Fifty nine years old, I pick up
a racket.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
I'm obsessed. It's like my days tennis just.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
To hire the competition.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
It's a different workout. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
I got so tired of just running and lifting weights
that I needed something new, and so tennis is doing
that for me.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
But then there was a book called Late to the Ball,
and it's about a fifty nine year old guy who
finds tennis. I'm like, yeah, but now I'm obsessed. And
so but I knew who andre Agassi was, but I
didn't know, you know, And so I'm reading this book
another summer book that I read this year and got
(39:45):
to know. The author was Ryan Holiday, and the.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Obstacle is the Way, and it's.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
You know, life gets thrown at you and shit happens,
and the titles says it all right, the obstacle was
there on purpose to teach you the right way.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
It's funny. Brian always says too.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
If you're in the game long enough, no matter who.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
You are, it's gonna sure.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
That's just the way it gets your for everybody long enough,
it gets hard.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Very helpful book.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
I've read every self help book there is, but the
latest things are the stoics, which these philosophers that are,
you know, thousands of years old, gave the guy enough
material to write about it and I explained properly. But
this little one, it's just that philosophy helps you be
a better leader.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
So the Obstacles the Way. It's been another one.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
So like this afternoon, will you you're going to go
to work on my andre book?
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, because yesterday was a rainy morning. If you remember
set sports reading loving it.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I hope everyone enjoyed pulling up a chair today. I
certainly did. I really appreciate the Times police sent a
big hugging against to Dorothea. She truly is a very
special human and I I.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Really appreciate you, John, Thank you, Thanks brother. This is great,
right everyone?
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Table for two with Bruce Bozzi is produced by iHeartRadio
seven three seven Part and Airmail. Our executive producers are
Bruce Bosi, Jonathan Hass Dressler and Nathan King. Table for
two is edited and written by Tina Mullen and researched
and written by Bridget arsenalt Our sound engineers are Emil B. Klein,
Paul Bowman and Alyssa Midcalf. Table for two's la production
(41:37):
team is Danielle Romo and Lorraine Verrez. Our music supervisor
is Randall poster. Our talent booking is by James Harkin.
Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Cher, Kevin Yuvane, Bobby Bauer,
Alison Kant Graber and Gabby Karen, Jomproloja Felice, and the
staff of Tutel Ojarno and sach Arbor. For more podcasts
(41:59):
from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's great to be back at the table today.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're at twotel little.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Journo in sag Harbor, New York with one of the
biggest rock stars of all time. Okay, I just spotted
out the window mister bon Jovi, and when rock and
roll comes into the room, it's epic.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh my god, thank you for doing this.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Please.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
He's a multi platinum selling artist. He's toured the world
countless times. His band is celebrating their fortieth anniversary this year.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Why are you hungry? We're hungry.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
We're eating it. Okay, I don't mind eating. Yeah, I
think I'm gonna do the chicken milonnaise. I think I'll
just do the tunit or tar.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
So pull up a chair, grab a bite to eat,
maybe even pour some Hampton water rose. Because we're having
lunch with John Bond Jovie. I'm Bruce Bosi and this
is my podcast Table for two.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
John.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I have been a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We're peers.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
We're just a couple of years apart, like so I
kind of feel John that we have sort of the
same time next year relationship.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah right, that's correct. So if you don't know that
the movie is.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I get to see John Dorothya over the summers like
two or three times. And you know two significant people,
which was Sandy Gallon the Buffets, and they both have
magical quality put people together. Friendship and family is a
huge thing. I mean, you're a New Jersey guy, I'm
a New York born. We're Try State guys. I really
(01:42):
think it plays so much into who you are and
why you have such a huge not only presence, but
what you give back.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Talk about friendship in your life. How did that become
such a bad roby. I'm not in the market for
fifty new friends. You know, like Dorothys, that someone has
to die to get on. But I love that when
we do have friends, they're the same friends. And someone
like the Buffets, for example, Janie is that great conduit, right,
(02:11):
She's always interested in your story, and then she introduces
you to other people who you find intriguing. And Janie's
also no bullshit. Jimmy Buffett is no bullshit there. They
don't have the patience for any of that stuff. So
when we first came here to the Hampton's and oh
my god, eighteen years ago or so twenty years ago,
(02:31):
music brought Jimmy and I, you know, the obvious thing
to talk about.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
But then it was Janie, who's the camp counselor, yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And the residents shrink and the den mother and all
of those things, and if you needed a dentist to
a caterer, and Janie was.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The one that knew everybody. And then you know, over
the years her.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
And Prothy have just gotten closer and closer and closer.
So that's a year round, all the time relationship. But
Janie is that den mother.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, she really she kind of and she brings a
really nice mix of people together always. She knows the
art of it, you know, your wife to me every
time it might feel weird or you might think this
is weird. But when I see Dorothea and I'm in
the same room as her, I feel immediately safe. I
feel there. She iss very lovely. There's something that's so
warm and welcoming and truthful and real about Dorothea. And
(03:21):
when I you know, have a good fortune to be
around a lot of people, but when I look in
her eyes, I feel like I get her. She gets
me there, and I think it's salt of the earth.
You guys are salt of the earth. Thanks, She's an
amazing woman. She's all right.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
I mean, you know what, we were going last night
out to dinner and I sit to her in the
driveway when we got in the car, sat just want
you to know when you came down the stairs, my
brain said to my mouth, wow.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And you know, to say something like that.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
To her, like, you know, forty two years into our relationship,
I say, I just like to tell you that all
the time, so I'll never have had a regret of,
oh I didn't tell her. I didn't because she The
highest compliment I love to pay a woman.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Is that she's abroad. And I mean that in the frankstin.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
I guess a sense of you know, Shirley Maclain, that
Janeye Buffett kind of a woman that is smarter than
everyone in the room, and cooler than everyone in the room,
and sexier than everyone in the room in their way.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And so my wife is abroad. I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
I mean, my parents are celebrating their sixtieth n worry
in about a week, and I feel similar to your
story with Dorothya. They met in high school and they
ow this you know, journey together. And my father always said,
this is a journey that we were on. It was
never there was never even a thought that he would
not be with her.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
This was whom he loved and this was you know,
through this, through then, through the.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Good times through bad times. Yeah, this was the woman.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And I think a lot of people forget that, They
take that for granted to make their wife and say, hey, no,
not great.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
You know, I talk about you being a rock star.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
You know, what is your definition of a rock star?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Does? Do rock stars exist today?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And when you were grown, when you were.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Thirteen or twelve, who were the rock stars?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You were like, oh, yeah, that's an aspiration.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Or a definition.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
It is something that is that That word is thrown
around now like it's nothing. You know, you could be
the rock star of the office, or the rock star
of the you know, production line, or the you know whatever, right,
and it's bandied about in music, that terminology is also
(05:41):
bandied about. But when I was a kid, the aspiration
of what that meant was that poster on your wall
of Queen and led Zeppelin and the Stones and in
Jersey of course Bruce and those bigger in life.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Holy Christ, I could never grow up and be that.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
You know, those are the posters on your wall, and
a lot of that was the mystery. I think the
songs were incredible and they still stand up fifty years later.
When you're talking about the Stones dead catalog of music
is le Jit you know, and Queen or Elton or
Bruce or you know those kind of things that hold
(06:23):
up today fifty.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Years Do you have a Stone songs one of the
Stone songs that just like hits you hard.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
There's so many. I mean, there's so many, but if
you think about more.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
I just was watching Who the Epics special, right, and
I did a voiceover kind of you know.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I was interviewed for not only could they write a
pop song?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Not only did they realize that they had to learn
to write a pop song because they weren't writers initially, right,
and the Beatles wrote their first song and for John
and Paul give them a song, and then I want
to be your man, and then Andrew says, you.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Guys better start writing zones. Oh fuck.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
They ramped up quick, and then before you know it,
in the next five six years, they're writing Give Me Shelter,
and they're writing Sympathy for the Devil and this isn't
Moonjune and spoon and she loves you. Yeah, this is
some deep, socially conscious stuff wild. They're incredibly cool and
incredibly fuckable and incredibly its socially.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Conscious and dangerous. And that was what, you know, the rock.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Stars that I grew up aspiring to be, you know,
and to this day, the bar for me is there
are two bands on the planet that I would open for,
and the Stones are wonderful.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
It's like I never miss a YouTube show if they
come to town because I'm a groupie for Bono's voice.
And I never miss a Stone show because that is
the band that I would open for any day. Yep,
you know, the other one being the EA Street Band
because there, you know, are are Beatles in New Jersey.
But I mean humbly. I say that humbly because she think,
(08:00):
oh my god, they're just so. I just saw the
Stones in Thanksgiving and I went to a show in Florida.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
I was in awe. I was just you know, Gaga,
It's amazing. It's like a religious experience for me. Find it, Yeah,
I find it to be that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
You know, when I've seen you in concert, when I've
seen you two, when i've seen stones. You know you
lose yourself recently. Yeah, you just go, you go something
you guys take.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So you know, the question to you is when you're
up there and you are looking at eighty thousand people
and you you know, you start your I when you're sixteen,
you're seventeen year in your room, it's fifty people, it's sixty.
What are you looking at? What are you relating to
the group as because it feels like you're saying to me, surely,
so how does that work for you?
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Numbers never mattered to me. I wanted to be great
for fifteen or fifty thousand. I always just wanted to
be the best I could possibly be in a club.
I wanted to kill you in a stadium. I want
to kill you.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Numbers. Never never wear.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Anything other than, you know, impressing yourself, because truthfully, you
can't see every face and you can't hear anything more
than a dull roar. It's glorious. I love stages. People say, oh,
you want to play the small venue.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Fuck no, I.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Like playing in the desert. Yeah and selling it out.
You know, it'st that was always the aspiration to be big.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Energy that flies back and what does that feel like,
to be honest, honest to god truth, it gets dark,
you can't see them.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
The sound goes up into the air and you can't
necessarily hear them. Really, Oh it's rolling hills of people
in outdoor fields, or it's a stadium where they're packed
to the rafters.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
But it's gonna get dark by the time I'm going on.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
So chances are twenty minutes into the show it's dark, right,
I might as well be in my bedroom, you know,
I know what's out there, sure, but it's all I
care about is waking up in the morning and being great,
getting on the stage and wanting to be great, leaving
and putting my head down on that pillow again at
night and going was I great? And what can I
(10:10):
do to be great tomorrow? So the rest of it
is just what it is.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
What was the bridge that was that you considered to
be that first big concert that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You were like, oh shit, guys, we're going to now be.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Our story is ours and everyone's is different. When I
was sixteen, and this is important to you and I
is that eighteen was the drinking age.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yes, it was so you could sneak into a bar.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
This is very important, yep, because at sixteen, if you
think about it, you don't have responsibility, you don't have family,
probably don't have a real job, you know, so.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
You could hone the craft.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Therefore, convincing your parents if I'm going to be in
a bar, at least they know where I am.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
This was very important.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
So I could go and start cutting my teeth at
sixteen and seventeen, so that by the time I just
barely turned eighteen, I knew that the only future for
me was having your own music.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Because playing other people's music was at dead end Street.
And I knew that at eighteen.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
That's amazing that.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
You never did anyone else's material.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Most people at that age were just doing cover.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Quit my own band, walked out on my own band
and said I'm out, And I went and became the
singer in a guy's band because it was original music
and the very very beginning.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So I knew at eighteen.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
So therefore at sixteen, when you're still in high school,
seventeen eighteen, i'd go to high school. Technically, I thought
I made it because I wasn't playing the dance anymore.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I was playing the nightclub.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
When I was twenty one, I got a record deal,
so I thought that was it. Do you remember the
name of the first night club, Well, not the first
I was up placed. It was my home was called
the Fast Lane in Asbury Park. Okay, they let me
in when I was sixteen, We let us open for people.
Even as a cover band, worked my way up to
(12:12):
then being in a guy's original band, and then that
was six months and I had.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
My own original band. Never looked back.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
By the time I was twenty twenty, I had written Runaway,
so there was no looking back.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
I mean, holy shit.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
And so by twenty one I had a record deal
and it's the same record deal, and I'm sixty it's
the same deal, same company.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I'm very proud of that too.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I think that that is also I think something so
amazing is loyalty, loyalty to life and people, and I
think it's really important.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So why that right, right? You know it is.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I think it's a very important attribute and for success too,
that you stick with the people and you talk about
at that point in your life you do make reference
to perform in a club and Springsteen comes up, and
you know, of course.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Springsteen Jersey, you Jersey like the Kings of they were bigger.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
There were four albums in at this point because he's
twelve years older.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
These are big brothers. Yeah, but they were also.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Icons in New Jersey. Yes, right, but I guess you're right.
I'm seventeen, eighteen years old. First time ever when Bruce
jumps on the stage with me?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Is that all documented?
Speaker 3 (13:24):
You have that in videos? Photographs?
Speaker 4 (13:25):
There was no There was no video in nineteen seventy nine.
Who had a big old camera back in those days?
There's photographs some Fortunately for me, somebody had a camera.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Welcome back to table for two. We're having lunch with
John bond Jovi. As I said earlier, he's been in
the spotlight for forty years, and I'm wondering how is
the music industry different today? So for people coming up
for people like doing what you are, what you did,
is it possible to do the same thing.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'll give you a little two stories about that.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I remember about twelve.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Years ago now, I was at a rock and roll
Hall of Fame and it was on the red carpet
and Little Stephen was in front of me and he
was saying rock and roll is dead.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And I was thinking to myself, this hurts my heart
in more ways than one, because not only was he
in the E Street bandy had his own solo career.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
He's the DJ on Serious Radio and he's my buddy, right,
And I'm going, oh, this hurts my heart, you know,
to be hearing these kinds of words.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Well, we're all struggling to get our new songs.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
On the radio, not just your catalog, right, and you're
at a Hall of Fame induction blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And then it.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Started to be processed for me. And here's how I
framed it. The advantages of being born much later making
a record today.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
You have the Internet? Now, is that good or bad?
Speaker 4 (15:05):
It's good because terrestrial radio, as we know at iHeart
our friends here who are broadcasting this, have very limited
playlists on every for amount of radio that they have.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
They have access to the universe.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
But yet they still play the same songs that they
played fifty years ago in that same order at eight
o'clock every single night, and you're like, why do you
do this?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
But they do.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
And then the Internet comes along, and therefore it allows
the next Bob Dylan to be born. Because if you
don't sound like one of those pop kids today, the
boys or the girls that all end up sounding the same.
How is a let's call them the stylist. Let's go
back to the Nick Jagger conversation. How is that kid
(15:47):
with that voice getting on top forty radio at twenty
one years old?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Chances aris not right? Right? They want you to sound
like the.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Pop kid or you know, the R and B slash
god that's in his own I listen to, like want
the whole package developed, and he just look that too.
That's a whole nother story. But those playlists are so
limited and limiting, and if you don't fit the format,
you're not going to get that record on the radio.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Boom.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Then, if you hit forty, getting on top forty radio,
no chance, you're done. Then if you're sixty and you
can still sell out a stadium. But I want my
new song on classic radio. Really, if I'm lucky, it's
there for a minute and then they go, well, let's
(16:35):
play Living on a praide and go yeah, but it's
been playing a billion times. This is a good new song,
give me it, you know. And Bruce is doing YouTube,
doing it, Eltman's doing. People are still making great new music. Yes,
that radio won't program, so we go back to the
Internet avenue to get your music. Hurt a kid that's
going to have grow up and be twenty and have
(16:57):
Bob Dylan pen But Bob Dylan's voice hasn't have au
right called the internet right now. Opposite side of that
argument is the past ocean doesn't have the marketing of
the record company and the and the focus of you know,
and now Unfortunately, if you're a kid at the record company,
you'll say how many likes do you have on your
(17:19):
YouTube channel?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
And you go, fuck face, here's my song. Oh no,
how many likes do you have? How many social media followers? Yeah,
that's what it seems like. They want to know how many.
They're not signing the kid to go.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
To the song completely completely, they're not.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
That's wrong.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
That's the good and the bad of the Internet, and
the good and the bad of terrestrial radio.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Sure, so it ain't easy now.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And I feel like because of social media and these platforms,
like everybody who has a creative gene.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Which is great, but a lot of people don't have
creative genes. But everyone's out there, so that is crazy, sure,
crazy crazy, It's just insane.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
The word influencer. What the money we have to give
them and.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Spend and do you play into that?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
The kid Jesse has to you know, in the wine business,
I'm like, we do what we have to fly influencers
into this place because they're going to post about the
wine and you go, really, I don't know what, you know,
what do they do?
Speaker 3 (18:19):
They just talk about the wine. So these people have
you know, it's a million, it's a yeah thing, It's
a thing.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The thing that is so hysterical is you know, I
asked you about your growing up.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I was not the coolest music guy.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I sort of was. You know, my sister was into.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
She was into Frampton, she was into all these and
she'd go buy my room and she'd hear like Olivia
and Johnson and you know, she'd hear she'd hear Beg's.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
You know, I was that was it Top forty that
you were just to to? I listened to the Beg's.
I remember how big bad record was. Here's an op soong.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So you write this album, you know, in twenty twenty and.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
One of and you hit upon real really pressing things
that we're all going through. You talk about that sort
of as you as we're sitting as your home, as
you're with your family, the inspiration and as we watch
the world crumble in front of us, and this monster
sort of tell lies and say, oh, this thing COVID's
(19:37):
not coming your way, and oh guess what yeh?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Talk about that part of the.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Joan bonjo name.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
As you get older, I don't have the desire to
write you give love a bad name. Even if I could,
I don't have the desire. I'm sixty years old. I
don't want to pretend to be twenty five. One thing,
and I that you've known me, happy that you've known
me long enough, right that that's not me.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
My hair has gone great.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
I just say, at least I still have it right,
because all I care about.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Is telling my truth.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
I can't pretend to be something I'm not, and I
can't go out and you know, keep dyeing my hair,
not whatever else you know you want me to do.
Paint my fingernails. I used to say, I'll never become
fifty painting my fingernails black and writing bitch on my
belly because it was just like it wasn't a part
of what I wanted to be. When I grew up,
(20:28):
you know, you just had to grow and it it'll again.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
It cost me, but it's okay. When I put my
head down on the pillow, it cost you. It cost me.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
When I walk down the street now and the girl says,
my mom likes you, and I go, fuck you.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
It's very funny. But you to pretend to be something.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
That that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing, then I believe
that I was a liar, and I'm not a liar.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
You may have liked our music. You may not have
liked our music. It may like me or not like me.
That's all cool. Yeah, But I was what I was,
and I am what I am, and it's what I
do period. And I grew up in public and I
stayed there.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
So an album like twenty twenty comes along and it
became topical, and I have to go into those rooms
and have people say it's political.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I go, it's not political, it's topical. It's see.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
If you can't do what you do, do what you can.
Is that political? No, I think it's topical. Let me
tell you something. When I tried to get that record
played top on country radio, we didn't even last until
this end of the song came up, they were like,
fuck you and your song get.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Out yeah wow.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
So that blew my mind that people couldn't come together
over a wee song, you know nobody, and this made
me happy. But it's sad that I had to write
the song. But when I wrote American Reckoning, I certainly
expected more blowback on that, And no where did I
hear read or hear people say that song about.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
They embrace the song.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
And you know, I wrote it in the wake of
George Floyd and watching out on television and it resonated,
maybe because we were all locked in our homes, but
that same tragedy that we've seen over and over again
this time.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Just forced me to sit down and write the song.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And it still works for me today. But I can't
write you give up in bad name and good conscience.
There's just too much more.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
I can today.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Who are the people that really light you up today?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Harry Styles is the biggest stars.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Full package.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
His ability to be deeper, thinker than a pop boys singer,
His sexuality, which is you know, the whole androgyny paying,
his ability to cross over into film, which is never
easy for anyone who's a singer. It's not gonna be
an easy road for him, but he's got a shot.
(23:12):
I love what he's doing musically. He's challenging himself and
then he comes up with a pop song. It has
a deeper meeting, you know, as it was. It's not
going to be the same as it was, folks.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
And I love that.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, because he gave you a slap outside the head
and said I'm here with you, but doing it on
my terms. So all of those things to me make
him one of one. He really is one of He's
one of one.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
What has been some of your favorite venues that you've
performed that you go holy because you would. You did London,
you were the last to do when they are. Yeah,
Wembley when they knocked out Baby, that's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
The deal was that we closed Wembley.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
I think we did three nights, and then the deal
was we were opening the new one. And as an American,
that was pretty big deals. You know that they gave
you both bookends and we sold the tickets. Two nights
sold out and I went there on the train, I remember,
and I got off and I was outside because they
wanted to take a photograph with the arch and I
took the photograph with the archsm go back on the
(24:13):
train to go back to the hotel, and a week
or two later I could word we're postponing the show
and having to move it to another location.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You should have looked inside. It's not built and.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
It was like those motherfuckers.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
So we had two nights. Books looked well. It was
like the joke was that they had they couldn't open
with me.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
It was a year or two years later, and so
we've moved and then by that time we weren't on
the road at that time. Somebody else played the first shot,
so we didn't get the other bookend.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
But Wembley Stadium is the place that you saw live age,
you know.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
It's so we've played there a bunch of times, playing
our home stadium which was then Giants Stadium, phenomenal for me.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
We opened Met Life, I think I did four nights
there because it's just amazing to be in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, because you're the people, right, You're right.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
I've played you know, every venue there is in Dublin,
which is always a place I had lived for some
of the Italians show, some of the South Americans show,
some of the Australian shows over the years.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
No one's played the Tokyo Dome.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
More than I have, and unfortunately the sound is still
reverberating around that room.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Forty years later.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Thanks for joining us today on Table for two. John
and I are having a delicious lunch talking about music
and family. But there's another incredibly important part of his
life JBJ Soul Kitchen. Let's jump back in and learn
more about it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
My background, as you know, for many years, was the Calm.
It was a family business.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
You know, it went away a couple of years ago
and sort of a big explosion, but that's a life.
And it was ninety four years of an incredible two
family store.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
And recently I was outside.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I left for a restaurants having dinner with Brian and
two friends, and it was West Village via Corota and
this guy is.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
I walk out and I don't notice, but there's a gentleman.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
There's a guy sitting on this lane on the street
and he says to me, you're hot, So that's going
to get my attention.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I turned around and I was like, well.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Hello, and he's like hello, and I walk over to
him and he's like, what's your name?
Speaker 3 (26:39):
And I say I'm Bruce, and I go, what's your name?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
He goes, It's Matthew, and he smiles and he's missing
like fire.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
You know, he's like three teeth. He's a guy of aids.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I've been living on the streets, so I've been down
and I'm like, you know, are you getting medication?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Are you being taken? Like how is it working for
you here?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And he's got just the best sort of energy about him.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
He's like, I'm gay too, and I'm like, oh great,
and then he's like.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
He's like who's that. I'm like, that's my husband.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
I had this full connection with him and it changed
the course of the day, the night, like everything. And
I think being seen is so important to people actually
see you. And you tell a story where you saw
a person and your line is if you do what
you can right, you can yeah, which is a big
(27:28):
deal because even at the moment, whatever, it was all
I could do. Can you tell me about like that
moment in your life coming from.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I never intended to start some foundation and I never
really had a that that was going to be my goal.
In truth, you know, when you're a boy growing up
in middle class New Jersey, We never didn't have shoes
on our feet and food on the table, and so
the family wasn't very philanthropic or politically even socially conscious.
(27:56):
To be honest with you, it was a two parent
working household, just living life.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Right.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
So, as I grew up and grew older, my initial
focus selfishly was to go and make music. Yeah, what's
wrong with that? Right, I'm twenty one, I'm twenty five.
Check the boxes. As you get older, you know, and
you're growing and growing up, your priorities or they don't change,
but you see the world differently, and you've traveled, and
(28:25):
you see cultures, and you see haves and have nots, and.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
You're more aware.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
So, strangely enough, and under the guise of what was
once sports ownership, I owned an arena football team.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So where does these two you know, roads intertwined?
Speaker 4 (28:44):
But I said, the only way that we can endear
ourselves to the city of Philadelphia was to be more
philanthropic than anyone My one partner was strange, but I
get it, and I says, we just have to be bigger,
better than baseball, basketball, football, and hockey in Philadelphia being
more philanthropic.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Initially we were robinhood.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
We were little things to each and everybody who wanted something.
One night, when I was looking out the window and
I saw a homeless guy getting ready to cuddle up on.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
A grate in the middle of winter, it all came
together in my head.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
I said, Oh, my God, doesn't matter if you're a
white or black, young or old, Republican or Democrat, Yankee
fan or Phillies fan. You know, I said, this issue
could hit anyone. Those two pet shakes away. I mean,
that's life in America.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
And I called a buddy of mine who was born
and raised in Philly, and I says, if you could
find me somebody in the.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Field to get some advice, tell him that, you know,
we'd like to do something.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Little did I know that the Michael Jordan of the
issue was in Philadelphia. She's a nun, a sister, a
sister of mercy, so they don't wear habits. She is
on the street. She is not in the church. She
is down that alleyway. She's the I want to talk
into that guy on the street. She's the one that's,
you know, telling him you need service provided. Go over here,
(30:06):
go over here. My buddy goes to her and says,
you know, I work with job bon Joe. She's like, yeah, great,
I work with the Pope.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Oh I got the greatest comeback Emerald.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
And Sister Mary says, well, that's sweet, you know, and
bring him around. So I go, I explain who we are,
what we've got, you know, a few bucks here and there,
and she says, well, maybe you guys could raise enough
money to help us repair one of these row homes.
And I was not being a wise answer, and I said,
but Sister Mary, what it cost to redo the block?
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And she said, I like you.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
And the reason I said that was I said, if
I can get a dollar sign, then I know that
we can bring back a street. We can back up
a street, we can bring back a neighborhood. We can
bring back a neighborhood, we can have an influence. We
hit it off. She taught me everything that I'm now.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
No, I don't know if.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Over many years later, fifteen sixteen years later, I learned
from her because you teach a manificient, you know, or
you give him a phicians. In this instance, service providing
is the key, because you could give Zoo money a
home habitat for humanity, which was our first for rank
before I met her.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
But how are they keeping the lights on? Yeah? Long
and short of it right there. Sister Mary's whole thing was.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Service, providing, job training. You know, I'd vote those things
were key. So we raised a.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Little bit of money. We built up a block with her.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
And this is even as deep as her teaching me
about text credits and government involvement in these things. President
Clinton came himself and cut the ribbon on our foundation
with her in Philly. Wrote about it in one of
his books called Giving, because he'd never imagined a sports
theme foundation, a non a.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Rock star, blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Since then, about a thousand units of affordable housing, three restaurants,
things like the food bank.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
So we're making our little more.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
It's not Jose Andres God bless SoSE he's a saint, yes, But.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
What we do in our little way is working.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
And then things like the Soul Kitchen, our unicorns, m tourthy.
You created something that didn't exist anywhere.
Speaker 5 (32:35):
So I mean, I know what the soul kitchen is,
but if you could give, right, So we're building houses.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
We meet sister Mary, we start building houses a block
at a time. We're in different towns. We're doing our
things all that same circle that our conversation began with
gave me a.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Lot of At a boy, that's what I get at
a boy.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
They're like, yeah, you know, so okay, Oh, the economic
downturn happens. And my wife on the couch one evening
watching the evening news, sees this restaurant and she goes,
that's the next phase of the foundation, because the people
who we put in these houses have to eat now
that the economy is going to take them, you know,
(33:15):
and we're not going to get text credits to build
more housing. Stream of consciousness, she says, I've got this
idea restaurant, no prices on the menu, people volunteer for
their meal, or you and I go. They're an effect
change directly by putting money on the table.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
You or I go there, you leave.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Twenty bucks on the table, paid for your meal, and
it paid for someone else's meal. You have directly and
immediately affected change those who are in need, which you
would never know the differentstween you and the man in
need going in there.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Get out of your mind's eye, down and out in
Beverly Hills. This is not nicking old in this ship.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
This is people who were coming in because of the
economic downtern and you had a job yesterday yesterday.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Now are coming in there because they were in need.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
But you would know they are talking to what you
think as a hostess, but she's really a social worker.
She's asking you've been here before, you know the model,
making it something that you want to feel a part of,
and therefore you've turned your meal. There's pride in that.
There's pride and empowerment. The twelve year old could come
(34:19):
in sweep the floor for twenty minutes. We call it
a job, and it's twenty minutes. Just come in and
push that broom for a minute. Here's a certificate.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Go bring mom and dad and the brothers and sisters. Fat.
I'm feeding everybody tonight.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Now that little boy goes home with such a feeling
of empowerment.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
They're not at a soup kitchen. There's no institutionalized food here.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
There is no soda pop and there is no you know,
fried this, and it's like a real farm to the
table menus, servers, plates, silverware, good and good for your food.
The only difference is there's no prices on our menu
and there's no government subsidies. I do not take government subsidies.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That's a huge thing. To your point, it's really hard
to actually do. It's easy to see it, it's easy
to feel it. It's easy to maybe write there whatever,
But it's hard to do. What you said is because
you create the blasts a year and create the community.
And that's when and every time I think about you, guys,
(35:19):
I think about family and community. You know your father
for comformist family is Italian family. It's about community, the
community you build. You're super connected to Long Island and
New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
These are your homes.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
It's the big deal.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
And what you're doing on Long Island.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, they did it here, you know. That was another
point to your point. People will write a check.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
They're either too busy or as many things in life,
it's born out of fear. I'll give you a story
from the Soul Kitchen. The Soul Kitchen, the flagship, the
first one. It's a thirty three seat restaurant. It's teeny weenie.
A third of this room that we're sitting in it
was an autobody shop when the man who got it
(36:08):
for us showed Dorothea. So the three bays are still
cut into the cinderblock right we walk in.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's three walls and three bays.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
He says, if you want to rent this joint, my wife,
being the visionary as she is, just as.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
I see it, we could do that. We do it.
We couldn't get.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
The affluent in the community to come. No way, no help,
and it was fear. And I love the honesty. There's
no booze. I go, okay, well go somewhere else because
I need to feed people. Another guy says, I really
don't want to sit next to a homeless person.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
There is people with a lot of money, and I go,
we have communal seating. You would never know who was
and who was not, and explaining that all to them.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
The idea that there was no prices on the menu
freaked people out there, like I don't know if I'm
supposed to come in and give you ten dollars or
one thousand dollars, and what if I, you know, don't
have a thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
It's not about that, it's communities. Meeting the guy next
to you.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
You'd never know that that guy who is currently in
dire straits worked on Wall Street last year. You know
he got divorced. He just decided fuck all this. Now
he's living with two other guys that are not doing
as well as they used to.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
But don't think he's not.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Educated and smart and passionate and everything else. Needless to say,
most of those people never came back. Interesting never came back,
and we just shake our heads and go, that's cool.
You know, we don't need them to come back. We
don't need them to come back. We'd rather feed the people,
but we'd like to get the.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Community more involved.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
They have because we've been there for eleven twelve years now.
It's about a fifty to fifty mix, so it's sort of,
you know, within reason, we're covering our overhead because you know,
the short was paid by the foundation, and we're meeting.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Sure, your children must look at you and your wife,
and what great.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Role models to sort of see because.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
You know, the rest of my day is shitty. I'm
back to being an arrogant Rocks.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Well that's good.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
I mean, really really have to just note that you
really are She's the one.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Dirthy is the one. She's the one.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I've had a wonderful time talking with John, learning more
about his family, his band, and on this beautiful summer day,
I just wonder what's he going to be up to?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
I just want to hit on a couple of things
that no nuggets of JBJ that I don't know, which
is what.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Kind of books turn you on?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
What kind of music when you're.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Home and you're just chilling out now and you're just
you know, you're resting, and what do you dig?
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I can't put down open the Andre Agacy.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Okay, I have a new passion or a sickness. It's tennis.
I never played tennis in my whole life. I never
swung a racket. Fifty nine years old, I pick up
a racket.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
I'm obsessed. It's like my days tennis just.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
To hire the competition.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
It's a different workout. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
I got so tired of just running and lifting weights
that I needed something new, and so tennis is doing
that for me.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
But then there was a book called Late to the Ball,
and it's about a fifty nine year old guy who
finds tennis. I'm like, yeah, but now I'm obsessed. And
so but I knew who andre Agassi was, but I
didn't know, you know, And so I'm reading this book
another summer book that I read this year and got
(39:45):
to know. The author was Ryan Holiday, and the.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Obstacle is the Way, and it's.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
You know, life gets thrown at you and shit happens,
and the titles says it all right, the obstacle was
there on purpose to teach you the right way.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
It's funny. Brian always says too.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
If you're in the game long enough, no matter who.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
You are, it's gonna sure.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
That's just the way it gets your for everybody long enough,
it gets hard.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Very helpful book.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
I've read every self help book there is, but the
latest things are the stoics, which these philosophers that are,
you know, thousands of years old, gave the guy enough
material to write about it and I explained properly. But
this little one, it's just that philosophy helps you be
a better leader.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
So the Obstacles the Way. It's been another one.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
So like this afternoon, will you you're going to go
to work on my andre book?
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, because yesterday was a rainy morning. If you remember
set sports reading loving it.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I hope everyone enjoyed pulling up a chair today. I
certainly did. I really appreciate the Times police sent a
big hugging against to Dorothea. She truly is a very
special human and I I.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Really appreciate you, John, Thank you, Thanks brother. This is great,
right everyone?
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Table for two with Bruce Bozzi is produced by iHeartRadio
seven three seven Part and Airmail. Our executive producers are
Bruce Bosi, Jonathan Hass Dressler and Nathan King. Table for
two is edited and written by Tina Mullen and researched
and written by Bridget arsenalt Our sound engineers are Emil B. Klein,
Paul Bowman and Alyssa Midcalf. Table for two's la production
(41:37):
team is Danielle Romo and Lorraine Verrez. Our music supervisor
is Randall poster. Our talent booking is by James Harkin.
Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Cher, Kevin Yuvane, Bobby Bauer,
Alison Kant Graber and Gabby Karen, Jomproloja Felice, and the
staff of Tutel Ojarno and sach Arbor. For more podcasts
(41:59):
from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Bruce Bozzi
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