Richie Sambora Would Return to Bon Jovi on This Condition

Richie Sambora has mentioned on numerous occasions that he would be open to returning to Bon Jovi. However, in a new interview, the guitarist does give an interesting condition for a potential return.

In an appearance on The Allison Hagendorf Show, Sambora touches on how Jon Bon Jovi underwent vocal surgery to help strengthen and repair a vocal cord that had atrophied. If JBJ is able to recover and get to a place where he could tour again, Sambora is all in and said, "If he gets [his voice] back, I'll go play." He also stressed that if he returned to Bon Jovi how much the fans would love it.

At the same time, Sambora says that if he could go back in time, he likely would have exited the band sooner. He said, "I might have left a couple of albums before, because I think Jon was moving into a place where he wanted to not really be a band."

As previously reported, Sambora has said he believes Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story was Jon's "project" and "perspective" and noted he viewed things differently than Jon Bon Jovi. In this new sit-down with Allison Hagendorf, Sambora opens up a little bit more about.

To begin with, Sambora says the four-part docuseries could've been "more of a celebration" of Bon Jovi's music. He also would have cut the five-hour docuseries could have been cut down to two hours.

When asked whether he would change anything about Thank You, Goodnight, Sambora replied, "Everything. There's one thing that's not in there, and it's everything. Like I said, to me, this is Jon's baby."

Following the release of Thank You, Goodnight, Sambora shared a clip to Instagram that he captioned, "From the cutting room floor of #ThankYouGoodnight." The clip shows an alternate angle of one of Sambora's sit-down interviews from the docuseries. While some of the clip below was included in Thank You, Goodnight, some was cut from the docuseries.

Part of Sambora's comments that were cut from the docuseries included him talking about a lack of compassion for what he was going through in his personal life, which included his addiction issues and other issues related to his ex-wife Heather Locklear, the mother to his daughter, Ava.

Sambora says, "I was in this organization for 31 ½ years, and everybody has their personal tragedies and things like that, but I didn't receive a lot of compassion coming back for what I was going through. I believe everybody had their own perspective on fame and fortune. Everybody experiences that at different speeds. That's how life can get whacked from one guy to the next and blah blah blah. I was essential because I spent more time with Jon than even his wife and was more honest."

He added, "We spent a lot of time in a room with no windows for the beginning stages of just writing the material ... I was a fan, too. I could be a fan of Jon and go, 'I don't want to hear you sing that.' I wrote him from the song on up, also. 'This is what I would like to hear from you, if I'm a fan in the audience,' that kind of thing. I think that was one of my primary roles, besides being his right hand and an accurate mirror, so to speak."

Bon Jovi has been active for over four decades, and they aren't showing signs of slowing down.

Their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career has netted them over 130 million albums sold worldwide and legions of fans spanning generations.

Narrowing down their catalog to a select number of songs and ranking them is a daunting task, but here are Bon Jovi's 35 best songs, ranked.

A new docuseries about Bon Jovi is set to premiere on Hulu on April 26. The docuseries is titled Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story.

The docuseries also has the cooperation of all Bon Jovi members, both past and present. A teaser trailer of the docuseries offers a supercut of the band's wild career, including the exit of guitarist Richie Sambora.

Additionally, the teaser trailer shows Jon Bon Jovi in a hospital bed. He's holding a dry-erase board that simply says, "I'm good." Meanwhile, an unidentified voiceover says, "Jon's going through his challenges." It then cuts to JBJ saying, "It almost killed us."

The "challenges" appear to be about Bon Jovi's recent vocal issues, which he discussed during the Pollstar Live! conference in February 2024.

Per Ultimate Classic Rock, Bon Jovi said, "It's become public knowledge now, but I've had major reconstructive surgery in my vocal cords, and I never had anything like this, ever. So it's been a difficult road, but I found a doctor in Philadelphia who did something called a medialization, because one of my cords was literally atrophied."

A description of Thank You, Goodnight from Hulu also promises it will delve into the band's "most public moments of friction." Of course, this is likely a reference to the 2013 exit of Sambora, who has often talked about the potential of rejoining the band.