Richie Sambora on the New Album...

So, the new album may not be called The Circle after all. Richie spoke to Rolling Stone about the new album. Here's what he had to say...


Bon Jovi’s last album, 2007’s Lost Highway, saw the longtime Jersey tunesmiths veer off into Nashville territory. And while the album was a sizable hit with their fanbase, on the group’s forthcoming album, guitarist Richie Sambora promises a return to the group’s roots. “It’s back to rock & roll for us, man,” Sambora tells Rolling Stone. “Jon and I had a wonderful time making it. Very proud of it — just getting down to mixing it right now. We hit a very prolific period in our songwriting.” Sambora reveals the band was considering churning out a greatest-hits album, but reports, “We started having so much fun making this record, that we decided we would do a studio album first. It sounds fresh — I think we reinvented ourselves again.”

The album will be out in November, and RS can report the title currently floating around cyberspace is not correct. While he couldn’t reveal the actual album name, Sambora did muse on the band’s evolution since going a bit country on their last LP: “I think what happened is the fact that we made the kind of Nashville-influenced record, and it created this vacuum now for a big rock record from us. There’s a continued evolution… it doesn’t sound like any other previous record. Everybody that we’ve been playing it for has been real turned on by it, and we’re certainly happy with how it turned out.”

Rest easy longtime fans, Sambora promises that the disc is unmistakably Bon Jovi. “There’s going to be some big choruses on there. It sounds like Bon Jovi, but it sounds fresh. We experimented with a lot of new sounds and had a really good time working with [producer] John Shanks, who is also a really good guitar player, so he and I did a lot of ‘weaseling’ with the guitar sounds. There are a lot of really good guitar sounds and new kind atmospheres on the new Bon Jovi record, that I think makes it really modern. I think people are going to dig it, man. And it rocks hard.”

And will Bon Jovi be hitting the road in support of studio album number 11? “Next year. 2010, probably spring time we’ll get going. And we’re going to go for a long time. It’s going to be a big one.”