A Christmas Miracle...
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Tico Torres: Jon called me. It's something that's iconic in a sense. A lot of my friends are in it. It's pretty prestigious. The fact that it covers all types of music is a beautiful thing. Of course, there's so many other people that have yet to be in there like [John] Coltrane. Elvin Jones was my drum teacher for God's sake.
David Bryan: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame carrier pigeon dropped by my house and delivered the note. [Laughs]
David Bryan: It was great. There's a lot of people that are in it. There are a lot of people that aren't in it and deserve to be in it. There's a lot of people that are going to be in it. It's a nice recognition of 25 years after 1984, which is when our first record came out. We're what I call a current classic. We still have a Number One record and we're still out there touring the entire earth and selling out stadiums everywhere, and yet we're still a classic. It's a great thing.
Tico Torres: I was elated. It was nice to tell my mom and my son. He was the first one. He's 13. I told him right away. I had to tell my mom. We grew up annoying our parents, making noise and having band practice. For me, it's been going on since '67. If anyone deserves the first mention, it would be my mom. Our parents.
David Bryan: When you look at it, its almost a journey of your peers. You're in with people you grew up with. They were my heroes, the reason why I play rock & roll. It's an honor to be amongst them. It's a nice nod from the industry. We've been eligible since 2009, so it's nice to be recognized.
Tico Torres: There's only so much room. Again, David mentioned this, there's a lot of people that should be in before us that have since passed, like Joe Cocker, guys that made statements in life that we grew up with. It's an ongoing adventure of music. It also brings to light a lot of music of people that gets passed to younger people, people just getting into music. They can actually go backwards and research and learn from it.
Tico Torres: That pretty much covers the band when we started.
David Bryan: That has to be the hardest part of the night because everyone has great songs. You can do a standard blues song or something. I don't know. I guess we'll figure it out when we're in the room.
Tico Torres: I guess we'll figure that out. It's kind of new to us. You have to include the songs that got us to this point. It's a hard pick. We'll figure it out.
Tico Torres: Absolutely.
Tico Torres: Honestly, he's a mystery sometimes. The hard part is finding him.
Tico Torres: He's always been the mystery man of Bon Jovi, even then he was like 007.
Tico Torres: I think so.
Tico Torres: He's a big part of the band. They should acknowledge that.
David Bryan: We're going to keep touring. That's what we do. We love to make records and we love to tour. We did a handful of shows this year down in South America and played a bunch of big stadiums and Rock in Rio. Next year, we're putting plans together and we're going to do some shows, do what we do.
Tico Torres: The hardest thing about those soccer stadiums is trying to find room in the soccer schedule since that takes precedent. We're lucky in South America that there wasn't much soccer that time of year. But it's incredible to still fill houses. A lot of it is because we try to stay current. We come up with new material and songs and try to reinvent ourselves. It's a journey of a lifetime. I'm glad we're able to do that as a band and keep creating and expanding our limits.
David Bryan: The fans realize the hell out of it. It's been something we always set out to to from the beginning, which was play the world. We'd go out and play 50 countries. We've done 50 concerts 30 times. They're familiar with us and we're familiar with them. It's a big world out there. One of the greatest things about our band is that we bring the American dream to the world. Here's a bunch of kids that were living in nowhere New Jersey and we made it through a lot of practice and a lot of work and a lot of luck. It shows the world, "If we did it, you can do it." It's that whole dream of "you can make it" that we bring to the world.
David Bryan: Any honor is an honor. You can't really say which one is better than the next, but it's always wonderful when you're honored by your peers for your work. There's the Tonys and the Grammys we won and were nominated for. The Tonys were an amazing evening and this will be another amazing evening. It's wonderful to be recognized by our peers, and the fans. This was one of the biggest fan votes. Almost 2 million fans voted for us, which was huge.
Tico Torres: For me, I live in the present, in the moment. It's one of those experiences I look forward to without a preconceived notion other than I'm excited.