Jon Bon Jovi has recalled encounters he had with David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger during his pre-fame days.
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Appearing on Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt’s Rockonteurs podcast, the Bon Jovi frontman spoke about the time he spent working at The Power Station recording studio in New York when he was just 18 years old.
“They paid me $50 a week to be the gofer and if it was a weekend or a late, late night, I could go in and record,” he remembered.
Bon Jovi went on to reveal that he spotted Bowie and the Queen frontman at the studios one night as they recorded their 1981 collaboration ‘Under Pressure’. “No one believes what I saw,” he said.
Around the same time, he also bumped into The Rolling Stones – whose frontman Mick Jagger pretended to be in a band called The Frogs with the teenage Bon Jovi.
“I’ll never forget this, I was outside paying my cabby… and The Stones got out of whatever car it was they were getting out of,” he explained.
“At the same time, they were going into [The Power Station] studio and a photographer jumps out of a trash bin and the paparazzi starts taking pictures. I swear to god this is true. The Stones, they open up the door of the studio… Wyman, Mick and Keith. They go into the studio.”
He continued: “The photographer is screaming, ‘Mick, Mick, Mick! Give us a picture!’ and I swear to you, he grabs me and these kids and he says, ‘Here’s my new band, The Frogs’ And we took a fucking picture.”
You can listen to the conversation at the 37-minute mark in the podcast above.
Last December, Richie Sambora opened up about his decision to leave Bon Jovi after 30 years. “I had a lot of conscious work to do around [my personal life],” he said.
