Woah, we’re halfway there! Bon Jovi is the subject of an upcoming deep-dive four-part docuseries that drops next month on Hulu. Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story chronicles the band’s epic, four-decade career, a journey that began in Jersey Shore Clubs and reached rock music’s zenith.
In a two-and-a-half minute trailer that dropped on Thursday (March 7), singer Jon Bon Jovi excitedly says “I’ve got a story to tell” over the strains of the band’s iconic hit “You Give Love a Bad Name,” as estranged guitarist Richie Sambora jokes, “I’m excited… are we telling the truth, are we gonna lie? What are we gonna do?”
Bon Jovi reveals that making it as a rock band was the only path forward for him. “There was no plan B in my life, ever,” he says over images from his early days grinding it out in bars. “Bon Jovi was all or nothing.”
There is, of course, plenty of footage of the band’s early shaggy-haired period, with elder Garden State statesman Bruce Springsteen remembering the first time he saw that “young kid” from his backyard “makin’ some noise.” The group’s members recall the rocket ride to fame they embarked on, which got super-charged with their third studio album, 1986’s Slippery When Wet. That album marked the beginning of Jon Bon Jovi and Co. dominating sales charts around the globe, unleashing a stream of hits, including the Billboard Hot 100 leaders “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
The singer recalls the day they wrote “Prayer,” saying the group didn’t “think much of the song,” which Sambora boasts is still their best effort to date. “Jon’s choruses demand to be sung by 20,000 people in an arena,” Springsteen says.
Slippery When Wet was the first of the band’s six leaders on the Billboard 200, an album that ignited a global fanbase and ensured the New Jersey favorites would, indeed, play arenas and stadiums for as long as they remained active.
It hasn’t all been a bed of roses. The ride has been stacked with triumphs and setbacks, good times and bad, and “public moments of friction,” all of which are captured in the series. The trailer hints at the wages of success, with Bon Jovi saying the global fame and wild antics “almost killed us,” and Sambora adding that he didn’t regret leaving in 2013, but lamenting “how I did it.”
All episodes will arrive for streaming April 26, retelling the Bon Jovi story with personal videos, unreleased early demos, original lyrics, and never-before-seen photos, according to Hulu.
The series joins the band in February 2022, an uncertain moment in their odyssey, four years after their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a decade after guitarist/co-songwriter Sambora’s departure at a time when Bon Jovi was battling a vocal injury which required major reconstructive surgery.
In addition to Springsteen and the other members of the band, longtime manager Doc McGee appears in the series.
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story is directed and executive produced by Gotham Chopra (“Kobe Bryant’s Muse,” “Man in the Arena,” “Tom vs. Time”). Executive producers are Giselle Parets and Ameeth Sankaran for ROS, and the series is produced and edited by Alex Trudeau Viriato.
Watch the trailer below.
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