New Jersey Pop Metal

Bon Jovi's road to super stardom began when Jon Bon Jovi wrote a song for a local radio station compilation album - that song was "Runaway". Jon has called it a "fluke", DJ's started playing the track and it became a hit, even without an album.

Bon Jovi released their first album in the early 80's (including yeah you guessed it, "Runaway"). The band had one more album after their debut - that album was " 7800 Fahrenheit" - before they started working on the album that would take them to the top of the charts, "Slippery When Wet".

But one of the band's biggest hits was almost given away to another group. Jon was actually writing a song for the band Loverboy when something told him to keep that song for his band. It's a good thing he did cause that song was "You Give Love a Bad Name". If he would have given that track to Loverboy, who knows maybe they would have became one of the biggest hair bands of the 80's.

"Slippery When Wet" however became one of the biggest albums of the 80's and turned Bon Jovi into a super group and unlike many bands of that decade, Bon Jovi was still successful in the 90's and continues to tour and record today. Yeah they may have been the glam pretty boys of the 80's, but the band has had a ton of hits including, the songs mentioned above, as well as "Wanted Dead or Alive", "Livin' on a Prayer", "Born to Be My Baby","Bad Medicine", "It's My Life", "Bed of Roses", and more recent hits like "It's My Life", and "Have a Nice Day".

Bon Jovi is another band I've seen a number of times (a couple times in their hairband heyday) and recently as well. They always put on a great show and are a great bunch of musicians.

So there you have it, some of the biggest 80's hard rock bands. I'll mention a few more quickly - Dokken, Tesla, Skid Row and White Lion were some more of my favorites from that era as well as Motley Crue (another mega-band that I wanted to mention) and Queensryche. So this will conclude my posts of the 80's LA hair band scene. Please feel free to leave me comments about these bands or any others that you liked from that period, when the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles ruled MTV and rock radio.