“It's all the same. Only the names'll
change. Every day, it seems we're wasting away.
Another place where the faces are so
cold. I drive all night, just to get back home.”
Bon Jovi got it right. You can't say
that very often at all, but his smoldering, anthemic metaphor
accurately draws lines between the traveling musician and the gun for
hire.
And it works for any traveling
entertainer, really. Sure, everybody likes the song, but entertainers
on the road really feel it when they hear it... Somehow that one song
captures the romance of traveling, the triumph of winning a crowd,
and the deep solitude before and after.
There's a special kind of quiet that
can only be achieved by the sound of a wall AC unit kicking on just
after the lonesome click of the hotel door, when you've got at least
another week before seeing another person you care about at all...
It's peaceful, yes. But it's terribly lonely, too. It is a deep and
ominous counterpoint to the applause and laughter from earlier in the
night.
And, in a profession comprised of
attention whores, success means more and more of that solitude, more
and more of that loneliness. Weekly. Nightly... It's no wonder that
some people crack, or give in to drugs, alcohol, or the random
attentions of someone who doesn't understand that you're not really
famous or rich or anything...
I have a ground wire, and I'm grateful
for it.
Still, I can't help but contemplate...
How far have you fallen, Bon Jovi? You
went from seeing a million faces, and rocking them all to having the
Kool-Aid man on your cover and singing “Have A Nice Day.”
Seriously? “When the world gets in my
face, I say, 'Have a nice day.'” Really? Shouldn't you be saying
something tough and rock and rollish here? Something entirely more
colorful, derogatory, and antagonistic. Something that sounds like
Batman and Dirty Harry mixed their sperm and had a baby with Courtney
Love, and that baby has been wearing the same diaper for four days,
eating enchiladas, and is in want of a non-heroin-ridden tit to
suckle for a change. Yeah. Yeah, you should.
“Who says you can't go home?” I say
so, Bon Jovi. I say so, after listening to your last two crappy
albums. Go back to acting or whatever. Take up painting, or coloring,
or sitting around being rich and bored. Take up something useful,
like mixing pills and alcohol... and bullriding.
I'd say give up rocking, but
apparently, you already did that.
Bow out gracefully, Bon Jovi. Your best
work is so far behind you, it's hidden by the curvature of the earth.
In the meantime, I'm gonna listen to
that anthem again...
“And I drive...”