Jon on Jay Leno

Transcript of Jon on Jay Leno 2/7/02

This is a transcript of Jon Bon Jovi's appearance on the Tonight Show
with Jay Leno on Thursday, February 7, 2002. The cast of characters
is as follows: JB = Jon Bon Jovi, JL = Jay Leno.
(Transcribted by Mary Beth Jahn)

JL: Alright, my next guest, big-time rock star and also been in
terrific movies like U-571, currently catch him Monday nights on Ally
McBeal, please welcome Jon Bon Jovi!

JB: (says into Jay's ear as they're shaking hands) You were fearless!

JL: Hey, you want . . . (offers Jon a blue paper that apparently has
some kind of animal sprinklings or something on it)

JB: (wrinkles nose and waves Jay off) No! (laughs)

JL: How you been, buddy?

JB: Good! You're psycho . . . rubbing heads with that cat (referring
to the lynx the exotic animal trainer had on in the segment before
Jon)! (fingers the lapel of his leather jacket) This is one of your
last guests!

JL: Really? There you go!

JB: I'm from Jersey, I'm not afraid of any snake. <Jay laughs> You
know, that was wacked, man!

JL: You should have come out here when the animals were here!

JB: I took care of them afterwards! <crowd laughs> That's the poop!

JL: Got bit in the finger . . . .

JB: I saw that! Bush babies bite, I'm telling you, those bupkins
(???) are bad, you got to be careful!

JL: Bush babies bite, always remember that. How you been, everything good?

JB: I'm good, I'm really good!

JL: Still riding, still doing the bike thing?

JB: Well, I gotta say, I'm gonna get outed here on national
television, cause my bike is in semi-retirement.

JL: Oh come on, what are you, an old married man, come on!

JB: Any married man . . . .

JL: What, you got a station wagon, a minivan?

JB: No, my bike, I loaned it to Harley, which I know you're a big
Harley aficionado, but it's going on tour with Elvis' bike <crowd
cheers>. It's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a year, so I put
it in the Hall and Harley's taking it out for their hundredth
anniversary. So I'm doing without, you know.

JL: So you walk?

JB: No, I just walk around the house going vroom, vroom, vroom!
<makes motorcycle-revving motions with his hands and laughs>

JL: Now, did you ever get tickets, were you like a crazy man on a bike or what?

JB: Not so much that I was getting tickets, you get stopped a lot and
you take off the helmet and they go "oh, that rock star guy." I
could get away with murder pretty much in Jersey.

JL: Yeah? Hey, you could do it in LA!

JB: Well, LA, I don't know, there's a lot more celebrities there.

JL: Did you ride as a kid?

JB: Yeah, I've been riding since I was a little kid, I mean, I got my
first bike when I was 13, I had to earn it, up at my grandfather's
house, riding it around the house and learned to ride then, and we
used to live in Sayreville, New Jersey, it was . . .

JB: . . .oh yeah, all of you all are from Sayreville, right? <crowd
laughs> But it was a great place to grow up. It was clay pits, so
we learned motocross back there, in the dirt. Now it's, of course,
you know neighborhoods.

JL: Right. Did you ever take any trips, like, cross-country?

JB: Couple times, those are my Kerouac years. You know, those are
the best experience - anyone who ever rode a bike, get on it and go
cross-country, go find, in search of Route 66. It was life, you
know. But whoever's leading the pack decides where you pull in, my
friend Obie, who you've met here before, we're riding in and he sees
the Flintstones Museum, and he goes, "we're going there!" So, you
know, I've got pictures of me like in Barney Rubble's car going
(holds right hand up and waves and gives a thumb-up sign). <crowd
laughs> Cool!

JL: Where is that, Arizona? Because that's the site of the actual
Flintstones excavations, you know, over 5,000 years ago.

JB: Yeah, it's hard now to get the cast out there, you know, they
don't want to work there anymore. <laughs> But, um, going cross
country, you find all things that I don't get to see. You know,
we're flying to big cities, playing arenas, stadiums, whatever, but
you don't get out to the Flintstones Museum.

JL: Yeah, how often though, you know, the caverns, the big guy with
the big bowling ball, I mean, all that.

JB: Right, right, right, right, right. I've been there, I've been
there, see, you've been there, too.

JL: So now you're doing the acting thing, now. Is it more fun than
rock and roll? It doesn't seem like it would be.

JB: Well, first of all, it's like this game of golf, which I also am
not really fond of. You go there, and people play golf when it's
still dark out. Why do they do that? You know, like they show up
and they want to be there at dawn to hit the ball off the tee and
chase it. I don't need any more stress in my life! Same thing with
acting - they wake me up at 5 o'clock in the morning! If this was
the band, we'd be going to bed, now I got to get up at 5!

JL: Right, right, yeah, yeah!

JB: You show up, you shoot a scene, before I'm, the first scene is
already done already and then the sun comes up, I'm like what the
hell, it's like a bunch of vampires, you know? <crowd laughs> And
Calista, like, I think she lives there, I think it's just the Truman
Show for her because she just goes to work every day all day, twelve
hours a day and she keeps saying "bye" and "hi" and she's always
there! I show up, I get to leave, and this poor kid . . .

JL: But it's a lot of work, it's not like, with music you play for a
couple hours and then, whee! trash the hotel.

JL: You can'trash your trailer, you have to come back to it tomorrow.

JB: That's true, you know, it's a lot of work. They work very, very
hard there on this TV stuff. But, I've been pretty fearless, you
know, you go from music to movies, movies to television, I mean, I
had no desire to do TV whatsoever - when David Kelley gives you a
call, it's like the Godfather calling, you know, so you jump at the
chance . . .

JL: Right.

JB: . . . I walk into the set the first day after being asked to do
this role for a while, and I'm thinking, you know, this is all right,
David Kelley's a pretty hot, cool guy, he's got three TV shows, I
hear he's married to Michelle Pfeiffer, I'm expecting I'm going to
walk on the set, there's David Kelley, big hug, kiss, you know, come
on over, meet my wife, kind of thing, I'm like all excited, I want to
talk about Grease 2. No. I get on the set, you hear this voice from
above, this <pulls his fist to his mouth to simulate a loudspeaker>
"This is David Kelley, I created you." And you go, yeah, you're God.
And so you start doing your schtick, but these people are wacky. All
these people have been together for five years, they're eight
episodes in before I even show up, it was a little intimidating.

JL: You're the new guy.

JB: Yeah, you know, that dancing baby thing, it's real, he's got his
own dressing room, he's a midget! <crowd laughs>

JL: Now the character you play, you play what, is it a contractor?

JB: Yeah, but, you know what I'm turning into? You know that, you
remember that character Schneider, with Bonnie . . .

JL: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

JB: . . . I'm just always there but I don't do anything, you know!
They handed me a wrench, I didn't know if it was a wrench or a plier,
I'm under the sink fixing the sink, the other day I said there's no
chance in hell I'd be ever fixing the sink!

JL: Now, are you a mechanical guy at all?

JB: No . . . if the light bulb's . . .

JL: You're from Jersey, you're a Jersey guy, come on, Jersey guys can
fix stuff!

JB: I'm a rock and roll star, you know! <Jon laughs> If the
lightbulb goes dead, I throw out the light! You know!

JL: Really?

JB: Completely useless! I have more people that work at my house than AT&T.

JL: Really?

JB: Oh, people here all the time!

JL: Now, I would have guessed Jersey guy, roll up the sleeves, yo,
put some new . . .

JB: I play a great one on TV, but . . .

JL: Yeah, but no, don't fix anything at all?

JB: No! I wouldn't know how to work, you know, anything. I could
make coffee in the morning and . . .

JL: Was your dad handy?

JB: No.

JL: No? So, this is, so the whole family is just pretty much useless, I guess.

JB: Pretty much.

JL: Yeah, yeah, thank God you can sing.

JB: I was telling, here's a good story. I was going out, I went last
weekend to, you know the Cub Scouts? The Cub Scout . . . do you have
any sons? You have any sons?

JL: No, I don't have any sons, but I know the Cub Scouts.

JB: They have a Pinewood Derby. It's a six-inch block of wood.

JL: Sure, I know that.

JB: A big deal.

JL: I was a Cub Scout.

JB: So was I. Thirty-five years ago, thirty-four years ago, I was a
Cub Scout, and they give a block of wood and they say "make a car out
of this piece of wood." Well, I am haunting my father to this day
because he didn't help me make this car, so now it's my son's turn.
Well, I'll be damned if I'm not going to go and you know, fly my
plane all the way back to Jersey, make this car, I'm there, you know,
I'm hanging with my son, we built the coolest car ever. But I
actually helped. My son did more than I did and he's six, but, you
know . . . <crowd laughs> . . . we had a hell of a time and I got to
say I did something handy and we're taking a picture together and you
know, he's got his arm around his dad, and I've got my two hands up
showing my wife I didn't cut myself, look, you know, it's like I
still got all my fingers. So that's about as handy as I'm able to
get.

JL: Do you still have your car?

JB: Oh, yeah, because of you I bought a Viper.

JL: No, no, but I mean, your small one, the one that you made?

JB: Mine? No, no, no, no, mine's still, I showed up at the race, the
paint was wet, my hands were blue, I'm giving my father hell over
this Christmas about it.

JL: See, my brother was a carpenter, he could make his car look like
a real car that was actually, you know, if you put it on a table,
you'd think, oh, that was a real car. Mine, three of the wheels were
on the same side, you know, you know what I'm saying, it's not good,
I wasn't very handy.

JB: That was as handy as I've ever been.

JL: So you bought the Viper? I told you you'd like it.

JB: I did, I love that car, lookit, we sound like a commercial - can
we get free Vipers, anyone?

<Jon, Jay, crowd laughs>

JL: But you gotta get tickets in that. Have you been stopped out
here with that one?

JB: No, but I do like driving around LA with like the plates from
home and driving into the lot and all, I really dig that car. It's
got a great stereo, it's all about the stereo, air conditioning and
heating and it hasn't broken down out here.

JL: A rock star with out-of-state plates! You won't get in trouble!

JB: No, no! <laughs>

JL: Well, thanks, you did some great stuff there with 9/11, I know
you didn't want to admit it, but it was great because I know where
you live in Jersey, there were an awful lot of people there that were
affected, firemen and all.

JB: I was there, I was home that morning, Richie and I were about to
start writing and he was sleeping and you really didn't know how to
react when you're caught up in it and 163 families in my county were
affected, you know kids in my kids' school and firemen that worked in
the city, you know that go to school with my kids, um, and as the
smoke was wafting over my home and the other two planes were in the
air, I mean, you really, it went through your mind, do you run to the
school, is this Armageddon, you start thinking the worst . . .

JL: Yeah.

JB: But fortunately, you know, it wasn't, as tragic as it was. I
delayed the start of Ally by a month and David Kelley, of course,
understood, because I said I have to stay home to do whatever,
whatever I could, so we did the telethon, which happened to be next
door to a place where I was a gofer in a recording studio 20 years
ago. You dreamt about writing the songs and 20 years later, you're
performing those songs for such an important night, you know, and you
walked out and saw that same playground, it really had a different
meaning, you know. But God bless all those firemen and policemen and
the folks who lost . . .

JL: Yup. Well, you too, good work, you're a good man. Thank you,
Jon! It's good knowing you, a pleasure to have you! <crowd cheers>
Be right back with Pete Yorn after this!