Year: 1985
Song: “In and Out of Love” by Bon Jovi
7800 Fahrenheit. The temperature at which rock burns.
If you listen closely, sometimes the wind still carries the anguished cries of metal bands who didn’t think of that album title first. You’d figure the dudes who thought of it would at least use it on an album they’re proud of but that is not the case. This is a non-Jovi album as far as JBJ is concerned, and unsurprisingly, this is the un-Joviest video I’ve encountered in their repertoire and possibly the most unintentionally hilarious.
The video opens like it’s going to be a remake of Journey’s “Faithfully” but then they realized the Jovi couldn’t grow a mustache so they had to switch up concepts.
They spend a minute or so with the standard concert footage, like they’re coming up with their new idea right on the spot, and everything about this just screams I can too grow a mustache, I just didn’t want to:
Then a limo drops them off at the Jersey Shore and some guy I’m probably supposed to recognize tells them they have 24 hours. For what? Helping old ladies cross the street? Sharing malteds with their best girls? Cleaning up a park with some neighborhood youths?
Nope. 24 hours off of from being the sweet lovable dudes we know as Bon Jovi.
That’s right. The living, breathing embodiment of the (orginal) Hulkamaniac’s Creed — always go swimming with a buddy, take your vitamins each and every day — decides to turn heel. Just look at these freaking hoodlums. What a bunch of rabble-rousers. This is what bad seeds look like in the Bon Jovi world:
- A subway flasher
- A drywaller
- Huey Lewis
They’re so bad they won’t even conform to conventional seasons.
QUICK, WHO WORE IT BEST???
Duff McKagan photo by Jack Lue.
These are the halcyon days of peaked caps.
Their bad boy image is a siren song…to every rock-listening dude on the boardwalk. They’re so bad, they have to hide…from rabbis.
After escaping from their rabid fans and/or any attempts at religious conversation, they’re really ready to raise some HECK!
Led Zeppelin rode motorcycles through the Riot House. Ozzy bit the head off a bat. Keith Richards threw televisions off of hotel balconies.
Bon Jovi kicked sand.
This is the worst thing they could think of. After the kid kicked sand first.
Tellingly, the only guy who even comes close to engaging in some public indecency is the guy who ended up getting kicked out of the band.
Also, memo. When you see a woman walking by, don’t shout at her to smile. Don’t make lewd gestures. Don’t cat call her. And don’t freaking squirt her with a water gun.
No woman is scuffing her Keds for that.
While Tico Torres is trying to pull a Chris Holmes in the neighborhood pool, except for in the daylight and fully sober, David Bryan perhaps commits the worst offense of all: wasting a perfectly good funnel cake to light a lady’s cigarette. Because smoking is bad for you.
This is like the Care Bear movie when they went to the gray land and couldn’t be their true happy selves. I guarantee you everyone’s wearing a shirt so you can’t see their tummy symbols.
Care Bear…Stare!
Up is down. Left is right. Steve Perry could grow a mustache. The Jovi and Sambora love each other so much.
Find someone who looks at you the way the Jovi looks at Richie.
It’s hard to see them like this, so happy, so secure in their platonic ideal. Because I think this is the moment when everything goes south. The band has their taste of how they view the stereotypical hard rockin’ life (because apparently they’ve never had a conversation with Motley Crue) and all the other guys are ready to go back to their clean cut ways, but Richie Sambora is like, “Spoiler alert, I want to stay in the hot tub time machine. I like it here better.”
The guys all board their plane on time and in an orderly fashion, probably helping the flight attendants clean up trash and pointing out the importance of recycling. But if you look inside, someone’s tray is not in the fully locked position and there, the first crack in rock’s greatest bromance forms.
Amy Rossi 
