LA, Nov 15: Sitting in the control room at Los Angeles' Henson Studios earlier this fall listening to mixes for "This Left Feels Right" -- a collection of Bon Jovi hits radically revamped by the band -- Jon Bon Jovi admitted, "I don't know if anyone's gonna buy this." The album, which came out Nov. 4, features songs revisited in ways that are startling at first: leadoff single "Wanted Dead or Alive" becomes a Led Zeppelin-like stomp, while "It's My Life" morphs into a wistful ballad. But the tunes quickly show themselves sturdy enough to withstand the upheaval.
"The children started to grow by themselves, so to speak," says guitarist Richie Sambora, who co-produced the album with Bon Jovi and Patrick Leonard. "To actually be able to reinvent your songs and be happy with them, I can't recall any band in history exactly ever doing that." Originally, the band planned to release an acoustic live album, and it recorded the tunes, many of them with an orchestra, last January in Japan.
But somewhere along the way, the group decided to turn the songs on their ears.

"I just thought, 'Why not?"' Bon Jovi said of the decision to scrap the acoustic Japanese session and turn the project into "Left."
"This is just the beginning of yet another chapter," he said. "'Keep the Faith' was the beginning of the second chapter, is now closed. It's obvious we're not going to try to write those songs again. It's time to go left and find another avenue."

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As for what the next 10 years will bring, that's yet to be determined, but Bon Jovi said he knows what it won't be. "I don't know yet what it will entail, but I think I've been honest with myself and with anyone else that this will never be a nostalgia band knocking on the '80s door and putting one of those bills together."

In fact, Sambora said the group's ability to revisit its past in such a fresh fashion is one of the keys to its longevity.

Bureau Report