For Jon Bon Jovi, getting inducted alongside his Bon Jovi bandmates at this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was something that came many, many years too late. His feud with the institution has been both well-documented and longstanding, with his previous sentiments suggesting that the voting board made it their personal mission to “fuck with” him by keeping the band out of the Hall for as long as possible. Well, 2018 called, and the tide has officially turned — New Jersey’s princes are officially coming home with the brass, baby!
Taking the stage after his good pal Howard Stern riled the crowd up with a raunchy induction speech, the significance of this Rock Hall musical fete was not lost on Jon. “I’ve been writing this speech since I first strummed the broom and sang at the top of the stairs of my childhood home. I’ve actually written it many ways, many times. Some days I write the thank you speech, other days, I write the fuck you speech,” he explained. “Writing it was, in fact, therapeutic for me in a lot of ways. I certainly see things differently tonight than I would have 10, 20, 30 years ago. But in the end, it’s all about time. It took a lot of people to get us here tonight and not all of them were hairstylists.”
Jon’s speech — which served as a bit of a condensed Wikipedia entry about his life, clocking in at around 20 minutes — was by far the longest of the evening, something he jokingly acknowledged near the end. But the audience didn’t mind one bit. “I know, I know, it’s about time. And that has been the theme of our weekend, so it all really just depends on how you read into those words, ‘it’s about time,’ because time is the most precious commodity we have,” he explained. “I thank my lucky stars for the time that I have to spend with each one of you, Alec, Richie, Hugh, Tico, David, to you, to us, to all of you, tonight the band that agreed to do me a favor stands before you so I can say thank you for making this dream live on.”
