You’ve probably heard the popular quote; “a change is as good as a rest”.

Both were necessary in the case of Bon Jovi.

Worn down to their wheels after three years of touring, the New Jersey quintet took a well-earned break following the commercial failure of their sophomore album, and replaced producer Lance Quinn with Bruce Fairbairn.

The result is Slippery When Wet, a true landmark of an album which sees the rockers finally make good on the massive potential they’d only ever shown in flashes prior to today.

Loaded With Hits

It’s hard enough to write one truly legendary rock song, so Bon Jovi deserve huge praise for delivering no fewer than THREE on the same disc.

The infectious Livin’ On A Prayer is perhaps the pick of the bunch.

It’s Bon Jovi at their absolute best, capturing the mid-80s rock scene like lightning in a bottle, transporting the listener to a time when the only thing bigger than the riffs was the hair, and frontman Jon Bon Jovi could deliver high five’s (see above) with a level of enthusiasm that’d make even the baddest of bad days feel like everything is gonna be alright.

That’s quickly followed by You Give Love A Bad Name, which became their first ever #1 hit.

Meanwhile, the cowboy-themed Wanted Dead Or Alive (originally intended to be the title track) brings a face-melting guitar solo from axeman Richie Sambora, the likes of which Eddie Van Halen would be proud.

Seriously…

The highlights don’t stop there.

Lesser known tracks which weren’t released as singles pack considerable punch, too.

These include the shred-tastic riff of Raise Your Hands, which is sandwiched between the bombastic duo of Social Disease and I’d Die For You.

This handful of album tracks demonstrate not only how talented Bon Jovi are at writing anthems of hope, but also how much they’ve honed their craft, thanks for three years of non-stop touring.

Indeed, while magazines of the time unfairly labelled them “too girly”, the fact remains that Bon Jovi were actually a lot closer to “the real thing” than most of their drug-fuelled contemporaries, having put in the hard yards by registering more than 1000 gigs by this point in their career – even though they were only 24 years old!

Credit To The Producer

As mentioned at the top of this article, Bruce Fairbairn was hired to produce the record.

He was tasked with “making Bon Jovi sound like a headline act” because, having toured with the likes of Kiss and Van Halen, they’d grown frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t persuade record label bosses to bump them up to a headline slot even though they were outshining their supposedly more illustrious peers night after night.

Fairbairn massively over-delivered on his promise to rid them of their “support band” status.

He gives each track a stadium-sized feel, capturing the electricity of Bon Jovi’s live performances on a record which feels extremely well-polished and chart-ready.

Rock Don’t Roll

Unlike their future work, Slippery When Wet keeps ballads down to a minimum.

And while neither Without Love nor Never Say Goodbye are bad songs, it’s relatively clear that this is one area of their songwriting which Jon Bon Jovi hadn’t fully mastered circa 1986 – something which would drastically change in the 1990s, when it’d become the real “meat and potatoes” of their work.

The eight remaining tracks are all crunching rock numbers, and only Let It Rock (the opener) fails to hit the mark.

That being said, we think any band who has the confidence to begin a so-called “make or break album” with a minute-long organ solo clearly has balls of steel!

Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet

Everything about Slippery When Wet has gone on to become infamous over the years.

From it’s crunching riffs and wailing guitar solos…

… To it’s trio of world-beating singles (Livin’ On A Prayer, You Give Love A Bad Name, and Wanted Dead Or Alive)…

… And even the last minute replacement cover art, which many people mistakenly believe is written on steamy shower glass, but really it’s written by Jon Bon Jovi on a water-sprayed black garbage bag…

There are so many iconic things here, on what truly is a seminal rock album.

We’re delighted to announce that Slippery When Wet becomes the first album to ever achieve the coveted 11/11 score from These Go To Eleven!