Half way there

Late 1986. London

”People sometimes think I‘m Jon Bon Jovi”

”Who?”

”Oh just women on the street, you know...”

”No! Who is Jon Bon Jovi?”

He was American. Skinny with long, wavy, brown hair, tight jeans, white t-shirt, long fringed boots and a leather jacket. I was a traveller, 21 years old, working behind the bar of a seedy London pub. Fresh off the plane from Australia. “Doing London.” So cool.

I loved new wave, punk and ska music. I prided myself in not being “mainstream”.

He looked like he thought he was pretty hot stuff. American. Loud. But kinda sexy.

“Jon Bon Jovi” he said louder like I might understand if he just kept repeating the name. Like someone talking to a person who doesn’t speak their language.

”Ah, sorry never heard of him.”

He looked crestfallen. His only pickup line wasn’t having any effect on me at all. I swear his hair even seemed to droop. He sipped his Scotch Whisky with coke and looked around the room. Almost like he was looking for someone to back him up. No one caught his eye so he turned back to me.

I continued to wash glasses and wipe the beer soaked bar with the dingy wash cloth that looked like it had been used to wash the floor in 1970 and never been washed. I threw it distastefully into the sink and served the woman standing next to him. She glanced at him and didn’t look like she was impressed by his appearance.

”My name is John” he said once I had finished pouring a beer.

”Bon Jovi?” I asked, confused.

”No, not Jon Bon Jovi, John Masters. I just look like Jon Bon Jovi, oh never mind!” His tone was one of exasperation.

”Ok, so who is Jon Bon Jovi?”

He immediately smiled and dazzled me with straight, white teeth. Flicking his locks. His hair preened and his skinny chest pushed out his white t-shirt. I noticed he had a studded leather belt on and those boots!

I must admit that he was starting to fascinate me, if only as a specimen I had just discovered.

”Just the most amazing performer and singer in the world!” He shouted

”Living on a Prayer?”

I looked at him with no recognition.

He stood up and started to nod his head, even doing air guitar actions “Tommy used to work on the docks...” he screamed moving his hair so it looked like a creature with a life of it’s own.

Other people in the bar were looking now, smiling. He got to the chorus and the whole bar joined in. “Woah...Livin on a prayer!”I felt like I had arrived in a foreign country. The performance finished and he sat down on his stool. He beamed at everyone in the bar. I could tell he felt vindicated. The look he gave me was triumphant “See, everyone knows who Jon Bon Jovi is “ it said.

It was the MTV era and television screens were showing elaborate music videos in every bar I worked in at that time. Music clips on a loop. U2‘s “Joshua Tree”, Peter Gabriel’s “Sledge Hammer“, Robert Palmer, Dire Straits and of course Bon Jovi and “Living on a Prayer”.

By the end of 1987 I had worked many bars and I had these songs embedded in my psyche. But none more than “Living on a Prayer”. I can’t say I ever loved it but hearing it today brings back that hair and the air guitar. That American over-confidence and swagger. Those boots! He did look a little like Jon Bon Jovi.

He never did succeed in impressing me enough to get a date with me because he wasn’t my “type” but he was half way there.