*RTH* Bon Jovi - It's My Life

**sokratikos** 15.07.23 15:16

[11-07-2023]

Richard Stephen (Richie) Sambora (Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 11 juli 1959) is een Amerikaans gitarist en zanger. Hij is bekend geworden door de band Bon Jovi, waar hij gitarist, achtergrondzanger en medeschrijver (van liedjes) was.

Richie Sambora staat bekend om zijn voorliefde voor gitaren. Zo bespeelt hij een dubbelhalsgitaar, een type vergelijkbaar met de Gibson Double Twelve. Ook bespeelt hij een Fender Stratocaster.

Tijdens een wereldtournee van Bon Jovi in 2013 kwam Sambora niet meer opdagen. Het laatste Bon Jovi-optreden waarbij Sambora meespeelde was tijdens Lubbock Texas.

Op 15 december 1994 trouwde hij met Heather Locklear. Samen hebben zij een dochter. Op 3 februari 2006 werd bekendgemaakt dat Locklear en Sambora gingen scheiden.

Richie Sambora krijgt een RTH kado en dat is de 3e van Bon Jovi en de 2e van die band - na "Livin' On A Prayer" (in 2014 gerankt) - waaraan hij heeft meegeschreven.

"It's My Life" is de eerste single afkomstig van Bon Jovi's album Crush uit 2000. Het betekende Bon Jovi's comeback, na vijf jaar geen nieuwe albums meer te hebben uitgebracht. Wereldwijd is het hun meest succesvolle single, met #1-noteringen in een groot aantal landen. Het was hun eerste en enige #1-hit in Nederland. In Vlaanderen was het Bon Jovi's tweede #1-hit, na Always in 1994. Het piekte in 2000-1 op:
#33 in de USA
#20 in Canada
#14 in Frankrijk
#6 in Finland en Walloons Belgie
#5 in Australie, Hongarije en Ierland
#3 in Griekenland, Kroatie, Noorwegen, Schotland en de UK
#2 in Denemarken, Duitsland, IJsland en Zweden
#1 in Italie, de NLse Top 40 (waar het 14 weken in stond), Oostenrijk, Portugal, Roemenie, Spanje, Vlaams Belgie en Zwitserland

Wiki schreef:"It's My Life" is a song by American rock band Bon Jovi. It was released on May 8, 2000, as the lead single from their seventh studio album, Crush (2000). It was written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and Max Martin, and co-produced by Luke Ebbin. The song peaked at number one in Austria, Flanders, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Switzerland while charting within the top 10 across several other countries and peaking at number 33 on the US Billboard Hot 100. "It's My Life" is Bon Jovi's most well-known post-1980s hit single and helped introduce the band to a new, younger fanbase.

Background
The song has many classic Bon Jovi features, such as Sambora's use of the talk box, and a line in the second verse "For Tommy and Gina, who never backed down" refers to Tommy and Gina, a fictional working class couple that Bon Jovi and Sambora first wrote about in their 1986 hit "Livin' on a Prayer".

"It's My Life" is also notable for its line referencing fellow New Jerseyan Frank Sinatra: "My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said / I did it 'My Way'." Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora apparently had a disagreement over those lines, with Bon Jovi recalling:

I had just come home from making U-571 and I said "Sinatra made 16 movies and toured till he was 80. This is my role model." He [Sambora] said, "You can't write that damn lyric. Nobody cares about Frank Sinatra but you." And I wrote it anyway.

In Paul Anka's cover of the song for his 2005 album Rock Swings, he sings the second line as "Frankie said he did it my way", since Anka wrote the English lyrics for "My Way".

Reception
"Nobody had anticipated the song 'It's My Life'," noted Jon Bon Jovi in 2007. "Except us. We knew we had a hit." The song became an anthem that appealed to many fans. As Bon Jovi later stated: "I thought I was writing very self-indulgently about my own life and where I was in it. I didn't realize that the phrase 'It's My Life' would be taken as being about everyone – by teenagers, by older guys, mechanics, whatever. 'It's my life, and I'm taking control.' Everyone kind of feels that way from time to time."

Veteran critic Robert Christgau later hailed "It's My Life" as a "schlock-rock masterpiece" and "everyman anthem" with a lyric that is "all well-meaning Democrat-as-everyman Jon Bon Jovi".

Music video
The music video was directed by Wayne Isham. Will Estes (as Tommy) and Shiri Appleby (as Gina) are the two main characters. At the beginning, Tommy is watching a video of a Bon Jovi concert on his computer when he is ordered by his mother to take out the trash. Suddenly, Gina calls and tells him to immediately come to the tunnel as the live concert has already started. Tommy starts running down to his apartment and obediently takes out the trash. He then runs through the streets of Los Angeles up to the concert, getting chased by dogs, running a marathon, posing for pictures, and jackknifing a truck. The video was inspired by the film Run Lola Run. Jon Bon Jovi met Estes on the set of U-571 and chose him to be in the video. The music video features the 2nd Street Tunnel as one of the main settings.

It is the most viewed video for Bon Jovi on YouTube, reaching 1 billion views by the end of June 2021

It's My Life (Bon Jovi song) - Wikipedia