Jon Bon Jovi Still Cringes From His Early Music Videos: ‘You Want to Embarrass Me? Tie Me to a Chair and Make Me Watch It’

“…it’s like, Jesus God.”

Jon Bon Jovi admitted to being embarrassed by the music video for “Runaway”, noting how it took his band three albums to figure out the right format for music video.There was undeniably a lot of outright goofy stuff in the ’80s rock music videos, which is only understandable given that the format was undergoing a massive evolution with the advent of MTV and its increasing importance at the time. And while all that silliness usually provokes intense feelings of nostalgia for most viewers, the New Jersey rock icon still can’t help but cringe when watching some of Bon Jovi’s early videos.

Speaking to SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen in a recent interview, Jon Bon Jovi noted how if you ever wanted to torture him, then strapping him to a chair and making him watch those early videos might do the trick. He began (via Loudwire):

“We were smart enough by the third album, it took three albums to figure out just promote the live show with a video, so by ‘You Give Love a Bad Name,’ ‘Livin’ on a Prayer,’ ‘Wanted Dead or Alive,’ those are really just performance videos and that’s when we realized this is all that matters.”

“When I think back that ‘Runaway’ …. when we made a video, ‘Wait a minute, I just learned to play the guitar and write a song. You want me to be a filmmaker? What the hell do I know!’

“I fell for it, hook, line and sinker, and the stupid record company with the stupid video director who says Fahrenheit 451 [when the album was 7800 Fahrenheit] or whatever with his niece starring in the video, it’s like, Jesus God. You want to embarrass me? Tie me to a chair and make me watch videos from my first two albums.

“Horrible. Horrible. And the second album, same kind of thing, and then by the third album we were like, ‘Wait a minute. Let us just film us performing,’ and boom. Everything changed.”