Forty-six years ago, the stunning frost of a Soviet winter helped turn back the German army as it approached Moscow. But Bon Jovi is made of sterner stuff than the Nazis. And the band’s plans to conquer the U.S.S.R. demonstrate a better sense of strategy than Hitler’s.

Other rock groups have visited the country just long enough to see the Kremlin and play a concert. A one-night stand won’t satisfy the boys in this band. To them, the Soviet Union represents the world’s largest unserviced pop market, a huge nation of kids who have been deprived of American rock & roll. Bon Jovi wants to be the first foreign group sanctioned by the Soviet government to regularly perform and release albums there.

So in early December, Bon Jovi interrupted the European leg of its eleven-month New Jersey world tour to spend three hectic days in Moscow. The five band members — singer Jon Bon Jovi, 26, guitarist Richie Sambora, 29, keyboardist David Bryan, 26, bassist Alec John Such, 36, and drummer Tico Torres, 34 — arrived with a large entourage, which included Doc McGhee, …, video director Wayne Isham and his crew, a photographer and executives of PolyGram Records, the band’s label. Their official tasks were to arrange a July concert that would be the first rock show ever held in Lenin Stadium; to negotiate the release of New Jersey on Melodiya, the state-owned record company; and to offer a bit of soft-metal diplomacy as self-proclaimed «ambastards of good will»

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Downstairs, to everyone’s surprise, a few thousand kids are racing around the terminal, hoping to find the band. Kids gather wherever the band goes, but Bon Jovi hasn’t even released an album in the Soviet Union. Copies of New Jerseyreportedly sell for 150 rubles (about $200) on the black market, a staggering sum compared with a typical monthly salary of 200 rubles.

The band members are led through a back entrance, where a police escort is waiting to lead their two limousines. («Man, Billy Joel didn’t get limos», says Wayne Isham, who filmed Joel’s Soviet concerts.) But when the motorcade arrives at the band’s hotel, a few hundred kids are clogging the entrance to the hotel, so the limos turn around and head for Gorky Park, and Stas Namin’s music center.

Namin, the grandson of a prominent Soviet politician, was instrumental in bringing Bon Jovi to the U.S.S.R. As the leader of the Stas Namin Group, the party-sanctioned Soviet rock superstars, Namin has sold 40 million records in his own country. Now he manages Gorky Park, a Soviet metal band. When he was in New Jersey last April, Namin asked Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora to help Gorky Park write some English lyrics. Jon and Richie, the creative axis of Bon Jovi, are nothing if not helpful — they’ve produced Cher, given songs to Ted Nugent, Aerosmith and Loverboy and introduced Cinderella to PolyGram execs. They agreed to help Gorky Park.

And how did a simple meeting with a prominent Soviet musician result in Bon Jovi’s plans to conquer the U.S.S.R.? «Doc», answers Jon Bon Jovi, grinning at his manager’s storied audacity. «Doc».

McGhee, 38, spends an unusual amount of time traveling with the band, and his crass good cheer masks the strategic savvy that has guided the band’s international campaign. «Life is like a sleigh ride», he says, as shots of vodka vanish in the music center’s dining room. «Unless you’re the lead dog, you’re always looking up someone else’s ass».

Wayne Isham and his crew are filming the music-center party, as they do nearly every minute of the Soviet trip. «Maybe it’s history, maybe it’s not», says Richie Sambora. Bon Jovi has discussed making a documentary film similar to U2’s Rattle and Hum but with a closer focus on the band’s daily life.

Which, on this evening, isn’t altered by the iron curtain. The «fun police», as Sambora refers to the band members’ girlfriends, aren’t in Moscow. But Stas has stocked his music center with attractive young Soviet women, including the reigning Miss Siberia, who proves to be quite popular among the Americans, in spite of her limited English. Isham turns his camera on some young fans and persuades them to sing «Runaway» — Bon Jovi’s first hit single. The young Russians know only the chorus, which they sing over and over. As a reward, Isham brings them back to the hotel on the video crew’s bus. The party continues at the hotel bar, where Jon is surrounded by students from St. Cloud State University, in Minnesota, who are on a class trip.

Much of the next day is spent traveling around Moscow on a bus. Richie and Dave — the most extroverted members of the band — tutor Yuri, the group’s hulking Russian security guard, in remedial English. Jon looks pensively out the bus window at the dreary landscape or quietly quizzes the guys in Gorky Park about why they don’t own cars, despite having sold a few million records. Jon is surprised to find that in the Soviet Union rockers don’t earn royalties.

After a hurried circuit of the Kremlin, the members of Bon Jovi hold a press conference in the editorial offices of a Soviet-youth newspaper. The first two questions, directed to Jon, are «How old are you?» and «Are you a wealthy man? He answers the first question; after a long pause, he tactfully dodges the second.

More innocuous inquiries follow, most of them concerning the band members’ feelings about a country they’ve been in for twenty-four hours. «We’re very comfortable here», says Richie. «We’ve had a great time», adds Jon. «Good vodka», says Dave.

The band leaves with Stas Namin, who directs the limo driver to enter a one-way street going against traffic. A police car pulls them over, and Bon Jovi — thinking of the KGB, or maybe New Jersey state troopers — gets worried. But when the policemen look in the car, they say, «Hi, Stas», and wave them on. Bon Jovi is impressed.

Back at Namin’s music center, another kingly, festive meal has begun, with numerous toasts between the band members and their generous Soviet hosts. Afterward, too many people cram into a rehearsal room that is decorated with posters of Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev and Bon Jovi. Gorky Park plays a short set, which includes a pumping rearrangement of «My Generation», and then Bon Jovi joins the band for «Blue Suede Shoes» and «Mean Woman Blues. Miss Siberia jumps onstage to dance

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Their Lenin Stadium concert, Doc explains, is planned to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Woodstock. But, he continues, instead of promoting «the drug message», as Woodstock did, this show will carry an antidrug message… Other hard-rock bands will appear with Bon Jovi — McGhee also manages Mötley Crüe and the Scorpions, who are likely candidates — and there are plans to broadcast the show live via satellite around the world

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Источник: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/bon-voyage-19890209