Then Jon wrote the words SLIPPERY WHEN WET. I propped up the black bag and sprayed it with an oil and water mixture.
I asked him what we were going to do and he replied: “I don’t know, but this is our last chance or the album gets held up.” Jon arrived at my studio, walked inside and didn’t even say hello. Recently he told Howard Stern that his thinking was, “My career is over if we put out a hot pink album cover.” But if the pink border was the problem, why not just take it out? Only in his mind, it was more about the color of the border around the photo than the actual photo itself. Jon had issues with the Angela cover as well. Mercury destroyed nearly 500,000 copies before they ever left the warehouse to be distributed in the U.S. They also knew the music stood on its own, so we went back to the drawing board to come up with another cover. Polygram knew they had a smash album on their hands, and they didn’t want to jeopardize that success. Record stores were telling the labels to ease up on the explicit content and imagery or they wouldn’t sell the products. But this was 1986, and the PMRC was in full swing. Three-hundred-thousand copies, with Angela in her provocatively cut wet t-shirt clinging to her 34DD breasts, had already been released in Japan. I would have a good laugh as these formerly clean-shaven guys swaggered in with Billy the Kid looks and attitude. Over a three-week period, Richie, David, Alec, Tico and Jon came to my studio in New York City, one at a time. The idea was to show the five of them as the Bon Jovi “gang,” and have the WANTED poster brazenly tacked to the wall where they were ‘hiding out’.
I came up with what I thought was a no brainer: I’d have the guys grow beards, put on some cowboy garb and make a WANTED poster. The name they gave me to work with was Wanted Dead or Alive. I was asked to brainstorm ideas for the album cover.
That January, Bon Jovi went to Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver to start work on their third record. Ratt and Bon Jovi, (L-R Stephen Pearcy, David Bryan, Robbin Crosby, Richie Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi, Juan Croucier, Warren DeMartini), 1985. Bon Jovi toured America as the opening act for Ratt, who were headlining arenas in support of their second album, Invasion of Your Privacy.
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