Jon Bon Jovi Reminisces About Partying With Michael Jackson’s Pet Chimp Bubbles

Before Bon Jovi go down memory lane in their multi-part documentary, Thank You, Goodnight, Jon Bon Jovi visited Jimmy Kimmel Live (for the first time!) to reminisce about some highlights from his Rock Hall-worthy career.

During the wide-ranging, 15-minute interview, the singer talked about his first guitar — which he sold to a neighborhood kid in 1978, and he got back from him just this year — and getting a local radio DJ to play what became Bon Jovi’s first hit, “Runaway.”

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Bon Jovi and Kimmel also talked about what was the singer’s first released recording, an appearance on a Star Wars tribute Christmas album. “I was a goffer in a recording studio in the fall of 1980 until the fall of 1983,” Bon Jovi said, adding he was paid $183 to sign on the track “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bon Jovi discussed taking long drives with his idol and fellow New Jersey rock god Bruce Springsteen, his initial reluctance to record “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and meeting Michael Jackson in Japan, where Bon Jovi and his band mates partied with the King of Pop’s cigar-chomping pet chimp Bubbles. “He hung hard,” Bon Jovi said. “We partied with Bubbles.”

Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, the four-part docuseries about the band, premieres on Hulu on April 26. The documentary, directed by Gotham Chopra, features interviews with all of the group’s original members — including Richie Sambora, who left the band in 2013 — as well as Springsteen and other rock peers.

“Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story joins the band in February 2022 and follows their real-time journey with its fits and starts as they attempt to chart out their future. As thrilling as the story of a once-in-a-lifetime talent is, it is even more rare that a legend like Jon Bon Jovi lets the world into his most vulnerable moments while he’s still living them,” Hulu said of the docuseries.

“Forty years of personal videos, unreleased early demos, original lyrics, and never-before-seen photos that chronicle the journey from Jersey Shore clubs to the biggest stages on the planet.”

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