Rock band frontman Jon Bon Jovi is back in form after vocal chord surgery that required years of rehabilitation to be able to sing live again, comparing his recovery to that of a footballer with a broken leg.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The analogy may have been inspired by the rocker’s encounter with Australia’s national rugby league team.<\/p>\n
Bon Jovi was giving a press conference about an upcoming tour at London’s Wembley Stadium on Friday \u2014 the same day the Kangaroo players were on the ground preparing for this weekend’s Ashes Test match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jon Bon Jovi with the NRL Kangaroos at Wembley Stadium.\u00a0 (Facebook: Australian Kangaroos)<\/p>\n
“I’m excited. I’m also grateful and humble,” Bon Jovi told Reuters about the idea of performing live again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“[It] has taken a lot of rehabilitation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s sort of like an athlete\u2026 because you’re retraining\u2026 [like] a leg break for a footballer on this field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You have to slowly walk until he can run.”<\/p>\n
How to watch the first Kangaroos vs England Ashes Test match<\/a><\/p>\n The countdown is on for the first Ashes series in 22 years.<\/p>\n As well as talking to the press about his upcoming tour, Bon Jovi met Kangaroos players, who were on the grounds for their pre-match Captain’s Run \u2014 a training session and photo opportunity that turned into a celebrity meet-and-greet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here are a few snippets of video from the encounter posted to social media by the Kangaroos’s official Instagram account:<\/p>\n Loading…What happened to Jon Bon Jovi?<\/p>\n The 63-year-old had an atrophying vocal cord \u2014 which meant one chord was weaker than the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n The issue came to a head after the band’s 2022 tour, with critics remarking on how the singer was not able to hit the notes the way he used to.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It felt like he had forgotten how to sing,” a reviewer from Pioneer Press said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jon Bon Jovi was in London promoting his band’s Wembley Stadium concert.\u00a0 (AP: Invision\/Millie Turner)<\/p>\n The singer looked into holistic options before eventually seeing a doctor who said one of his vocal cords was atrophying.<\/p>\n “This was unique,” he told Associated Press last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It wasn’t a nodule.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The strong [vocal cord] was pushing the weak one around, and suddenly, my inabilities were just exacerbated.”<\/p>\n The symptoms of vocal chord atrophy most commonly include a reduced vocal volume, a higher-pitched voice and a breathy “thin” sound, US university Johns Hopkins Medicine’s website explains<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n What kind of surgery did Jon Bon Jovi have?<\/p>\n An atrophying vocal chord meant surgery, he told the Pollstar Live! conference in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n “I found a doctor in Philadelphia who did something called a medialization,” he said in entertainment website Blabbermouth’s reporting from the conference<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “So they put a plastic implant in it for the last … almost two years now.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n