In a new interview with the How To Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast, BON JOVI frontman Jon Bon Jovi opened up about the vocal cord deterioration he experienced a few years ago which caused him to have surgery in 2022. Asked when he “started realizing that there was something awry” with his voice, Jon said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, in this latest chapter of the saga of this body, probably 2014. In 2013, I had a tumultuous time. I lost a bandmember [Richie Sambora] who abruptly quit on us — the band, the crew, the fans. A couple business dealings that didn’t go the way I’d hoped they would. And we overcame that. And I did a hundred shows and persevered. In 2014 the body crashed out from under me, and I wasn’t even aware. But I know that when I walked by my guitar, not only didn’t I touch it, but I gave it the middle finger. I wasn’t at all interested in seeing my friend. And by 2015, when I was attempting to go back to work maybe even a little bit, something just wasn’t right. So this was odd for me. This wasn’t just, ‘Okay, I’ll beat the muscle back into shape.’ There was something wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out. [In] 2016, we put out a record called ‘This House Is Not For Sale’. It’s very much a statement record. There’s a chip on my shoulder. We work, but, again, physically I’m not quite right and I don’t know why. So the tour is very short. After that, as we’re writing what was to become [the] ‘2020’ [album], and then COVID happens, you’re not thinking about touring, ’cause there is no such thing. And by 2022, when the world is opening up again, I’m thinking, ‘Okay, what’s the big deal? Let’s go. I’m past the difficulties of ‘This House Is Not For Sale’. I’m past COVID, like everyone else. I’m dying to get out in the world.’ I do what is to become a 15-show tour, and it’s just not working anymore. And I don’t understand it, because, in a clichéd world, they say, ‘Well, what have you done? What excesses?’ It wasn’t that. The only thing that’s ever been up my nose is my finger. [Laughs] It wasn’t working. And I willed it. And I tried, and I tried very hard on a daily basis on a 15-show tour, which is practically — you don’t even bring a change of socks for 15 shows. It’s, like, that’s nothing. At the end of the 15th show, I remember going into that dressing room in Nashville, Tennessee and saying to my wife, ‘It was pretty good.’ And she looked at me and she said, ‘It wasn’t.’ People think, ‘Oh, what a blow.’ It really wasn’t, because she’s gonna tell me the truth. That day I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well, time for a drink. I don’t think I could do this anymore. I don’t know why, but I’m okay with walking away from this because there’s no way I’m dragging down the legacy.’ And that began my journey to what got me here tonight, speaking with you.”

Reflecting on how he eventually found out what was wrong with him, Jon said: “I sought out a surgeon, who explained to me that one of my vocal cords had literally atrophied — it was dying — and that he could do an implant surgery on the outside of the vocal cords to get them to close properly again, therefore simultaneously closing. And if I worked hard — he promised me nothing other than I would be better than I was that night in Nashville. Had I known that it was gonna be a three-and-a-half-year recovery, I very well might have said, ‘Thank you, goodnight.’ But the process and the progress was steady enough that I didn’t lose faith. It was just nowhere near what I thought it would be in the recovery. And then, because of this record [2024’s ‘Forever’] and my putting it out a year-plus ago, I thought, ‘It’s a bitch to let this moment in time slip through my hands again with these last three albums.’ So we reimagined the record [as ‘Forever (Legendary Edition)’ with guest singers]. And now, and only now, am I willing to go out on a limb and say, ‘Yep, I could play some shows because I feel fully recovered’ — or close enough to fully recover that I have faith in the process.”

Asked to explain what his implant surgery entailed, Jon said: “If you look closely here in the bottom of my throat, there’s a scar. That’s where they cut you. They go right through the front. They put two pieces of Gore-Tex, which is plastic, outside of the vocal cords but in the neck that close the muscles together outside. Every time you say a word, the muscles push the cords together, and they were not firing symmetrically.”

After podcast host Elizabeth Day said that she imagined there was a period of time where he “couldn’t speak and couldn’t communicate”, Jon clarified: “It wasn’t that extreme, and they told me it was going to be. But I did sound like the Godfather for a while… Even that next day, they said, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna be able to talk,’ and I was able to talk like that. You certainly couldn’t sing, and there was no way you could sing like you sing. So the process was very slow. And then six weeks after the surgery, I could take speech pathology kind of courses to work with a speech pathologist. Now, let me equate that. If when you are walking down the street and if you had a pebble in one of your shoes, at first when you said, ‘Ow, ow, ow.’ Then eventually you would compensate by leaning on the other leg and the other shoe till you got used to that pebble being in the first shoe and you’d compensate. Well, I had basically seven or eight years of compensation to unwind. So they had to start from scratch, teaching me how to speak, then how to ultimately make sound that sounded like singing and to get better and better throughout this process. And it’s a constant evolution. But I’m confident enough now to know that I can sell a ticket. I wasn’t at all willing a year ago.”

Earlier in the month, BON JOVI announced a series of global concert dates that will mark the band’s much-anticipated return to live touring with shows in New York, London, Dublin and Edinburgh starting in July of 2026 at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden. And due to overwhelming demand, the band has already added additional dates at Madison Square Garden. The tour is produced by Live Nation.

Produced by Jon with John Shanks, “Forever” featured Jon Bon Jovi once again alongside fellow founding BON JOVI members, keyboardist David Bryan and drummer Tico Torres. They were joined by bassist Hugh McDonald and guitarist Phil X.

“Forever” contained 12 new songs, including the hit lead single “Legendary”.