During a recent conversation with Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon, former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven, spoke about the reason he declined the offer to be the manager of Jon Bon Jovi, right after he left managing GNR.

Here’s what the ex-manager said:

“What actually happened was: I got a phone call from David Geffen and he said, ‘I think you should take a meeting with John Bon Jovi.’

“I picked my fights with David Geffen carefully, and this is one I was not going to make into a fight straight away, so I said, ‘OK, fine, I’ll take a meeting with him.’

“I just left GN’R at that point, so I’m in my kitchen and the phone rings, and I pick it up, and this guy on the other end says, ‘Hey, it’s Jon.’ And I go ‘Jon who?’, and he goes, ‘Jon Bon Jovi,‘ and I go, ‘F*ck off,’ and put the phone down thinking it’s somebody screwing around with me.

“And then the phone rings again and it’s, ‘No, no, it’s really me.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, Jon, I’m so sorry. I thought it was somebody screwing around.’ And he said, ‘Can we meet up and have a drink?’

“And I said, ‘Well, yeah, we can definitely do that. But I cannot do it right at this moment – can we pick another time?’ He said, ‘Oh, OK, sure. Call me and we’ll set something up.’

“And in that moment I had a semi-intelligent thought – and having been somewhat aware of Doc McGhee’s tales about working with Jon, I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t jump immediately when I was whistled. I’d heard a rumor that Jon was a little controlling and demanding, so I wanted to see what would happen.

“We arranged for another time to meet; it wasn’t over a cocktail, it was in the office of his business manager, and he had his tour manager sitting there with him.

“And I walked in and saw this triangle and went, ‘Wow, do I intimidate you? You need backup to talk to me? Originally you wanted to go out and have a drink and see if we could have a meeting of minds? I don’t think this is for me,’ and quietly backed out of it.

“The other thing was, and I have to confess this, I don’t own a Bon Jovi record, which should tell you something.

“I was not a huge fan of what some people called ‘happy rock.’ I don’t think that all rock has to not celebrate life or not have the energy or not be spectacular, but there was something about the idea of going to a pizza parlor and asking the girls in the pizza parlor if a song is good or not that I found a little un-encouraging.”

He added:

“This I will say, and I can hear people loading up the Guns now and pointing them in my direction: if I had a perception of Jon at that time, I think he wanted to try and elevate himself from being seen as an entertainer and that he wanted to be seen as an artist – that he wanted to be comparative to Springsteen.

“And I think that was what he really wanted. I’ll tell you this: I didn’t make the wrong decision, he did. Because if I had worked with him, that’s the way I’d have driven him, and I would have got him into being perceived more as an artist than an entertainer.

“But you know, have a nice day. He’s had a wonderful day, lots of wonderful paydays and he’s a great entertainer. I still don’t have a Bon Jovi album.”