During an appearance on Mavericks With Ari Melber, Jon Bon Jovi revealed how “It’s My Life,” lead to disagreement between him & Richie Sambora.
When the interviewer brought up the “bit of trivia,” saying “Richie Sambora tried to talk you out of invoking Frank Sinatra, a line that people have loved forever. How do you know when to listen and edit and when to say, ‘No, I got this’?”, Jon replied (transcribed by UG):
“Oh, if I was talking about flying purple people eaters and a collaborator on a song said, ‘I don’t like it’ – if you had a great argument, the eraser comes out, no problem.
“But in the case of ‘It’s My Life’ and the line ‘like Frankie said, ‘I did it my way” – when I was asked by my dear friend and collaborator, ‘What do you mean by that?’, I said, ‘Well, Sinatra was a role model, Sinatra made movies and he made records simultaneously. That’s what I’m doing. He’s involved in social cause with politics. That’s what I do.’
“So I felt that lyric, and then my ultimate argument was, ‘I’m the one that has to sing it’ – the argument was over, and he said, ‘OK, I get it.’
“The beautiful thing is the audience, their response was, ‘Frankie’s just my friend, my brother, my collaborator in life’ – they didn’t have to make it about Sinatra in my situation.
“And that’s the beauty of a song – when it goes beyond time or even language or borders. In my case, we were able to play these songs around the globe.”