During a recent Masterclass at Sweetwater in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Phil X shared his thoughts on playing Richie Sambora’s parts in Bon Jovi.
“I hit bad notes all the time. When it’s important, I really try not to, because I’m filling in for a guy [as] great [as] Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi,” said the guitarist. “And the very first time I played live on a 12-string — like, a 12-string is not my thing, man, but it had to be. We’re in the encores, and I did a smoking-awesome set. But if I screw up, there’s people going, ‘That sucks.’”
He continued his words, “So, there’s things you don’t want to mess around with. I believe I went into the Bon Jovi thing with the right the right mindset. It was like, ‘Okay, you can’t stray from the solo of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer.’ It’s gotta be that solo. There’s no, ‘Hey, let’s jam this out.’”
“There’s none of that. And there’s a lot of songs like that,” Phil X further explained what it is like to play in Bon Jovi. “There are songs where I get to shine. If it’s your thing, you can hit as many bad notes as you want. [But] if you want to get a gig and play somebody else’s thing, you probably want to stray away from the bad notes. But again, have fun with it.”
After filling in for Sambora for several years on some occasions, Phil X became an official member of Bon Jovi in 2016. “When it’s something like a situation where you’re filling in for somebody and somebody comes up and says or writes a comment the next day, ‘That was my first Bon Jovi show and it was Phil X,’ I feel bad sort of. I feel like that should have been Richie,” the musician told Talking Shred in a Q&A session in June.
Phil X recently worked with Bon Jovi on the band’s latest album, ‘Forever.’ It was his third record with the group.