Slippery When Wet - 25 anos

Esta era a foto da capa original

E no dia 18/08/86 era lançado o disco que mudou a carreira do Bon Jovi (e provavelmente as vidas de todos que lêem este blog!). Em homenagem a isso no mês de agosto vou escrever posts com histórias curiosas sobre o álbum que eles mesmos definem assim:

SLIPPERY WHEN WET

Bon Jovi's 3rd album, released in 1986. This was the breakthrough album that lead to massive superstardom for the band. The album title was taken from a combination of two things: a road sign on the road from the mountains down to Vancouver, where the band was recording the album… and the visual of two semi-naked strippers dancing underneath showers, soaping themselves up at the legendary No.5 stripclub in Vancouver. The album cover was originally a busty woman in a wet t-shirt… when the artwork wasn't approved by the band, there was little time to re-do it. Jon Bon Jovi went to a photographer's studio, grabbed a black Hefty bag, sprayed it with water and wrote the words "slippery when wet" with his fingers. This is the album cover to this day.

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O álbum foi gravado em Vancouver, Canadá, onde a banda se divertiu muito num strip club que existe até hoje. Vejam um trecho da matéria que saiu na revista Playboy em 1987: “We gave Bon Jovi the best table in the house. They made this place their headquarters while they recorded Slippery When Wet,” says Eric Polson, 23, manager of Vancouver, British Columbia’s leading strip joint, the No 5 Orange Street Showroom Pub and Hotel on Main Street.

“In spring ‘86, the guys would come in every night, order hamburgers and a drink from our (insert commercial jingle here) 30 different kinds of Scotch and 60 imported beers,” Polson elaborates, proudly gesturing around the oak-and-brass-appointed night club. “We made them feel at home. The Number 5 is not like the unpleasant strip clubs you see in the States. Our strippers are recruited from the finest dancers in Canada and our clientele includes the best Vancouver business people and visiting foreign dignitaries who are in town. The girls take the stage from an elevated area that leads directly to the dressing room, so there’s a great view from everywhere in the room but normally, there’s no mixing with the customers.”

Normally?

“Well see, the girls would come out before and after their acts to hang out with Jon and the band, help them unwind.” Which is a polite way of saying that Norma-Jean, Jessey, Cybelle, Laurie, Jamie and Evelyn went out of their way in every blood-rushing sense, to help these boys reach their avowed end zone with all pistons firing. Whenever they appeared on the raised strip platform to spotlight their attributes, the darlings put an extra half-twist of zeal into their peel to please the randy rockers crawling over the front table. Afterwards, they nuzzled with the lightheaded lads over cocktails, reacquainting them with a time-honoured tenet of the rock life: What you don’t see, ask for.

If Jon and his colleagues somehow lacked imagination when it came to informal application of these girls’ vocational verve, they were suitably galvanised, Eric Polson assures, “by Evelyn and Laurie, who do the shower act.”

The shower act?

“You don’t know about the shower routine? We have a special performance every evening with Evelyn and Laurie. An illuminated glass ladder comes down from the ceiling and they ascend as our custom-built light system goes into action. The girls dance for about ten to fifteen minutes and strip completely. The girls hop in and soap up, get a nice lather going.

Jon and the band were checking all this out, having a wonderful time and they got the idea for the album from Evelyn and Laurie - slippery when wet!”

No 5 Orange @Vancouver

Back in Florida, as the 1987 Bon Jovi tour Without End bumps and grinds onward, Bon Jovi confirms, “That’s more or less how it was. We had done an old-West style album cover photo with this tough little five-year-old tomboy, who was dressed in dirty jeans and a cowboy hat. We put her in a corner with her punk-tomboy attitude and shot that for the cover, thinking we’d call the album Wanted Dead Or Alive.

We took the Polaroids of the cover back to the No. 5 Orange and I was sitting there with my drink, looking at ‘em, thinking they look too cold and stiff. And, as I’m thinking, the shower routine starts and the two girls begin dancing to a Bon Jovi song, In And Out Of Love.”

“Young and wired

Set to explode in the heat

You won’t tire

’Cause baby was born with the beat...”

“I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, just waiting for the girls to get off from work so we could all get out of there.

So I’m looking over my shoulder at the girl and I’m listening to Richie complaining about something, and then I’m watching the girl soaping herself up.

We started talking, nasty things, saying, ‘I’ll bet that’s wet! Soap it up! Slippery when wet - just like the road sign!‘

Everybody thought it would be a great album title but we wondered, How do we take this shower act and get in onto record shelves across Middle America? Big problem.”

While Jon Bon Jovi wrestled with that marketing quandry - ultimately settling for a photo of a black plastic trash bag splashed with water, the words written on it in his own fingertip script - the girls had dropped the soap, left the stage and had towelled off for a night in and/or out with the band. The after-show line-up would vary, Evelyn and Laurie sometimes going along for the ride, plus Norma-Jean, the Marilyn Monroe lookalike; Jessey, a sandy blond with a frizzle halo; Cybelle, a gorgeously ripe brunette; and Jamie who’s dark-haired and dramatically athletic; plus a few friends from the No 5‘s sister strip spa, the Marble Arch.

The entire troupe would usually gravitate to the condominium Bon Jovi had rented for the more than two months it took for the band to complete its recording at little Mountain Studios. Jon ushering the women into makeshift weight-training rooms to pump ironies until the sun came up over the surrounding mountains.

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“We’d put the girls into Jolly Jumpers,” Jon says, referring to a spring-supported exercise harness to keep tots upright while providing happy bounce-ability. “They have amazing muscle tone. It certainly was an education,” he summarises.

Quer saber como a segunda capa foi criada? Leia aqui o depoimento do fotógrafo Mark Weiss:
http://www.weissguygallery.com/press.php?page=press-OLD_BRIDGE_MOMENT

All photos by Mark Weiss