Psst: Slippery when icy

By Jon Bream, Star Tribune

Last update: November 11, 2009 - 3:30 PM

HAIR BAND ON THE PRAIRIE

"It's cold in Minnesota. It's February 2007, a drafty hotel room, a tour-weary rock star and a somewhat juvenile British photographer. The guy behind the lens just wants to take a portrait."

Thus begins Phil Griffin's "Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful" (Collins, $30), an official book about New Jersey's second most-famous band, published last week. The 192-page coffee-table book is mostly a photo book but Griffin also adds what he calls "conversations" with the four current band members and their associates.

This book is essentially a companion to Griffin's 2009 Bon Jovi documentary, "When We Were Beautiful," which was recently shown on Showtime. Although there are a fair number of older photos of Bon Jovi when they were a big-hair, trenchcoat-wearing band, most of the book is devoted to fairly recent photos. And many of them were taken at the Xcel Energy Center in March 2008.

Here's the guys signing posters backstage, passing out hard-earned Bon Jovi pendants to longtime crew members, waving goodnight to the fans at the X. There's Jon Bon Jovi onstage, beaming that Pepsodent smile with his acoustic guitar. There he is offstage, looking pensive with his acoustic guitar.

There might be as many photos from Minnesota as there are from Jersey. But this band-authorized book is about Bon Jovi and their life on the road -- not about their wives and kids in Jersey.

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