Surprisingly, the New Jersey band’s book deal isn’t for a collection of poetry entitled You Lost More Than That In My Backseat, Baby: Reflections In Verse, but a 25th-anniversary celebration that will tell “the behind-the-scenes story” of the band, and that will be released in conjunction with a documentary. Yes, Bon Jovi’s self-titled debut album came out in the wee days of 1984. Doesn’t it seem like they’ve been around longer than that? They’re a fixed object, like a star or a war memorial or something. (Plus I could have sworn that my friend had her Jon Bon Jovi poster on her wall when I was much younger.)

Anyway, for some reason this is actually the band’s second attempt at putting its history down on paper. From Publisher’s Marketplace:

Bon Jovi’s BON JOVI: When We Were Beautiful, the first official book from the band, celebrating their 25th anniversary, “an honest, unposed and unscripted portrait” promising exclusive photographs and revealing text from Jon, Richie, David and Tico themselves to tell the behind-the-scenes story, also serving as a companion to a documentary releasing at the same time, to Marta Schooler at Collins Design, for publication in October 2009.

In 2007, the group backed out on a planned book, BELIEVE, written with David Ritz, set for Flying Dolphin Press. At the time, Jon Bon Jovi said: “One of those big publishers gave us a million dollars recently to write a book about our experiences but we just gave the money right back because it’s no one’s business. They wanted the cliched story about being a rock star and I’m not going to tell them. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it just means isn’t there anything more important to talk about.”

Well, it’s about time Jon and the boys became comfortable with cliches, isn’t it?

[via RKB]