video: a May 2023 (!) fan-made lyrics video of Secret Dreams (1985). That’s 38 years after its release.

“Secret Dreams” is the 10th and final song on Bon Jovi’s 1985 album “7800° Fahrenheit”, and one of the three songs of the album that was never played live.

Since the 2015 album Burning Bridges, Bon Jovi hardly plays the songs live that are on their new albums, but we’re talking 1985 here!
This was only their second album, and it was a make or break one!

Or so they and everybody else in their fatalistic mind thought.
Because in retrospect Fahrenheit neither broke them, nor made them. That  honor would go to their third album, Slippery When Wet (1986).
Which in its attempt to reach for the stars, also became the (or one of the) most-sold hardrock album of the 80s, depending on the country.
Europe and Japan have traditionally loved Bon Jovi more intensely, than the USA did.

So Secret Dreams was one of the three songs of the Fahrenheit album, that was never played live. The other ones never seeing the limelight of the stage are (I don’t want to fall) To the Fire and Price of Love. This last one despite being a single in Japan, the country that has a long status of getting exclusive editions, the best performances, and also the rarest played songs;
In particular of the Fahrenheit album!

Because this was an album that was inspired by Bon Jovi’s first tour in Japan in 1984.
This is most obvious in the album’s song Tokyo Road, but also visible in their video In and Out of Love which depicts the story of being a band traveling the world and being chased around by fans. This video, and its footage, was predominantly inspired (or their confidence was!) by their success in Japan, where they now had two tours under their belt.
Even there, in Japan, where fans were hungry for every snippet Bon Jovi and at a time when they could only choose from two albums – their debut album simply called “Bon Jovi” (1984) or 1985’s successor Fahrenheit-
even there, these three songs were never played.

But if we dig a little deeper than the album’s production process, a drama-filled rush job with unsatisfactory results, we can find something these three songs, unexpectedly, have in common.

Or, as Anthony Kuzminski describes it in his indispensable article All 334 Bon Jovi Songs, Ranked Worst to Best;
“Jon Bon Jovi has never sounded as despairing as he does in Secret Dreams“

And about the second song (I don’t want to fall) To the Fire Kuzminski says:
“one-of-a-kind song that works as a prayer to an unknown power” 

And about the third never-played song Price of Love:
“A manic and unrelenting drum roll opens this spiritual sequel to Love Lies“

Three clearly deeply felt songs with Jon Bon Jovi transmuting all his pent up emotions, both from a career perspective where the band was hitting its hardest year from their entire career;
As well as on a personal level.

In the month of the release of the Fahrenheit album, Jon Bon Jovi turned only 23, but he had been as serious about his relationship to Dorothea, as he had been about music.
But the uncertainty of being a beginning band;
The unavailability of being in a touring band;
And the temptation of being the best looking frontman the 80s would bring forth, were too much for the two of them, to make it in one streak.

Ultimately Jon would marry Dorothea in 1989.
1985 would become the only year he and his future wife-to-be Dorothea were so far apart and officially split up, that we even know who he dated that year;
The actress Diane Lane.

Click this Google search for the only photoshoot the two ever gave. disclaimer: Probably will make whatever you have going on in your love life, look pale in comparison! 😅
In 2017, Diane Lane commemorated:
“every girl should have such a wonderful experience when she’s that young.”

Diane was 20, but more than her age being 3 years under Jon, it was his personality and the way he had been claiming and using every inch of opportunity coming his way -and even managed to confiscate some originally given to others- that made him the adult in this relationship.

Diane Lane was a Hollywood actress, a job that did not require and probably would never have even allowed for the strong willed, power driven, blind ambition that had been Jon Bon Jovi since he had been 16.
Even though Jon Bon Jovi was at the beginning of his career, his parents had encouraged his rock star path from his teens, allowing him to play at New Jersey’s Stone Pony, on weekdays.
And his cousin had given him a job as a gopher in a recordstudio that hosted world class stars.

The story goes it was Jon who did the actual breaking up, but that she forced his hand because she was a party girl, meaning non-committed in the relationship.
There are even accusations of her hooking up with Richie Sambora, causing the split with Jon.

But whether or not that is true, I think the deeper lying inequality came from Jon having been given free rein to pursue his biggest dreams, while she had been groomed into Hollywoods age-old solution to quiet women;
Parties, drinking and drugs.
Which acted as a double-edged sword.
First there is the fun and the substances to distract you from how you really feel about having no power and are dependent on Hollywood moguls to throw you an audition or other bone, hopefully avoiding the sexual predators;
And then what you do in those moments of oblivion and taking off the sharpest edges of your reality, become events that can harm your career and apparently even come back to haunt you 30 years after.

Just saying that I’ve never seen a couple, any couple, in the history of Hollywood, New Jersey or The Netherlands, looking more radiant and more meant for each other, than Diane Lane and Jon Bon Jovi did in 1985.
If you don’t believe me, you obviously forgot to click:
Google search for the only photoshoot the two ever gave

“The Netherlands? What does this have to do with the Netherlands?”

Well, first of all, that is where I live, but secondly because The Netherlands, was one of the countries Bon Jovi visited on their very ever first headlining tour in 1985!
The Fahrenheit tour, named after their second album.
The screenshot of the concert that I used for the picture to this blogpost, is the thumbnail from the hAnD90 upload of that concert.

The tour had two legs:
Japan and Europe, both eager to welcome the beginning band, and this time as headliners.

They played The Netherlands on Saturday May 18, 1985, at Noorderligt in Tilburg. The Netherlands is famous for its graphic designers, something which, in my opinion, shines through in what appears to be a Piet Mondriaan-inspired concert ticket.

The concert was recorded in audio as well as video, and in 2020 YouTube channel hAnD90 uploaded a remastered version.
“A must-see show for every fan of the first two records!” he writes about this beautiful recording.
From a decade few recordings were made and even less survived.

But even without watching it, you now know which three songs from these first two records will not have been played, at Tilburg, 1985: 
Fahrenheit’s Secret Dreams, (I don’t want to fall) To the Fire and Price of Love.

“Not good enough,” some may say, including Jon Bon Jovi.
But judging by their studio versions, I say these three songs were never played because they were so powerful, they ripped the beating heart right out of Jon Bon Jovi’s chest.

By 1986 Bon Jovi released their third album, Slippery When Wet. Their first single was You Give Love A Bad Name about a woman whose cruel breakup had shot Jon right through the heart.

And although the anthem was often introduced by a story of a girl he had met on the road, or a stripper he had met in Vancouver recording the album, I think we can all agree there is only one woman who we have photographic proof of, she had Jon’s heart in her palm. 
Only one woman, about whom we can logically assume, the biggest and certainly most important Bon Jovi song ever written, is about.

The relationship with Diane Lane did not survive in the form of a marriage, but it was the way she twisted Jon’s heart, after a five month “honeymoon period” so sweet, it still cracks the enamel of your teeth 39 years later;
That got him to write the song that brought him the fame and success he had been working for since those school nights spent on stage in the Stone Pony in New Jersey.

“You Give Love A Bad Name”.

The anthem of a broken heart overcome, would not just be played at every concert from 1986 and up, in the history of Bon Jovi;
It was the song that shot them to world fame.

Diane Lane had given Jon Bon Jovi, what he had always wanted.

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~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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The accompanying Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs video on the topic of 
Secret Dreams 
has been recorded will be published on my YouTube around the 7th of April 2024.

The next article in this series will appear around 9 April 2024 about:
Let it Rock
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That was it! 

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SOURCES for this series:

I
https://bjtours.jimdofree.com/the-albums/1985-7800-fahrenheit/

II
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/bon-jovi-songs-ranked/
“All 334 Bon Jovi Songs, Ranked Worst to Best”
by Anthony Kuzminski

 

 

my business since February 2023:

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DEEP CUTS

I created a list with unknown Bon Jovi tracks from the 80s and early 90s.
You can listen to those tracks here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeTTE6ZfgsIE_Qvi6Cvb5h1
Bon Jovi 1985-1995 Deep cuts and cover songs (live)

They will be included in this series Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

Bon Jovi 1984/85-1995 Deep cuts and cover songs (live):