Richie Sambora says he’ll return to Bon Jovi if Jon Bon Jovi gets his voice back: ‘I swear to God’

The guitarist, who left the band in 2013, said that "the world could use" the good energy.

Keep the faith, Bon Jovi fans. Richie Sambora has confirmed that he’d return to the legendary rock band once again under one condition. 

The musician, who abruptly left the band in 2013, revealed in a recent The Allison Hagendorf Show interview that he’d rejoin Bon Jovi once its frontman, Jon Bon Jovi, has fully recovered from his vocal cord surgery. (The “Wanted Dead or Alive” singer underwent a process called medialization to repair one of his cords, which had atrophied, in 2022.)

“The fans will just love it. It’s not finance, it has nothing to do with [that]. The world could use it,” Sambora said about returning to the band. “But, as Jon said, he’s been having problems with his voice, and now he had that operation.… It’s an iffy thing at best. I don’t know if there’s anybody that has ever had that be successful. I’m not really sure about that. And I went to his house, and we talked about it.”

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Related: Jon Bon Jovi opens up about his estrangement from former bandmate Richie Sambora

“If he gets [his voice] back, I’ll go play. I got songs. I swear to God," he continued. "It’s the honest-to-God truth.… I told everybody that I would, without a doubt, go back. The world needs it.… We need hope.”

Sambora made a recent appearance in the band’s Hulu docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, where he apologized for his sudden decision to quit the band just before they were about to play a gig in Calgary while on tour in 2013. 

During his discussion with Hagendorf, the lyricist admitted that he probably should’ve left “a couple albums before” his actual exit, adding, “I think Jon was moving into a place where he wanted to not really be a band, you know?” 

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Sambora also noted that he disagreed with “a lot of stuff” that appeared within Thank You, Goodnight and described the series as Bon Jovi’s “baby” and “perception” of the events that have unfolded over the band’s 40-year career thus far.

“I really had nothing to do with it, you know? There were some incongruencies [sic] about time periods and this and that and it continues on,” he said. “I disagree with a lot of stuff or whatever, but I’m not really shaken by it at that point. It gave me a platform to go, ‘Here’s some new music now.’ Where now it’s relevant, because I think a guy who’s been around the block like me needed a platform.” 

Although he believes the four-part documentary could have been a lot shorter.

“We could’ve cut that down to about two hours,” Sambora said. “Because, to me, the celebration would’ve been the great songs that we wrote and how we sold all those millions of records and played for people.… That celebration of those great songs that people really took into their lives, that’s what I believed the 40-year celebration would be myself, but like I said, it was his baby.” 

He later added, “There’s one thing that’s not in it, and it’s [this]: everything.”

Listen to Sambora talk about music and potentially returning to Bon Jovi in the clip above.

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