“We couldn’t talk at that point. We weren’t talking – we weren’t communicating.”

Image: Daniel Boczarski / Getty

Richie Sambora has clapped back at the “incongruous” way he’s depicted in the Bon Jovi documentary series Thank You, Goodnight. Speaking to Guitar Player, he discusses his two stints in rehab, after which he “went sober both times.”

He continues, “I learned a lot, and listen, I’m not bullshitting you, you can ask – I became like a counsellor to people. I was going, ‘Hold on a minute. Let’s go see where the demons are.’ I did all the work, and I actually enjoyed it. For an adult to be able to take the time to refocus his life and do that is extraordinary. The psychiatrists and everybody were wonderful. I enjoy therapy.

“That’s one of the other things that was reflected in the documentary: that people thought I was, what, a drunkard? Like I didn’t show up one day because I was high? That doesn’t make any sense to anybody. That’s an incongruency. There was obviously an amalgamation of a shitload of things over a 31-and-a-half- year period. We couldn’t talk at that point. We weren’t talking – we weren’t communicating. And I was like, ‘That means it’s stale.’”

Sambora, who left Bon Jovi in 2013, describes the band as stale in the documentary itself, too. He explains that it was his job to say so – “If anyone told Jon [Bon Jovi, frontman] the truth, it was me.”

He didn’t feel as though he was being heard when he voiced his opinions, however, with his concerns not being addressed. After leaving in 2013, he has played with the band again – at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2018 – and explained that he left to devote more time to his family, and particularly his daughter.

Last year, Sambora discussed the possibility of a Bon Jovi reunion. He said in November, “It’s just a question of when everybody’s ready to go do it. It will be a big, massive kind of undertaking.”