Jon Bon Jovi Says Richie Sambora ‘Quit – He’s Gone’
It's been more than a year since we heard anything about Richie Sambora's split from Bon Jovi. After a relatively busy 2013 of he-said-he-said back and forth between the guitarist and frontman Jon Bon Jovi, not much was said about the incident over the past 12 months.
But in a new interview with Showbiz 411, Bon Jovi said that Sambora "quit -- he’s gone." That doesn't mean the two longtime friends aren't still buddies, at least in some sense of the word. "No hard feelings," he said. "Being in a band isn’t a life sentence."
Problems started in April 2013, when it was announced that Sambora wouldn't be part of the band's upcoming tour. For the next several months, rumors flew: Sambora was fired, Sambora quit, Sambora still hadn't gotten over Jon's starring role in 1996's 'The Leading Man' (we made that one up, but would you blame him?).
In November of last year, Sambora said that he quit the group to spend more time with his family. “I just started spending time with my kid between [tour] legs, and my spirit wouldn’t pull myself out of the door,” he said. “I just needed to be home ... I think people don’t understand exactly what that means. You don’t get to come home. There’s a huge sacrifice in that. I missed a lot of my daughter’s life.”
A guitar player wasn't the only loss in Jon's life recently. In the same new interview, he discusses how he lost out on owning the Buffalo Bills. The incident -- which included football fans who were roundly opposed to the sale -- left him depressed, he admitted. "I devoted two years to that project," he said. "But I’m coming out of it now."