There are a lot of great stories about how wild Bon Jovi were back in their '80s heyday, but none of them are as weird as the one Jon Bon Jovi told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel this week.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night (April 10) to discuss his band's upcoming Hulu documentary, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, the frontman recalled a time in 1986 when he met Michael Jackson at a hotel in Tokyo, Japan during their Slippery When Wet tour.
After thinking they had made a new friend, the band started partying in the same hotel and invited The King Of Pop to join them.
"So now we think we're friends and we say, 'Come on down to our floor and you know hang out we've got the whole band here, the girls or girlfriends and all here," Bon Jovi tells Kimmel. "And unfortunately he didn't come. But he sends Bubbles the chimp as his representative."
Bubbles, a chimpanzee that Jackson adopted in the early 1980s, was a frequent companion for the superstar who travelled by his side, taking him on tour and into the studio when he recorded.
“[So] Bubbles comes down and wreaks havoc," he explains. "Bubbles parties like a rock star. [He was] jumping on the bed, putting on a show."
Bon Jovi says he doesn't know who brought the chimpanzee down to the band's hotel suite, but Bubbles arrived chomping on a cigar, much to their amusement.
"I don't remember who brought him down or if he just came down on his own with the cigar," he remembers, laughing. "Bubbles showed up, he hung hard."
The band found the chimpanzee's behaviour so wild that at one point the hotel threatened to kick them out of the building.
"[It] seemed like a lifetime," he says about how long Bubbles partied with them. "Quite a while, to the point where hotel management came and threatened to throw us out."
Elsewhere in the interview, Bon Jovi discusses how a wet garbage bag saved them from committing career suicide when they released Slippery When Wet and an early job he booked singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as R2-D2 for a Star Wars Christmas album.
You can watch the full interview below.