Interpretation - Garageland

'Garageland' is one of over 50 songs that you can find on Bon Jovi's Box set '100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can't be wrong'. It's one of those songs that never made an official record of the band and finally got released with a lot of similar music on the set in 2004.

When you read the lyrics of 'Garageland', it's a bit like reading about Jon's youth. They tell a story of a person who plays in a band and who'd love to do nothing else than music. It's not a professional band, but more a garageband that plays music because of the fun it brings and because of the good feeling music brings to them. The narrator also says that 'Our parents all held jobs, but we had other plans, we acted like our heros, they just didn't understand' which is not right in Jon's case because his parents always supported him as much as they could, but other boys in Jon's first bands suffered under the pressure of their parents who wanted them to get a real job.

So we can say that 'Garageland' is a little bit autobiographic, but anyway it just describes the youth in New Jersey at the early 80s.

The song also tells us a lot about Jon's attitude in his early days. He always explains that he knew he would become a famous rockstar and that he worked hard for it. Two lines in this song describe exactly this: 'We were never afraid to fall, it was us and these four walls' and 'Nothing ever felt so right, just us, those guitars and a saturday night'. Another one is: 'We heard those old records and knew we belonged, when the drums hit the groove, we'd all sing along'.