Life of Bryan rooted in classical music

Lisa Ferguson

Friday, April 20, 2001 | 11:59 a.m.

Care for a little Bach with your Bon Jovi?

David Bryan could arrange that.

Of course, he won't. At least not at Saturday's Bon Jovi concert at the MGM Grand. Bryan, a founding member of the band and its keyboard player, is a classically trained pianist who has been playing since he was a child.

In fact, it was shortly after Bryan had auditioned for a spot at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music that he received the call that Bon Jovi had landed a record deal.

Nearly 20 years and 90 million Bon Jovi albums sold later, Bryan recently released a solo disc, "Lunar Eclipse." Available on his label's website, rounder.com, it is composed entirely of instrumental tunes, save for the vocals on his "cover" of "In These Arms," a Bon Jovi single that he also co-wrote.

"I think it's a different side of me," Bryan, 39, says of his classical piano playing and the disc.

Mellisa Isenberg, a music editor with Revue magazine, a monthly arts and entertainment publication in Fairlawn, Ohio, reviewed "Lunar Eclipse."

Calling the disc "a far cry" from Bon Jovi's mega-hit '80s album "Slippery When Wet," she wrote, " 'Lunar Eclipse' is a sound that evokes calmness and even a bit of sentimentality."

Bryan, the father of three young children, says, "It's really fun to just stretch out and not have any boundaries or just try something for the craft."

He also contends that piano playing is "a dying art, where somebody can sit down at a piano and just play with no instruments or no anybody -- you're the whole band."

He says he's lucky that "my piano teacher, when I was 7 years old, showed me something that I wanted to learn. (Music is) a wonderful gift -- you can entertain people, entertain yourself, soothe your soul, find different places without even saying a word.

"That's the real fun of it. You know, I can stand up there (onstage with Bon Jovi) in front of 70,000 people and really love it and take it all in, and then I can be intimate with a piano and a couple of people in the room."

Bryan says of his solo work, "I think that's the one beauty (about) Bon Jovi that separates us from a lot of other bands is that when we stretch out and do solo projects, they're not meant to be in the same vein as the band."

He was able to bring some of his solo experiences back to the band.

"I think that just naturally happens," says Bryan, calling from the band's home state of New Jersey. "You're doing it all yourself and you're doing it in different directions, so you're growing in different ways and learning from and working with other people."

Bryan says he has no difficulty switching from the rock riffs of Bon Jovi's hits to the softer sounds he creates on the piano, and vice versa.

"I'm comfortable. Boxers or briefs, it doesn't matter," he jokes. "It's making music."

That's something he nearly lost the ability to do following "a little mishap with a circular saw" four years ago, which severely damaged his left index finger.

"My story is, I was fixing houses with Jimmy Carter for the homeless, and that's what I'm sticking to," he says. "There's no glamour in stupid mistakes."

Seriously, though, Bryan was out of commission for a year, followed by another year of rehabilitation. All's well now with the digit but, "It was pretty scary."