The man who co-wrote “Wanted Dead or Alive” was once on the run from his own band.
But in the new docuseries “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story,” which premiered on Hulu Friday, Richie Sambora apologizes for the way he abruptly left the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group — failing to show up for his plane to Calgary, Alberta, for a concert in April 2013.
“I don’t regret leaving the situation, but I regret how I did it,” Sambora, 64, says in the final of four episodes.
“I’d like to apologize fully right now to the fans, especially, and also to the guys. My feet and my spirit were just not letting me walk out the door.”
And Sambora likens his vanishing act to fleeing the mob: “I guess if you’re in the mafia, the only thing you possibly do is disappear. And, um, I did.”
Frontman Jon Bon Jovi recalls when the band’s guitarist and co-writer left them high and dry: “There is a plane on the runway, a car in the driveway and a suitcase in the trunk. Richie never makes it. And we have a show that night.”
But the show did go on that night in Calgary — as well as 80 other dates on Bon Jovi’s tour — without Sambora.
“We were quite angry and disappointed and shocked,” recalls Bon Jovi, 62. “But we’ll get through the night, and we’ll figure it out … There was no way that I wasn’t going to do it.”
Sambora — who co-wrote everything from “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer” to “Bad Medicine” and “It’s My Life” — would go on to enter rehab for alcohol abuse and exhaustion.
“What was more important was … you try to help someone, but it’s difficult,” says Tico Torres, 70. “And you love ’em. And it hurts.”
Sambora never returned to his band of Jersey brothers — eventually being replaced by current guitarist Phil X — and Bon Jovi hasn’t talked to his former sidekick about it since.
“No — not for lack of f—king trying,” he says in the doc.
“Nobody expected Richie to quit in the middle of the night,” he continues later. “But at the end of the day, that’s what makes the journey so amazing — that nobody knows where their life is gonna lead ’em.”
But Sambora — who also released a new solo single, “I Pray,” on Friday — insists, “Jon and the band knew exactly why I didn’t get on the plane that night.”
Later in the doc, Sambora explains, “It’s really, really hard to be married to four other guys and be in close quarters [with] that, coupled with my daughter coming of age. She said, ‘Yo man, you should, you know, clean your act up.’ You know, that was a big, big thing for me, ’cause she’s my kid.
“So we were going through it as a family together. 24/7, 30 years — you don’t get to come home. There’s a huge sacrifice to that. You know, I missed a lot of my daughter’s life.”
But Bon Jovi still hasn’t accepted that Sambora’s departure is permanent.
“I haven’t,” he says with a wry laugh. “Ten years later, I still haven’t.”
