In September 1987, two of the biggest acts in music were staying in the same Tokyo hotel. Michael Jackson had just opened his Bad tour in Japan. Bon Jovi had flown in from Australia on the “Slippery When Wet” tour, with five nights booked at the Nippon Budokan. Jon Bon Jovi was 25, and he knew exactly who was upstairs.
“Everybody wanted to meet Michael Jackson,” he told Jimmy Kimmel in April 2024. “So Richie and I had the opportunity to go up to his room.”
Richie was Richie Sambora, the band’s guitarist. The room they walked into was no ordinary suite. It was “all done up in mirror so he could dance,” Jon said, “and they actually took a wall out between these rooms.” Michael was in town for quite a while, and the hotel had made room for him to move.
Then Michael came in, wearing what Jon remembers as “the bullet belts across his shirt,” the buckled look of the “Bad” era. Jon told Kimmel it was all “very surreal.”
The two rockers tried to make small talk anyway. They told Michael how they’d bought wigs, mustaches and beards in Australia so they could slip out and mingle with the fans in front of their own hotel. Michael was the last man on earth who needed that tip.
“He just played along as though he’d never done any such thing,” Jon said, “to find out of course that he had done that all the time.” Listen for how Jon describes walking into that mirrored suite, and how quickly the band decided they were Michael’s new friends.
Jon Bon Jovi tells Jimmy Kimmel about meeting Michael in Tokyo
Kimmel brings up Tokyo at about 10:25, and Jon starts the story at 10:49. The wigs come up at 11:21, and the invitation to the band’s floor follows at 11:48.
By the end of the visit, the band felt like old pals with the King of Pop. So they made him an offer. “Come on down to our floor and hang out,” Jon remembers saying. “We’ve got the whole band here.”
Michael never came down. But he didn’t leave them hanging, either.
So who did Michael send?
His chimpanzee. “Unfortunately he didn’t come, but he sends Bubbles the chimp as his representative,” Jon told Kimmel.
Bubbles was 4 years old and traveling with Michael on the Japan leg of the tour. On Bon Jovi’s floor, he made himself right at home.
“Bubbles comes down and wreaks havoc. Bubbles partied like a rock star,” Jon said. The little guest was “jumping on the bed, putting on a show.” He wasn’t in any hurry to leave, either. “Bubbles showed up, man, and he hung hard.”
Kimmel asked how long the chimp stayed. “Seemed like a lifetime,” Jon said. Long enough, he added, “to the point where hotel management came and threatened to throw us out.” A rock band with a wild reputation nearly lost its rooms in Tokyo, and the party guest causing it all was Michael’s pet. Watch for Bubbles riding along as the cameras follow Michael around Japan that year.
NBC News follows Michael and Bubbles on the Bad tour in Japan
This is a fan upload of a 1987 NBC News report, about 40 seconds long. It shows the fan frenzy around Michael’s tour in Japan, and Bubbles is right there in it.
Jon’s story wraps up at about 12:54 in the Kimmel clip, with a quick update on where Bubbles lives now. He’s 43, and since 2005 he’s lived at the Center for Great Apes, a sanctuary in Wauchula, Florida, a long way from any hotel manager.