BY CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
Beacon Journal staff writer

A few months back, Rage Against the Machine made a video for the song Testify, which was nicely timed with the 2000 election.

Testify was really more a political editorial than a piece of entertainment: It was mostly a collection of clips of Al Gore and George W. Bush making identical statements about identical issues.

What it tried to show was that two men -- who had undoubtedly spent their youth as polar political opposites -- had slowly merged into the same person. As they grew older, their differences were swallowed by their similarities.

Time has a way of doing that.

Case in point: U2 and Bon Jovi, two bands that once seemed to have nothing in common and have now become virtually interchangeable. Both are radio bands that no longer appeal to the teen audiences that drive TRL (Total Request Live), yet both have sold loads of tickets this week at Gund Arena (and both to the kind of fan who now owns a house and two cars).

One group is led by a 39-year-old who drove girls crazy before he cut his hair; the other is led by a 40-year-old singer who tried to change the world before chopping off his. If you go to U2 tonight, you will know most of the songs and be impressed by the showmanship. The same thing will happen if you see Bon Jovi on Saturday. Trying to contrast and compare U2 and Bon Jovi would have been a far easier task 15 years ago, when the two rock juggernauts had less in common than arsenic and Pepsi. That was 1986, and Bon Jovi had just released Slippery When Wet. That record sold 12 million copies; according to SoundScan, it still sold about 4,000 records last week. It remains the best-selling album of its era that was purely pop metal (purely meaning that there was nothing edgy or sinister about any song on the entire opus. For all practical purposes, it was a collection of 10 prom songs).

Meanwhile, the 1986 version of U2 was waging a war against everything it saw wrong with society, half of which was either lost on its audience or too overt to be transcendent. But the quartet was also on the cusp of releasing The Joshua Tree and becoming the most important band of its generation, at least to prototypical rock purists.

U2 was pretty serious; Bon Jovi was seriously pretty. And the only people who cared about both were people who owned record stores (most of whom played U2 during business hours while quietly praying that Bon Jovi would hurry up and release New Jersey).

So how did this occur? How did two groups from two different continents representing two diametrically opposing views on rock 'n' roll end up exactly the same? Why did this happen?

Maybe because they were never that different to begin with.

Bipolar originality

The geographic connection between Dublin, Ireland, and Sayreville, N.J., is (at best) weak and (at worst) nonexistent. The only connection you can draw is self-reflexive: Each town produced a major '80s rock band. But the forces that made that happen share the commonality of detachment; both U2 and Bon Jovi were founded on the idea that something important was happening somewhere else. It has been well-noted that U2 started as a punk band, forming in 1979 and drawing inspiration from London-based groups like the Clash. Vocalist Bono and guitarist The Edge saw London as the catalyst for a new way of using rock music -- it could simultaneously destroy the past and change the future. And it was deeply earnest about the significance of this venture. Rumors continue to persist that U2 almost broke up before it got famous for religious reasons. At least among its band members, there was no question about how important the music of U2 was intended to be.

Meanwhile, things were different for wide-eyed John Francis Bongiovi Jr. -- but different in a strangely similar way. As a teen-ager sweeping floors at the Power Station (a legendary New York recording studio owned by his cousin), Bongiovi's initial hero was Bruce Springsteen, a fellow from his own Jersey backyard. But his taste in entertainment was actually more in line with groups like Kiss (a band Bon Jovi eventually opened for). What Bongiovi envisioned was a synthesis of Springsteen and Paul Stanley: sincere, working-class showmanship on the largest possible scale. And this is what Bon Jovi was destined to become.

On the surface, those origins probably seem antithetical (one assumes Bono never owned Kiss' Alive!). But the end result was ultimately the same. U2 took its name to represent the words ``you too,'' implying that everyone could participate in its music; U2 was literally populist. Bon Jovi's goal was to package personal music into a medium that everyone on the planet could experience together; Bon Jovi was actively populist. And those are the two motivations that made rock in the 1980s happen.

Symmetrical evolution

What might be most interesting about the Bon Jovi/U2 relationship is how they both made a conscious decision to switch their artistic philosophies 180 degrees -- and almost at the exact same time. When U2 was founded, the goal was to be a band. That was part of the punk idealogy. The mission is supposed to be about the music, and all the involved individuals are equal. Bon Jovi was completely the opposite. When Jon Bon Jovi made the song Runaway, he was the only guy in the band. The track was performed by studio musicians, and the ultimate group was put together to serve as Jon's supporting cast. He wasn't the breakout personality -- he was the pre-ordained superstar.

And people were supposed to understand this.

However, you can't control how audiences respond to art (no matter how hard you try). Despite critical contribution from The Edge (among others), Bono slowly became the face of U2. To many casual fans, he singularly represents the entire band. Paradoxically, the opposite phenomenon has happened to Bon Jovi. Even though Jon has found some success as a solo artist, the general perception is that Bon Jovi is an insular, tight-knit unit (on VH1's Behind the Music, the bands' inner circle was sometimes referred to as ``The Jersey Mafia''). Right now, Richie Sambora probably has the same amount of name recognition as The Edge.

But that's not the most telling evolution.

What really illustrates the understated similarity between U2 and Bon Jovi is the way they tried to become each other.

People who saw U2 play Cleveland's Agora on the early '80s Boy tour describe a show that personified all the things rock purists lionize: visceral energy, guileless intimacy, and the adamant message that the guys in U2 understood how you felt. Anybody who watched the 1988 performance video for Bon Jovi's Lay Your Hands On Me knows those things had nothing to do with their iconography. Bon Jovi concerts were bigger than life. If you knew anybody who resembled Jon Bon Jovi, you knew somebody famous. Normal people did not look like that.

However, this would not always be the case. In 1997, U2 put on a massive (some might say overindulgent) stadium tour that featured a gigantic lemon. This was the ultimate extension of the band's decision to become ``rock stars,'' which they obviously already were. The difference is that suddenly Bono wanted to act famous and embrace decadence on purpose, claiming that this was somehow ``ironic.''

Meanwhile, things weren't as flush for Bon Jovi in '97 (at least not in the U.S.), so it was acting like U2: normal haircuts, smaller venues and a sudden emphasis on the merits of the music. All of a sudden, Jon Bon Jovi wanted to be just another guy in a band, implying that this had always been the case.

On the surface, it might look as if both Bono and Bon Jovi were lying (one out of hypocrisy, the other out of necessity). But that's shortsighted. The fact is that U2 and Bon Jovi are more alike than different, but for all the best reasons.

Regardless of how the media want to perceive them, these are both major rock bands that affect massive numbers of people in a uniquely personal way. Though their motivations seem radically different, the result is pretty much the same: U2 can think big but seem small, and Bon Jovi can seem small but project big. And vice versa.

Maybe you love one of these groups, and maybe you hate the other . . . but the reasons behind both of those emotions are probably more similar than you'd like to admit. But don't worry -- the bands would understand.