hard rock cachet

With a hit record, Heather Locklear in his arms, and a new house above the sea, Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora is counting the waves—and riding his own

Richie Sambora is on a roll, and he's got the fax to prove it: The happy document has just come over the transom to his new beach house, and the Bon Jovi guitarist can hardly contain himself. Island Def Jam reports that Crush, the band's first studio album in six years, has had the highest debut sales (U.S. and worldwide) in Bon Jovi's history, seizing the No. 1 pop-chart spot in nine European countries. "I don't want to jinx it," says Sambora, who co-produced the album with lead singer Jon Bon Jovi, "but 18 years into our career, it seems like we've made our best record ever."
     Sambora, looking like an overgrown teen, leans back on his sofa, bare feet propped on a table and one arm resting across the koa-wood body of a Taylor acoustic guitar made just for him. "I couldn't ever dream this big," says Richie, and he's not just talking about being part of one of the world's biggest rock acts, with sales of more than 84 million albums. He's including this—a contemporary 2,800 square-foot getaway high on a bluff in Laguna Beach, Calif., with heart-stopping, 180-degree views of an all-but-horizonless Pacific Ocean. "It's funny. I always wanted to be in the front row, and this is the front row," says Sambora. "I walked in and went, 'This is going to be ours, darling.'"
     "Darling," of course, is Heather Locklear, his wife of five and a half years and mother of their 3-year-old daughter, Ava Elizabeth, who is at preschool today. Sleeping in after a late flight the night before from Washington, D.C., Locklear emerges from the downstairs master bedroom, appallingly gorgeous without so much as a smidgen of makeup on.
     "Hey, baby," says Richie, coming over to exchange a quick kiss.

     Locklear walks toward the window to take in the day. "I'm dizzy with this view," she says. "It's like I'm on a boat." Indeed, a visitor does feel as if she's standing on the prow of a great ocean liner. After Sambora got one taste of that vista, two years of house-hunting were over. He'd been looking for a new home to replace his first Laguna Beach property, a fixer-upper he'd transformed over 10 years into a Craftsman-style bungalow. A sentimental favorite that gave Heather "the first sense of who I was," says Richie, the old house nevertheless was a holdover from his bachelor days that he had outgrown. "We love looking at houses," says Locklear. "He didn't like anything: I, on the other hand, liked 50 things." At the moment, Locklear has got a charming case of blond bedhead and is dressed in a pink tie-dye cotton slip that molds to her petite figure—which brings up the other reason Sambora liked this house: It's near a secluded cove, far from prying eye. "He would say, 'Do you see the pier over there? I don't want the paparazzi to see my wife walking around in a bathing suit!' I'm like, 'Why? I'm on TV half naked! Who cares?'" As if to prove her point, she later turns a pretend camera on Richie as she passes his door while he's changing shirts. "Click, click!" she says suggestively. Their relationship seems doting, playful and irreverent. What is she going to do when he's on tour? "Get a boyfriend," says Heather, not missing a beat. And honestly, his being away has a real upside: When he returns, she says, "It makes me go crazy over him."
     Though they bought the house almost a year ago, work kept them away. "I bought it, then three weeks later she said, 'We're moving,'" recalls Sambora. Their destination was New York, where Locklear was joining the cast of Spin City. As it turns out the timing was perfect: The band was recording Crush in Bon Jovi's home studio in New Jersey. "I would have had to commute from the West Coast to the East Coast," says Sambora. Adds Locklear: "It was such a blessing how it worked out."
     Now that the show has moved to L.A., the couple is finally getting to know their new retreat (they also have a place in Los Angeles). Amid rooms that still smell like fresh paint, dark Balinese furniture blends with Indonesian accents, Western antiques and modern pieces, all with an emphasis on unfussy luxury. "We just want it to feel like home," says Sambora, who grew up in Woodbridge, NJ. He picked up guitar at 12 and later dropped out of college to join the Bruce Foster Band; four years later he hooked up with Bon Jovi, whose hard-rock band scored a monster success with 1986's Slippery When Wet. Sambora has also done two bluesy solo albums, but don't expect him to be installing home recording equipment anytime soon: "I'm a guy who likes to get out of the house to work." Songwriting is a different story; Richie keeps several of his 120 guitars within reach should his muse pop in for a visit. "I write very simply, with a tape recorder and a guitar. Jon and I have always worked that way."
     Guitars are also handy for those special encore covers of the Barney theme song that Ava requests. He accommodates gladly, though sometimes she tells him, "Daddy, don't sing." "See, she wants to sing," he says, his face brightening. "I love being a dad—it's the sweetest thing." His daughter inspired the instrumental "Ava's Eyes," which became a hit on the New Age albums chart. "It's so inside—so, so inside," he says of the love a father feels. "I want to take a knife and fork and just eat her! ... She's a pip. And you know what's fun? You love your kid, of course, but I also like my kid. She's got a great personality."
     So what's he going to do the day Ava comes home and says, "Dad, I'm marrying a musician"? Sambora just shakes his head. "Good luck ... good luck ..." When asked the same question later, Locklear replies, "I don't have a problem with it. He might have a problem because he knows what he was like, but I'd be like, 'Great!'" Then she pauses. "What did he say?"
     As the sun nears its zenith, Richie kicks back and revels in the glory of the moment. But it's a short recharge for a man whose life must be lived, at least for now, on the run. First, he and his bandmates are taking over the back lot of Universal Studios to film the video for "Say It Isn't So," in which Matt LeBlanc, Claudia Schiffer, Emilio Estevez and Arnold Schwarzenegger are to appear. Tonight he leaves for Texas, where he and Jon will begin the next day in Austin at an early-morning radio show, then head to Dallas for a concert that night. He ticks off the list, then catches himself, "C'mon, is this so tough?" he says. After all, he's promoting something he truly cares about. "When we got together to do this record, we said, 'Let's make an uplifting pop album.' That's who we are. What have we got to complain about? We have longevity when a lot of our peers have fallen off the mountain."
     Luck may have something to do with it, but so does hard work. "You've got to show up for your life," Sambora says. "If you keep on doing it, things start to fall in your direction." He smiles, his arms crossed over his chest, and he seems to embody a line from the song "Just Older," off the new album: "Like a favorite pair of torn blue jeans/The skin I'm in is all right with me."
     "I'm going to write some pretty good songs in this place, dontcha think?" He points to an antique Indonesian teak-and-cane chaise by the window. "I'll turn that chair around, face out toward the ocean, and something good's going to come."