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But Jon Bon Jovi seems to have made peace with that. The rocker points out that he's been "the Tom Cruise of the music business and the Elvis Costello of the acting business."

He says he's received great reviews for his acting, mainly in small independent films, but won "zero commercial success" for those efforts. In contrast, critics don't like his music, but "the masses" do.

"Do I really want to be the Elvis Costello" or the "Cruise and Schwarzenegger" of music "and be here forever?" he asks.

Before the tour's show at Madison Square Garden, Jon Bon Jovi points out to the band and crew that the group has been together 25 years.

"We're not supposed to still be here," he says.

But as "When We Were Beautiful" shows, it hasn't been easy. The band members discuss the time they almost broke up.

"It was almost over," Torres says.

Jon Bon Jovi brought in a psychologist, Lou Cox, to help mediate the band members' differences.

Torres opens up and talks about making peace with his father, beating alcoholism and taking up art and golf instead of the bottle.

"He was a really bad drunk," Jon Bon Jovi says. "'T' was a very, mean, mean man."

Sambora talks candidly about his difficult last few years, a "dark period," when he was living through the death of his father and his well-publicized divorce from Heather Locklear. He credits Jon Bon Jovi with pulling him through that period.

For Jon Bon Jovi, there are the burdens of being away from home, Jersey, and the headaches of taking care of business.

He misses his children, and says he's selfish for touring and being away from them.

"There's four kids at home that are going, ‘Where the f--k are you?'" he says.

Jon Bon Jovi describes doing a concert to thousands of screaming fans, then going to a hotel room, ears still ringing, with no one to talk to. Your family is in another time zone, so you can't call them.

"It's a lonely existence," he says.

Jon Bon Jovi is also seen fretting over tangled plans for the band to do a free concert in Central Park, an effort that he calls a "fiasco." Blaming "lawyers," he is afraid the concert is going to have to be cancelled, and Bon Jovi will be blamed - not Mayor Bloomberg or agents or attorneys.

"No wonder why I've got a f--king headache and I'm going gray," Jon Bon Jovi says.

But the problems are resolved, because the next scene is a press conference with Bloomberg and Jon Bon Jovi announcing the free Central Park concert for July 12.

Jon Bon Jovi tells reporters it's "The perfect bookend to an incredible tour."

As the group gets ready to perform, Sambora jokingly laments that his daughter Ava (from his marriage to Locklear) won't be at his historic Central Park concert. Instead, she will be going to a Jonas Brothers concert that night,

Sambora mimics her voice, saying, "I love Nick."

The group is shown performing to a seemingly endless sea of people at Central Park,

But the documentary starts and ends with scenes of Bon Jovi getting ready for a concert at Madison Square Garden, where they sold out for two nights and ended their tour. Backstage family members — including both Sambora's mother Joan and daughter Ava, and Jon Bon Jovi's mother Carol — kick back with the band before it performs.

The group members celebrate their New Jersey roots and the bond they have.

"It comes from the way we grew up," Sambora says.

Torres similarly sums up Bon Jovi's blue-collar approach to their careers.

"We're going to fight to make it the best band, the best music and the best show possible," he says. "That's inherent in our upbringing. That's a Jersey-New York signature. You'll find it with anybody from that area."

Related:

New Jersey's band opens up at New York screening of ‘Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful' documentary

Bon Jovi set to be first band to kick off in new Meadowlands Stadium