I had what I've been calling "the ticket of a lifetime" to last night's Bon Jovi show at Giants Stadium. I've been a Bon Jovi fan as long as I can remember. (Literally, my first ever fight over a boy was in 1986 with my friend Jill over Jon Bon Jovi. I ultimately relented and decided I preferred Richie Sambora anyway. Jill did always have better taste.) But through the years, Bon Jovi has been this kind of thread that ties things together for me. I recall my first night in my dorm freshman year at college. My roommate and I did not seem to have much in common, and we'd spent a few hours kind of awkwardly organizing our crap. Until it came out that we were both Bon Jovi fans. Then the floodgates opened, and to this day (19 years later), she's one of my best friends in the world.
Which is all to say that it's not that I think Bon Jovi makes the greatest music in the world. But rather that a lot of my very happiest memories are somehow connected with the band. If you asked five random people who know me to tell you five random things about me, I guarantee every one of them would say I'm a HUGE Bon Jovi fan, but it's not really the case. I think they make great pop rock music, and I think Jon Bon Jovi is one of the greatest showmen on earth. But my intense loyalty to them is more the result of the associations I have with them than their music specifically. At any rate, I've always told myself that someday I'd sit really close-up at one of their shows, and randomly checking Ticketmaster one night a few months ago, a 3rd row pit ticket to last night's show at Giants Stadium came up. It cost a fortune (though not as much of a fortune as I'd have expected a seat like that to cost), but my bonus at work had just paid out, and I had near killed myself for that money, so I decided I'd earned the right to have some fun with a bit of it!
I won't go on about the show because people seem either to get Bon Jovi or not. I will say that Jon's definitely gotten older. He played guitar a lot more during this show, which I interpreted as an excuse not to run around the stage as much. (The last time I saw Bon Jovi, Jon tore his achilles during the second to last song of the set. He powered through the end, but it was one of the more pathetic things I've ever watched. The worst part was at the very end when they were exiting the stage -- doing so required walking down some stairs in the middle of the stage that went beneath the drum set. Everybody kind of bunched up behind him waiting for him to go, but he physically couldn't. Ultimately the keyboardist and a roadie had to carry him down.) So yeah. He still looks great, but maybe slowed down a little.
Part two of my comment specifically about this tour is that as much as I've perhaps had a laugh at Richie Sambora's expense over the years ... my favorite was some technical difficulties in the middle of their show at Madison Square Garden a few years ago. I think the PA blew out? At any rate, they got things fixed in under 10 minutes, and on with the show. But they're always bumping right up against curfew at these shows, so I figured they'd skip the break between the end of the set and the encore to buy back some time. And it turned out I was right: Last song of the main set ends, and everybody stays put. Except for Richie, who basks in the glory of 20,000 screaming fans (as one would at the end of a set), then runs triumphantly off the stage. Jon goes to start the next song, but the drummer has realized that Richie isn't on stage, so he waves everybody off, and there's a moment of bewildered, "Where'd he go??" Ultimately, the drummer ended up having to leave the stage to retrieve him. It was a total Spinal Tap moment. (And where the hell are the band's production team and roadies during all of this??) Anyhow, though he's maybe scrambled his brains with substances over the years -- or perhaps was never too bright to begin with -- he was missed. He's not touring with the band either because of financial disputes or alcohol problems or personal problems or some other kind of problems depending on who you ask. The man's got pipes, though, and his backup vocals were sorely missed.
And I said I wouldn't say much about this show. Ha! Some very early pictures -- I haven't even scanned through them all!
