As you might have
guessed from the red carpet outside and the omnipresent police officers, this
was a special occasion: opening night at the
Certainly Mr. Bon
Jovi was pleased to play the dual role of gracious
host and proud native son. Im the Jersey Devil, and this is my new
house, he said. And for more than two hours, his band played on (and on!).
By 11:07, when the time finally came for the aforementioned Wanted Dead or
Alive, it seemed that the people onstage (and maybe some of those in the
well-padded seats, emblazoned with the Devils logo) had gone from excitement to
weariness and back again.
Its
hard not to marvel at this bands career. Slippery When
Wet, Bon Jovis third album, from 1986, was
a career-making blockbuster, spawning three songs that helped define an era:
Wanted Dead or Alive, Livin on a
Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name. Then, having lit the fire,
the members of Bon Jovi merely needed to stoke it
with a new album every few years, and the occasional hit single.
One need not be a
record executive (though it probably helps) to admire Bon Jovis
unabashedly practical approach. At the turn of the century, when teen-pop was
ascendant, the band collaborated with the teen-pop mastermind Max Martin on a
bubblegum rock song, Its My Life, that soon became a worldwide
favorite. And when Who Says You Cant Go Home, a Bon Jovi song that was rerecorded as a duet with Sugarlands Jennifer Nettles, unexpectedly topped the
country chart, the band members merely shrugged and got to work on
Lost
Highway hasnt (yet) given the band another
country-radio favorite, but for now the members are part-heartedly embracing
country-rock. Thursdays set included Summertime,
a song from the new album that bears a faint resemblance to a 2005 country song
by Kenny Chesney. (Perhaps you remember it? It was
called, um, Summertime.) And the extended
band included a violinist and a pedal steel guitarist, who spent part of the
night nudging Bon Jovi away from the synth-rock sound that made it famous.
To underscore the
notion that this 10-night stand is something special, the band booked five
different opening acts, each scheduled to play two nights apiece. In that
sense, Bon Jovi was actually the second band to play
the
Halfway through
the concert, Mr. Bon Jovi announced that this
extended run was the start of a world tour. After these shows sold out, we
decided that it was time to hit the road, he said, although perhaps he was
overstating the case slightly. As of Friday afternoon, tickets to eight of the
remaining nine concerts were still available from Ticketmaster.
Still, no one can
deny that Mr. Bon Jovi remains an A-list rock star,
in
When he strains
for gravitas or, maybe, for Springsteenishness the results can be ludicrous. Exhibit A:
an overlong rendition of Blaze of Glory, Mr. Bon Jovis
half-twangy solo hit from 1990, which came lumbering
back to life just when it seemed to have finally expired. But most of the hits
work as well as ever, thanks partly to his breathy, still-boyish voice, which
always seems to be delivering the same two messages: Were gonna make it and Cmere.
For that matter,
the building put on a pretty good show, too. The sound was great, for an arena,
and the nearby train station is now the site of a continuing science
experiment. What happens when you cram a PATH train full of unabstemious
revelers and shut the doors? Preliminary results on Thursday night were
intriguing but inconclusive; expect better data by the end of hockey season.
And what can
concertgoers expect from the
But the presence
of Bon Jovi on opening night only underscored the
fact that there arent many young bands that can
reliably play rooms this big. And all night long it was possible to marvel at
the contrast between the sleek new building and the un-sleek, decidedly un-new
band onstage. Good news for developers, bad news for promoters, mixed news for