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2013 has been a challenging year to Keep the Faith for Bon Jovi fans. Not only was their ‘What About Now’ CD perhaps the lamest of their career, but for undisclosed personal reasons Richie Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi’s right hand man and the band member who gives them their rock edge, missed the USA leg of the tour, then the news came that he would not be touring Europe either.
It was therefore with more trepidation and slightly less anticipation than usual that I made a trip up north with friends to catch them at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. It was still an occasion to fortify ourselves with wine and the city’s finest steaks before making the most of some rare sunshine in this part of the world.
The Stadium is magnificent and the atmosphere in a crowd with an older than expected average age was excellent, even if we had a shock that our supposedly exclusive ‘gold circle’ tickets extended almost back to the half way line.
Opener ‘That’s What The Water Made Me’ from the new album began quietly but soon picked up momentum, and any doubts that that the gig might be flatter than usual were swiftly dispelled as ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’ (always second in the set!) had the whole crowd singing along and punching the air and the pace did not flag with a run of ‘Slippery’ and ‘New Jersey’ classics – ‘Born To Be My Baby’, ‘Raise Your Hands’ which was made for stadium experiences such as this, and even ‘I’d Die for You’ with its very eighties AOR keyboards.
There was an imaginative stage set with the band playing under a giant fender of a classic American car, enhanced by clever lighting, but it struck me that a Bon Jovi show is plainer than of old. The big stage shows have gone, JBJ expounds less energy than before and his mobility is restricted by playing guitar more, and he even chats less than between songs.
Yet all that means is that the padding is stripped out and one of the best catalogues in rock is allowed to speak for itself and a 2 ¾ hour set of at least 26 songs by my reckoning was almost a definitive greatest hits.
When you stop and analyse it, the reason Bon Jovi carry off this show better than anyone is how so many of their live staples – ‘It’s My Life’, ‘Lost Highway’, ‘Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen From Mars’, ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’, ‘Who Says You Can’t Go Home’ – have vocal hooks – a ‘hey’, a’yeah’, a ‘do-do’ or an ‘all right’ - that lend themselves perfectly to a whole audience joining in.
They do not rock as hard as in their big-haired heyday, yet this was an unashamedly uptempo show with dreary ballads kept to a minimum. Moreover, despite their generic lyrics straight out of a self-help guru’s manual, the only two other new songs, ‘Because We Can’ and ‘What About Now’, were perfectly suited to the live environment.
Ok folks, now to the 64,000$ question – how badly was Richie missed? Stand-in guitarist Phil X did all that was asked of him, supported by Bobby Bandiera taking the occasional lead, and far from being overawed seemed to have a natural stage manner.
At times he even freshened the band’s sound, especially with some loose jamming with keyboardist David Bryan on ‘Keep The Faith’ (interpolated with an unnecessary snatch of Robbie Williams ‘Let Me Entertain You’).
However on songs that Richie made his own, especially in a more improvised live environment such as ‘I’ll There For You’ and ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’, his musical and visual presence was missed having been such a big part of the band.
Yet on ‘We Got it Going On’, which saw Jon go deep into the crowd between the ‘diamond’ and ‘gold’ circles, the lyric ‘Getting Down with Richie and Jon’ stayed in the set. As night began to fall, ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead’ provided the framework around which the band stretched out with covers of ‘Roadhouse Blues’ and ‘Rockin All Over the World’, before the timeless ‘Bad Medicine’ – this time sans the Shout cover – ended the main set.
Wondering which well known songs had been left out, I was mentally crossing them off as ‘In These Arms’ and an aggressive ‘Have a Nice Day’ formed part of the encores. Yet one of the pleasures of a BJ set is the chance to hear an obscure cut dusted off, and indeed the diehard fans at the front seemed to have borrowed from those of fellow Garden Stater Bruce Springsteen by holding up requests on pieces of card. On this occasion ‘Garageland’ from the rarities box set won the day.
In contrast as some scat singing from Jon led into ‘Livin on a Prayer’, an already hoarse crowd was roaring through one of rock’s most beloved songs, even if the call and response he sometimes uses was absent.
I wondered whether that would be it, but long encores are a Bon Jovi trademark and memories of mid 90′s shows at Wembley and Milton Keynes came flooding back with a double of ‘Someday I’ll be Saturday Night’ and ‘These Days’. Strangely they ended on a ballad, but it is as well to remember that ‘Always’ was their biggest UK hit and a group of girls behind me were singing as if they were enjoying the hen night of their lives.
A great solo from Phil, proving that he could improvise and recreate the studio sound, was the icing on the cake. On a night when hit followed hit, I felt like the Ferrero Rocher eating guest at the Ambassador’s reception – ‘Mr Bongiovi, with these songs, you are spoiling us’. Despite Richie’s absence, no-one still does stadium rock bigger or better than these Jersey boys.
Review by Andy Nathan
Photos by Steve Goudie
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