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Famously, in August 2020, Bon Jovi were the last band to play the ‘old’ Wembley Stadium, the one which hosted Live Aid, the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final, and every global superstar from Bruce Springsteen to Madonna in the 1980s. But when Jon Bon Jovi returned to England’s national stadium in the summer of 2019, it seemed highly likely that the next much-loved institution soon set to crumble into dust would be his band. That night, the New Jersey hard rockers didn’t sound great at all, the problem, sad to say, very obviously being their frontman’s voice. And although it clearly stung when I told him so to his face five years later, the superstar singer took the criticism with commendable good grace.
“Yes, it wasn’t like it was in 2000 or 1995,” he admitted. “Or any of the other times I played in that building. I knew that. I won’t argue with you.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with,” he said, looking genuinely upset. “Imagine knowing it’s not working right, and you can’t figure out why. It was tough… It was fucking tough.”
Tonight though, that gleaming million dollar smile is back on Jon Bon Jovi’s face, and it’d take a heart of stone not to feel pleased for the man. Not least when, in an acknowledgement of the fans who stood loyally behind him while he recovered from major vocal chord surgery in 2022, his band open the first of their three sold-out shows back at the national stadium with a powerful cover of Lennon and McCartney’sWith a Little Help From My Friends.
By his own admission, Jon Bon Jovi is feeling “caffeinated” tonight and looks like a man who’s shifted a huge weight off his shoulders. At one point, he tells the 90,000-strong crowd he’s going to take us back to 1986 song-wise, and jokes that his “pants are a little tighter” than then. But if he wanted to guarantee a home run tonight, JBJ could have absolutely stacked his band’s setlist on their first stadium run in seven years with selections from Slippery When Wet and New Jersey, and to his credit, he doesn’t take that easy option. Granted there are seven songs from that era written in black type on the 22-song setlist at his feet, but the multi-generational crowd also get songs from five of the ten albums the band have released this century. And if its true that, say, Legendary isn’t met with the same whoops of joy as You Give Love A Bad Name, then neither is it a cue for thousands to hit the bars.
If tonight isn’t peak Bon Jovi, its still a brilliantly-staged, slickly produced, state-of-the-art stadium rock show, delivered by a band in full control. It’s hard not to escape the feeling that Jon Bon Jovi needed this tour, that he felt that he had something to prove tonight, and was seeking some personal validation and redemption. Well, he got it, and when 90,000 voices help him over the finish line on Always, it’s clearly an emotional moment for the man. Don’t imagine that all superstar rockers are happy to dial in mediocre performances as they hit the twilight of their career, this still means something to Jon Bon Jovi, and tonight, it’s only the demons of the past which feel irrelevant.
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