Rock of ages

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2010 (5561 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The concert industry is facing a bummer of a summer.

With cancelled tours, scrapped shows and low ticket sales, the 2010 summer concert season in North America will go down as the summer of slumps.

Lilith Fair, the Eagles, Rihanna, the Jonas Brothers, Christina Aguilera and the American Idol finalists are just a few tours that have had to cancel or retool shows, while U2 and Simon and Garfunkel have scratched some or all of their 2010 dates due to illnesses.

Yet, with the exception of offering ticket discounts, Bon Jovi has bucked the trend and is on the road with a full-production stadium tour that will visit Canada, Japan, Australia, the United States and Brazil before the year is done.

Not even a torn calf muscle suffered by frontman Jon Bon Jovi at a concert in their home state of New Jersey last weekend will prevent the pop-rock group from making all its commitments, including tonight’s show at Canad Inns Stadium with Kid Rock and contest winner Sierra Noble.

So why is the band going bigger when most bands are going home?

"Because we can," Bon Jovi says during a recent interview. "We wouldn’t be doing this if we couldn’t — we have been awfully busy in this decade. And some of it had to do with circumstances. The Circle was like that. We were going to do a greatest-hits record and we wrote all these songs, then the choice was: should or shouldn’t we go out and support it."

The choice to promote it appears to have been a good one. The band just wrapped up a 12-show residency at London’s O2 Arena, where they played to more than 175,000 people, and scored four sold-out shows at the New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey.

It was during the final show of the four-night stand that the crowd-pleasing Bon Jovi was injured and had to be helped off stage by his bandmates — after finishing the concert, of course. No shows are being cancelled because of the mishap, but the vocalist might be moving a little slower tonight.

"My calf muscle just blew out. Whoa!" he said from the stage, according to the Associated Press. "I got another leg. I don’t need this one.

"Don’t you worry, folks, I ain’t got nowhere to go. I’m old. What can I tell you? But I’m still good-lookin’!"

Cocky? Perhaps, but also accurate, since it’s clear there are thousands upon thousands of fans still drawn to the 48-year-old — for both his attractiveness and his music.

The band — Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora, drummer Tico Torres, keyboardist David Bryan and bassist Hugh McDonald (who replaced Alec John Such in 1994) — released their self-titled debut album in 1984 and have gone on to become one of the most popular bands in the world with album sales of over 100 million. They have remained a solid concert draw since their 1986 breakthrough album, Slippery When Wet, which sold over 12 million copies in North America on the strength of singles You Give Love a Bad Name, Wanted Dead or Alive and Livin’ on a Prayer.

"Obviously the songs resonated with the people that heard them when they were young, and they like the new songs, too," Bon Jovi says over the phone. "Now I’m 48 with 12, 13 albums and there’s two generations of people that come. It’s cool. It’s not the kind of people that are just young, attractive and trendy — it’s everybody from all walks of life and it’s really pretty cool."

Bon Jovi believes one of the keys to the band’s success has been the fact they have never attempted to jump on any cause or trend, no matter what came along. Since forming as a hard rock/pop-metal band in the early SSRq80s, they have witnessed every musical flavour of the month, from grunge to rap-metal, come and go, while they have stayed nearly the same, offering up catchy, anthemic pop-rock with a socially conscious edge.

The doubters should take note: Bon Jovi and Sambora were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame last year.

"This is us," he says. "This is what we do. I never tried to be a rapper or a grunge guy or learn how to dance. This is how we sound and this is how we look and these are our songs."

Even their country album, Lost Highway, was basically just a Bon Jovi album with fiddles.

"At the time we were moved to write that album, I was finding more on country radio than on pop radio," he recalls. "We went to Nashville with a blank notebook and a desire that it should sound like it would fit on country radio… like Keith Urban, Sugarland and Kenny Chesney. Fun. Obviously it worked.

"When I went out there and played Hank Senior, the audience went, ‘Oh no, go the other way.’ They allow you to have your indulgences, but they want you to use those Marshalls on the stage."

The Marshall amps on stage for this tour are getting quite the workout. During their London residency the band prepared to play 72 different tunes from their songbook, allowing for a different show every night.

"When we started to achieve those numbers and they were going higher and higher, it got to be a challenge. Once we got up there, I wanted to do more. I wanted to do 70," Bon Jovi says.

If any themes stick out as the band looks back over the years, it’s one of realism, he says, from a song like Runaway, which deals with a street kid, to the couple in Living on a Prayer and on to the blue-collar anthem We Weren’t Born to Follow from The Circle, which was provoked by the economic downturn and the election of Barack Obama.

The new album wasn’t even planned; it just happened, he says.

The group was supposed to write a couple of songs for a greatest-hits album and take some time off; instead inspiration struck and along came The Circle.

"A record executive said to me, ‘I find that if an artist holds songs, they aren’t timely anymore,’ and that’s true," Bon Jovi says.

"The truth is, I’m much more concerned writing tomorrow’s songs than rewriting yesterday’s. You’re never going to be talking to me on the reunion tour or the comeback nostalgia tour.

"The fat Elvis ain’t gonna happen."

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca