| "Bon Jovi Displays His Garden State of Mind" |
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Giants Stadium Shows... as seen by NY Daily News
Jon Bon Jovi and his associates came to Giants Stadium Friday night for the purpose of delivering a nearly flawless doctoral thesis on the finer points of being an arena-rock god.
The shag-haired professor and his bandmates — guitarist Richie Sambora, drummer Tico Torres, keyboardist David Bryan and bassist Hugh McDonald — demonstrated a fluency with their theorems such that the soldout audience of acolytes was in a perpetual state of fist-pumping agitation.
The vast majority of the crowd, already familiar with Bon Jovi's research, was moved to sing in unison with the learned master and he did rock them to their core.
To the outsider, Bon Jovi's methods may have appeared crude and transparent, but they were executed in such a spirit of casual geniality that this observer accepted them as genuine gestures of intimacy.
Even such overworked bromides as "This is our house tonight!" and "Words cannot express how good I feel right now" came across as affectionate acknowledgments of a spiritual debt to the singer's home state.
Indeed, a Garden State working-class idealism figured large in the themes and characters of Bon Jovi's best-loved works. There was Johnny, the protagonist of "Living on a Prayer," who used to work on the docks before the union went on strike. And his lover, Gina, who works for the man and brings home her pay for love. Their struggle inhabited every note of songs such as "Keep the Faith" and "Born to Be My Baby," which validate the toil of every man and woman who ever suffered through a commute on the New Jersey Turnpike.
At other significant points, Bon Jovi demonstrated his superior system by kissing unwitting female fans on the lips and allowing their shocked surprise to register on his giant video monitors.
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Related URL: http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-07-30/New_York_Now/Music/a-119997.asp
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