Bad shows in terms of not having been able to live up to their standards of that era - yes. But I mean they've played something like 3,000 or more concerts in their career, it's only natural that they had some weak ones in there as well. They're just human beings after all and everyone has off-days. Every athlete, no matter how impressive the respective career may be, has had days where they just couldn't deliver what they usually did.
Of course there are different sides. There were shows where the band was absolutely gutted, yet fans enjoyed it and the other way around.
Dublin 1988: The fans liked it, the band was fuming backstage. Everyone argued with each other, Jon said "this was, in my opinion, the worst show!" and "if it happens again and I have a machine gun, it's loaded, so stay out of the way!"
Madrid 1996 / Padova 2001 / Washington 2006 / Pittsburgh 2017: Jon was sick and advised by the doctors not to perform, but thought he knew better. This resulted in the shows being cut radically short and him not being able to really sing the last few songs anymore.
Gelsenkirchen 2003: Jon at his peak of his "moody era". Before the show he threw a glass of water into a photographer's face for unknown reasons, during the show he didn't talk until he had to introduce Richie for his song and in the end, he went back to play All About Lovin' You with Tico and Hugh having already left the stage, David sitting behind his keyboards not knowing what to do and Richie just starting to play along somehow.
New Meadowlands Night 4 2010 / State College 2011 / Dusseldorf 2011: As good as the band was for the majority of their 2010/11 tour, they were off on those nights. Either unrehearsed after a long break (the first two) or being pissed at themselves because they couldn't get into the groove at all (Dusseldorf). I still remember Jon missing his cues on Saturday Night more and more and rolling his eyes, obviously being unhappy with himself. The whole band seemed so filled with consternation near the end of the set that it felt uncomfortable.
Hull 2006: Probaby the one really bad show. Fan boards were filled with complaints afterwards because after a few songs, Jon turned into some arrogant mode, ignoring both the rest of the band and the audience and making it clear that he absolutely didn't want to be there. To this day, it's still debated as to why that happened. Some say that the band found out about Richie's father's illness before the show, other say that the band was contractually obliged to play at Hull and Jon didn't care about doing that gig at the end of the tour.
Of course, in the long run, these are just a few. But like any other band on this planet, they've also had their nights where they were just "off" and it didn't work for whatever reasons. And in this case, "off" means bad in comparison to what they usually were able to perform on that subsequent tour.
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