Evening Standard Review:
http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/m...-a3365966.html
Bon Jovi, review: Never mind the new album, what about the greatest hits? (Missing the point there spectacularly, Evening Standard!)
Quote:
Much has happened in the three years since Bon Jovi’s last London concert. Jon Bon Jovi’s troubled sidekick Richie Sambora fled, Jovi suffered a debilitating bout of self-doubt and, despite the group still being a stadium act, their record label lost interest.
Rather than being a conventional show, last night was billed as a “live listening party” for their 13th studio outing, This House Is Not For Sale. The album won’t be released until next month and, in what Jovi himself admitted was “a big ask”, they played it all, in order. Plus bonus tracks.
The 54-year-old singer had a point. A band with a great, 100 million-selling back catalogue playing 15 tracks unfamiliar to an audience including Matt Cardle and Blur’s Alex James made the event more an endurance test than joyful return. Even so, This House Is Not For Sale may well prove to be the finest Bon Jovi album this century. There were galloping verses and stadium-filling choruses to spare; a clone of Wanted Dead Or Alive in Scars On This Guitar and even a slinky new direction on the Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque Roller Coaster.
As rejuvenated as his suspiciously white teeth, Jovi would not mention Sambora by name and patiently explained the meaning of each song, even if his philosophy may have been purloined from a greetings card: “Life isn’t a merry-go-round, it’s a rollercoaster… you’re as much a part of this as we are.”
To reward the audience’s admirable patience, hits were unfurled in the encore, albeit only two of them.
Rousing assaults on Who Says You Can’t Go Home and Bad Medicine were greeted like manna from a more recognisable heaven and the sense of relief and release was an adrenaline shot. That, though, was that.
A big ask indeed.
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