20 February 2008
Bon Jovi Promises Surprises On Tour

After decades of playing music, Bon Jovi drummer Tico Torres still has a smile on his face when his band hits the stage.

"Twenty-five years on the road and 40 years of music. It's the best thing I've ever done in my life," Torres said last week during a teleconference call.

"I feel like I'm a kid up there playing. I'm blessed to have a profession that feels like fun. The traveling and everything else can get you down. Being away from the family is the worst part. The actual playing is spiritual and I'm just enjoying my life. That's why I have such a good time playing."

Torres, singer Jon Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora and keyboardist David Bryan are looking at touring through July in support of their latest album, the country-tinged "Lost Highway." Before the tour's Monday (2/1 launch, the band was reluctant to reveal anything about the show.

"It's going to involve a lot of media and a lot of visuals," Bryan said during the same conference call. "But it's a surprise. We can't tell you too much. It has pretty amazing screens and the stage is just awesome. It's probably the best stage we've ever had."

Sambora, also on the conference call, was a little more specific about the show without giving away too many details.

"We have a bunch of HD screens that morph into different things," Sambora said. "It's going to be a spectacle and feature things people have never seen before. We're very, very excited about it. From what we know after 25 years of experience, it looks like a 'Holy cow' moment. People are going to walk away going, 'Wow. This is really cool.'"

Bon Jovi hoped fans would have the same reaction to its 10th studio album, "Lost Highway." It worked. The million-selling album debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 album chart. Torres explained that the record came about through various visits to Nashville.

"We kind of did it as an experiment and it turned into a real record," Torres said. "Everybody seemed to like it, as well as ourselves. It was something that happened at the time. I don't think it's a genre that we'll follow.

"However, to have the success it did kind of [caught] us by surprise. We've been going to Nashville on and off individually and as a group for 17, 18 years. It rubs off. It was a nice adventure for us to do that."

This "adventure" spread through the Nashville community, bringing on board new fans young and old.

"The great thing about Bon Jovi fans now, there's multigenerational fans that we do have at this point," Sambora said. "I think there's probably three generations of Bon Jovi fans. We've been around for almost three decades now. There's kids who think we're a new band. They've been following us for maybe two or three records. Then there's people who have been there since the inception."

Bon Jovi's set list includes a retrospective of songs--some hits, some album cuts. Bryan said shows will run about two-and-a-half hours.

"We probably have 100 songs to choose from that the band has learned and rehearsed and ready to go," Bryan said. "We're not a scripted act, if you will. You know, it's not a dance act where everything is coordinated.

"Jon will be up on stage and he'll turn around say, 'OK. I want 'Joey.' And we'll turn around and play that. And that's an album cut and so we have a lot of that going on. It's very spontaneous when we get up on stage."

Torres calls his band a "brotherhood," and that bond was especially important when Sambora was admitted to a Utah rehab facility for addiction treatment. This followed his divorce from actress Heather Locklear and subsequent child custody battle. His father was also dying from lung cancer.

"Obviously, just because you're a rock 'n' roll star, it doesn't make you exempt from any of life's tragedies," Sambora said. "I had a couple of them kind of mount up on me a bit. But, the band is obviously a great, great aid in pulling me up and helping me out of those situations. Obviously, my mom and friends were too. Also the band and also the fans and the work. A week after I got out of detox and stopped all that stuff, I went right back to work. We just started touring and promotion on the 'Lost Highway' album. Between the band and the fans and my faith, I got through it."

Source: LiveDaily