The security at Twickenham was a joke. There were 2 queues for the general admission entrance at Gate C. One for people carrying bags and one for people not carrying bags. Still, if I would’ve brought a beer crate and would’ve claimed that it wasn’t a bag I would’ve gotten in without any problems. As soon as I got in Twickenham it surprised me how empty it felt. It was big, but there was not really any atmosphere at all yet. We had missed the first support act and when the second support act we felt a bit sad as we didn’t miss that one either. We started to look around for other Jovitalkers and now Kev’s favorite moment of the tour came and he met me. I met Carli, Yvonne and Deb as well, was nice meeting them and we were off looking for a good spot without a Kev hanging around us. We walked a bit to the front, got 25th row, I looked back and saw Emil at the barrier of the General Admission Area. I send him a text message about how he was probably jealous at me, showed it to Tom and he said “Have you seen the girl beside him? That’s probably his girlfriend. Who’s really jealous now, Seb?” and I told Tom to shut up. When the support act announced their last song the crowd cheered so loudly that the singer said something like “yeah **** off we’ll be gone and you can do whatever you like” after they were gone there was zero applause and people just felt relieved that they were gone. It wasn’t really music, it was just noise.

When the intro music for Bon Jovi came on at 8:20 me and Thierry realized that this was going to be a short show. There was a curfew at 10:30 so there was no way they were going to extend this show. During the intro music I realized that this stadium didn’t feel like it was anticipating a great show. It merely felt like Ostend 2003, a crowd that was just waiting for whatever was about to come. Something about it just didn’t feel right. The band came on, everyone cheered, but it felt messy. They were still picking up their guitars while David started the intro of Prayer and although it was refreshing to hear a different opener again, the magic just wasn’t there. Jon came on, did his usual stuff, delivered a proper vocal for the song, Bad Name followed, the crowd was awake, but as soon as Lost Highway followed the moment was completely lost. Right after song 2 it was just a silent crowd. Jon realized it though, and went into auto-pilot right away. He wasn’t into it at all anymore and it would take a little while before he picked it up again. During Sleep there was somebody putting up a sign for Mercy, Jon pointed at it and it looked like he was giving it a go but instead he started Twist & Shout, which was alright but didn’t really work as well as the other covers I’ve heard them do during the Sleep Medley. Start Me Up followed with Bobbies guitar still being a bit low in the mix so the intro went a bit lost. After Sleep the band were apparently about to do another cover as everyone looked a bit surprised when Jon went back to the usual “seven days of Saturday…” stuff. Sleep felt rather messy and not like it was planned.

When Blaze followed Richie messed up the slide work several times and Jon almost messed up the end chorus but managed to do it without really failing it. He didn’t look too happy during the song and when Whole Lot Of Leavin’ followed he was completely back into the auto-pilot mode. He introduced Diamond Ring as a song that was “what they’d do best” but the crowd had lost interest during `Leaving so Diamond Ring was a bit lost. It was a very good version though, better than the one in Amsterdam, mostly because of Richie delivering very, very good backing vocals. With Richie having the louder voice of the two of them, and them both singing in the same microphone it was a bit hard to hear Jon sing and Jon really needed to give his all during the song just to be able to deliver the song as well as Richie did. So there, after 9 songs there was finally a highlight during this show. We hoped things would pick up but Always followed. Normally I’d say that it’s a good thing but when Richie was doing his ending guitar solo Jon gave the band the signal to end it, Tico did but Richie didn’t notice it and by then Jon looked even more upset. The band finished the song a bit later, Richie did a good guitar solo but not as smashing as in Amsterdam, and when the song had finished and In These Arms started Jon started to walk away from Richie and didn’t look at him at all during the entire song. I don’t really think that many people noticed, but Richie did when he tried to make eye contact with Jon and Jon just looked away several times. It looked a bit forced and pathetic to be honest. Thierry said something like “I bet we get a rare song like Dry County or Hey God to make up for the shit set so far, and I thought he could be right about it.”
We Got It Goin’ On followed with Jon doing the usual banter about how he wanted to hear us scream and sure the crowd screamed and the overall performance was nice, but I just couldn’t get into the show at all anymore. Sure, it all sounded great but it lacked soul. It all felt empty, and Jon especially just looked like he couldn’t be arsed at all anymore. It’s My Life followed, more standard moves from Jon, and when he had to introduce Richie again it was the first time he gave Richie a look anyway. Richie’s version of There For You was pretty good again. Jon came back on and Dry County started. This was the first time I heard the song again after hearing it in Dusseldorf back in 2006 when it finally made its return to the set. And I’ll probably get a lot of shit over saying this, but the song didn’t do anything for me. And that’s not because I’m spoiled, I really love the song, but tonight the magic just wasn’t there. It felt like a compensation from Jon. Like “I give ‘em this song so I can satisfy the die hards” and it just doesn’t work like this. The overall performance was so much better compared to Dusseldorf, where Jon messed up the words several times, Richie was too drunk to realize what he was playing, but the atmosphere in the pit back in 2006 was so much better. Note for note the guitar solo was perfect, but the amazing feeling of getting the song just didn’t occur. Jon was good on it, but again, looked like he didn’t want to do the song at all.

Have A Nice Day, Keep The Faith and Who Says You Can’t Go Home were all as standard as could be, they’re just not worth mentioning anymore, nothing special happened during the song, but during Bad Medicine I had some fun. Right in front of me there was this blonde girl with big boobs who was dancing all the time, and Thierry got that look in his eyes saying “Oh **** Seb, you’re not going to do anything silly, right?”. When Shout came on she started jumping and while laughing at Thierry and Tom, I was staring at her tits bouncing all over the place. Tom and Thierry were laughing too, but not because I was staring at her tits, but because the girl was there with her mum, and her mum was laughing at me. Whoops. I obviously made a picture of it though, which I will now share with you. And no, she didn’t mind, just in case anyone’s wondering:



After Shout the band were off. Hmmm. During the encore break the crew put some lyric sheets on stage so we were hoping for something special, but it turned out to be Hallelujah. You’d expect Jon to know the lyrics of that song by now but seeing as he still needs lyric sheets for Mercy as well it didn’t really come as a surprise after all. Hallelujah was good, but the crowd didn’t really know what to think of it. Richie wasn’t on stage during the song at all, and when he came back with the double neck for Wanted we knew the show would be over, and we were all pretty pissed off about it. When he house lights did go on we just felt so disappointed by this performance. On paper the set looks pretty good, but the delivery of the band was so disappointing. I didn’t think I’d ever say this but Gelsenkirchen was a better show, just because Jon was excited during the first half of the show, and because it did have a better encore. After the show we felt tired, and although we wanted to go to the first Jovitalk meeting we Thierry was so incredibly pissed off by this performance and the fact that he was walking like a cripple duck again that I decided to go back to our pub instead. Thierry got even more pissed when we couldn’t find out how the bus connections worked and wanted to take a cab instead so I wished him good luck with that because there was no way I was going to pay for that. For a very short while it wasn’t really fun hanging out with Thierry and I think it’s a good thing that we’ve read each other’s manual very carefully or things could’ve gone terribly wrong right there. I let Thierry just rant on, tried to find out how to get back to our pub and I was actually still pretty happy despite the show. Thierry’s mood was completely the opposite of mine, so it was time for us to go to sleep. So sorry we missed the after party, but Thierry needed his sleep. We got in a night bus, made it to our pub but I’d gotten a bit hungry, and how lucky I was! McDonalds. Open 24h per day. So I got myself some nuggets and French fries, ate them in our hotel room (that smelled like McDonalds shortly after my dinner) and went to bed at 3 in the morning, but still kept on going on with our pointless banter. There were some serious deep discussions in bed, and the best one was when I asked Thierry how long it should take before you’d start having sex without a condom. He replied “Right away. Sex with a condom is like eating a burger with the plastic still wrapped round it”. Brilliant. End of day 2.