It finally was time for a proper speech from Jon, saying that they had done fan favorites on many shows, and this would be the first time they’d do the first track from the first album from the nineties, I Believe. Although it didn’t really come as a surprise for me, it was a brilliant version. I send a text message to Seem, one of my Dutch friends, and she called me back and heard the song on the phone. I’m still wondering how much that phone call will have cost me but we’ll see about that later. It really was a brilliant version with stunning vocals. This was Jon going for it. No, it wasn’t the best version I’ve heard, but the fact that they finally pulled out a rarity after such a long time slightly made up for the boring show so far. We were close to forgiving Jon the mediocre show so far, but he needed to do a little more for that. After I Believe, Who Says followed and with me and Thierry being so incredibly happy about I Believe even me and Thierry danced on this song. In a very gay way, but we thought no one noticed it anyway (how wrong we were, but more about it later). Bad Med. Followed, Prayer followed and they were off. We got together for our usual encore banter “what will they play? Well they’ve still got Something To Believe In to do” and Tom said “they won’t do it, Jon’s not up for it and only gave us I Believe to keep us happy”. We all figured he was probably right but hoped it wouldn’t be like that. I expected them to start with Something To Believe In, but they didn’t. It was Always. Well fine then, in my opinion an encore should start with a big hit, so they were off with a good song. When Wanted was next we got slightly worried that the show would be over, but luckily Sat. Night followed. Although, luckily? Jon rushed himself through the song, barely made any eye contact with the crowd, no improvisations in the middle of the song and we thought Sat. Night would be the last song. After Sat. Night the band sort of did a wave but got back together, teasing the crowd by pretending they’d be off. They got back together so we figured they would do a proper song then, but it was I Love This Town instead. Of all ****ing songs you can give your fans as an extra treat you do I Love This Town? Pathetic. After I Love This Town Jon went into Twist & Shout and by then me and Thierry were so ****ing bored that we actually wanted to leave. Out of 24 songs, only 2 songs were really worth it. I Believe and Blood Money. Twist & Shout ended the show, Jon extended the song a few times so he’d be just in time for the curfew, band did their wave and they were off.
Now before you all go like “Seb you shouldn’t complain, you’re spoiled/Seb you shouldn’t complain, you’ve seen too many shows” I’m going to explain why these 2 shows were pathetic excuses to end the tour with.
- If Frankfurt can have 5! Rare songs (Blood Money/Bed Of Roses/Lay Your Hands On Me/Damned/These Days), it shouldn’t be too hard to beat that when you’re playing 2 nights in a row in the same venue. Instead, the only real rare songs were Blood Money, Dry County, I Believe and erm… well that was it really. And that’s spread over 2 nights. It’s just pathetic.
- If you can play a spectacular show in Amsterdam when you’re on 2 hours later than you’re normally playing, if you can give the crowd various spontaneous improvisations (extended versions of Keep The Faith, Always and Sat. Night, if you can do a spontaneous improvisation by playing one of your songs for the first time there, surely you could’ve done a song or 2 spread over 2 nights that would come across as if you’re actually having fun on stage?
- When you know that you’ve sold 400 tickets on your fan club alone, you know that many fans will travel from very distance countries just to see you perform there. They know they come over to see your last show, so you can at least show some respect to them by actually putting on a great performance. I’ve seen 2 shows with a Jon Bon Jovi being on auto-pilot most of the time. That’s not paying respect to your fans, that’s disrespectful. Many fans paid well over €500,- just to be able to see you play there, and yes, it’s their choice, but is it that hard to give them a few songs back in return?
Just these 3 things made me leave with a bitter feeling, and when meeting up with several other Jovitalkers who´d seen them before this tour I wasn´t alone in this. Most of us really wanted to have a brilliant time during the show, but none of us really had it. I had most fun during Capt. Crash, and that was because I was just so bored by Bon Jovi that I decided to start fooling around instead. I´m also sure that for the casual fan or first timers this was a good show, but for the casual fan a show that would´ve lasted 1 hour and 50 minutes would´ve been brilliant as well. So this is why me and Thierry were so incredibly pissed about Bon Jovi, and it got even worse when we saw the real set.
1. ROCKIN' ALL OVER THE WORLD
2. LOST HIGHWAY
3. BORN TO BE MY BABY
4. BAD NAME
5. SUMMERTIME
6. CAPT. CRASH
7. SLEEP
8. BLAZE OF GLORY
9. ANY OTHER DAY
10. IN THESE ARMS
11. WE GOT IT GOIN' ON
12. IT'S MY LIFE
13. FAITH
14. I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU - RICHIE VOX
15. HAVE A NICE DAY
16. BED OF ROSES
17. WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T GO HOME
18. BAD MEDICINE
19. PRAYER
ENCORE:
20. ALWAYS
21. WANTED
22. SATURDAY NIGHT
23. I LOVE THIS TOWN
24. SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN
25. NEVER SAY GOODBYE
Audibles: Hey God and I Believe
So there. This was what was supposed to be played. It was supposed to be a fantastic show, but there was one guy who just couldn’t be arsed. Jon Bon Jovi. These 2 shows made me and Thierry decide that we’d never again come over to the UK during a tour as the best shows were almost every time given in Germany and Holland. Manchester was good this tour, but that’s it really. Right then, this was my review of the shows at Twickenham, I’ll now continue describing what the Jovitalk meeting what was like.
After the show I was sending a text message to Seem and while doing so I lost Thierry. It turned out that he would meet me at Gate C again, and when talking to Tom how I lost Thierry he started laughing and told me Thierry would get lost on a soccer field, which is true, I guess. He send me a text message that said “see you at Planet Hollywood” and I called him back to ask him who had my train tickets. “****, he said”. Yes ladies and gentlemen, it was Thierry who had my train tickets. I met up with Moron again and we decided to meet up with Thierry at the train station. At the train station we saw him with a girl from Belgium called Vallie, and while we sat down in the train I asked Vallie if she still hated me (just to make conversation obviously) and she got a bit shy and said “well…I never hated you…” to which Thierry replied “well now that the ice has been broken I can hear the wedding bells ring!” Nice one, Thierry. What was more interesting was that Vallie actually had a very good looking friend sitting beside her. Hmm…
When we were finally at Planet Hollywood I started chatting with Moron for a while and for a short while I thought that this Jovitalk meeting would be pretty crap with no tables to sit at. When we finally did get a table I met up with everyone. RichieW shook my hand, introduced me to his brother and Thierry introduced RichieW to Tom by saying that Richie’s the JBJ lookalike to which Tom replied, according to Thierry “No that can’t be, he’s too ugly”. Apparently that wasn’t what Tom said at all but we had a good laugh over it. Meeting everyone was really nice, we discussed Neil’s beard and how he really needed a haircut and a good shave, and had pointless debates about pretty much everything. RichieW said he had seen me and Thierry dance during Who Says, which was erm, slightly embarrassing. I really, really didn’t expect it to be this much fun, and it only got better when Vallie’s friend met up with me and just asked “So, do you still hate Belgian people?” Seriously, that was her opening line. I absolutely didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about, but apparently I had posted something like that on the Dutch board 3 years ago! I apologized (no I didn’t) but said I didn’t really hate people from Belgium (not if they had cleavage like that) and we started chatting. In fact, I chatted with her for the rest of the evening. And now we’re expecting our first Jovitalk babies! No we don’t, but it clicked very well. At 3 o clock a bell did ring though, final round which surprised me really. Here in Holland there isn’t really a curfew in the big cities and it disappointed me really. We were sort of forced to end the meeting, said goodbye to a few British people (and one yank) and decided to go off to find, maybe you guessed it, a McDonald’s. Sadly though, every ****ing McDonald’s in the centre of London had closed.