I just read today’s posts on this thread. I want to make a brief comment on set list variation (or the lack of it, to be exact).

Personally, I’ve never regarded unaltered set lists as a major problem. I saw Bon Jovi twice on the New Jersey tour. The first time was on the first European leg and the latter one was on the rebound a year later.

In 1988, the band was on fire from start to finish. There’s no denying. We got 18 songs if I remember correctly, ending with Boys Are Back In Town.

In 1989, the band was evidently somewhat exhausted from neverending touring, as later admitted on various interviews and documentaries.
There was almost no interaction between Jon & Richie anymore to be seen and Jon was clearly more static in his movements. We got only 14 songs of which 2 were performed acoustically. So there were only 12 songs with the full band. Towards the end of the set, we got 3 songs that hadn’t been performed the previous year (Love For Sale, NSG and LIS which was a current single).

It was the shortest Bon Jovi concert I’ve ever witnessed. The energy level was probably 2/3 of the previous year. Less rockers, more ballads.

Nevertheless, even with all the above mentioned shortcomings, the second leg show in 1989 was and still is my ultimate Bon Jovi concert experience. They were world weary and tired but still on the absolute top of their game. That’s the best of Jon I’ve ever seen.

So it all comes down to performance quality, if you ask me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk