Originally Posted by Supersonic (Post 1126365)

Aloha !



Actually, it was Richie's guitarwork on Keep The Faith and Always that made me a fan and want to look for more music out there. I discovered the band because of Destination Anywhere, but became a fan because of Richie. Yes, I loved Jon's vocal delivery as well, but those are pretty much gone nowadays with the odd exception here and there. And now that I'm thinking back, yeah, once I found Stranger In This Town on a local fair and started digging into those songs I realized there was a lot more to Bon Jovi than just the songs.

While you're saying Richie's fingerprints are all over the song, I really disagree. Richie has mastered songs like I'll Be There For You, Keep The Faith and pretty much every guitar orientated song Bon Jovi has released, and without him, the songs are lacking something. I find Phil X a good guitar player, but not for a band who's got as many signature solo's like Bon Jovi has. You can't play Sweet Child O' Mine with an improvised solo, just like you can't play Keep The Faith with an improvised solo. I don't expect to hear a note for note rendition of the studio version, but I do expect to hear Bon Jovi with their signature sound. 1 member's already gone, the other's often barely capable of singing certain songs live, and now there's another member of the band down. Sorry, but that's a little too much for me.

So for me. the issue is that with every song that has a guitar solo in it I'll be thinking "nope, not as good as Richie" or something to that extent. I realize that's approaching things from a guitar players' point of view and I'm quite sure that plenty of fans don't really hear the difference, but down the line, I do, and why I don't care for solo shows of Jon playing songs with friends or whatever he surrounds himself with. Because usually whenever he plays Bon Jovi songs or songs of his own career with a bunch of different musicians they're much worse than what's on the records, no matter what rare song he'll pull out of the bag. If it's second rate; I don't want it.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Originally Posted by crashed (Post 1126368)

I love INXS but am the same - never got to see them with Michael Hutchence but saw them three or four times with JD Fortune fronting and every show was amazing.

I DO understand - Richie is as big a part of the Bon Jovi sound as Jon, Dave, Tico and Hugh - but one day (maybe it's already here) Richie may not be able to play with the band at all anymore - I'd still want to hear those songs and would go to see them played, because it's the music I love, not some idolization of any individual band member. If any of them are my heroes, then it's all of them.

Would I travel to other countries and spend as much as I do now - maybe not. I was half-considering booking Manchester as it falls on my birthday but it was hard to justify the expense of the gig before, even more so now. But for the tickets I've already got, of course I'm going. The money's spent, and I'm still pretty sure it's been spent well.

Originally Posted by linnea.cfc32_jovibandana (Post 1126381)

But I'd still rather go to a Richie solo show than a full Jovi show without Richie.. I think that says it all.

Originally Posted by crashed (Post 1126387)

I'd rather go to a Jon solo show than a Bon Jovi show without any of the full members, but don't have that choice at the moment. I believe in enjoying what you've got, not worrying about what you can't have.

Originally Posted by MrNickel (Post 1126391)

Belittling a man in front of 30,000 people isn't harmless banter. Jon acted like an ass that night and it was rather uncomfortable to watch.

Originally Posted by TwinFan (Post 1126399)

Oh you overreacters. That exchange was absolutely NOTHING! If you want evidence of Jon being a prick, there's dozens of better examples.

Originally Posted by Mysterytrain (Post 1126398)

This was my take on it, too, at least once he started talking about docking David's pay. The other thing that bothered me about this is that if you turn the situation around, I highly doubt the other band members would ever dare do something similar to Jon onstage.