He doesn't use any fancy visuals even on his own shows TBH.

Just a basic stage and straightforward rock n roll.

Oh Wow! Somehow I'm not too excited 'cause I'm not going, but it will be fun!
And about Bryan Adams, I guess it's okay, from what I remember of that guy his songs are kinda ballads so Bon Jovi will be a Wake Up!!!, I guess...
BUT again, all depends on the new record, they need a STRONG single...
Just saying...
Don't say no BJ concert for me this year, not going to Phil X concert either, maybe Richie Sambora needs a tour, I'm very bored...

I'm sorry, but did you watch any footage from the European tour or Rock In Rio last year? Yes, his voice is gone and will never become any better again (I've accepted this by now), but there's still one thing he has left of his past greatness as a live performer that he won't lose until he can't move around anymore. That's charisma and the capability of working a crowd.

You simply can't judge his energy on stage by watching one song (at most) per show. In Rio he moved like crazy all night jumping and running all over the place, went into the audience in front of the stage to greet the fans during LYHOM like he already did back in 2000 (no, it wasn't needed as a "schtick" to cover up his vocal shortcomings back then, but interacting with the crowd in different ways has still been an essential part of his act for about all of his career), did extended outros on BTBMB, BOR and BM, a brief jungle noise on KTF... the list is endless. His vocals were atrocious, there's no denying it, and in the encore he was barely able to get any voice out at all, but I still very much enjoyed the show with him again being the showman I grew up watching on my old Crush Tour DVD.

You don't have to be able to sing to be a great frontman. Bono (who Jon idolizes) has never been hailed as one of the greatest singers in the industry, yet he's an amazing performer and continuously hailed as so. The same with Liam Gallagher (who in my opinion could never sing his way out of a wet paper bag if his life depended on it).

I'm not sure how Jon is any different and why so many seem to think he can't do anything anymore, when at the end it's only his voice that's really gone. I enjoyed his showmanship efforts in Tallinn as well (and yes, I was there and heard every single bum note he sang), and something like Saturday Night and IBTFY from Dublin night #2 were still great to watch, as even though his vocals were still poor, the old ad-libs and improvisations were great to have back after having been absent for so long. So pardon me for defending Jon on this, but he's still a world-class frontman and has the crowd eating out of his hands every night even though he indeed can't sing worth a crap anymore. The voice undoubtedly is still a big issue as well as a very distracting one on its own if it's closely focused on, and I'm sure Jon has indeed boosted up his movement and energy (at least partly) to get the focus of the audience off it - he was moving around the stage more during the last two legs of the THINFS tour than he had probably done since 2011 -, but other aspects of showmanship and performing ability do exist equally on JBJ as they do on others, no matter how shit he's gotten as a singer. And yes, he still has them.

Amen! :cool:

I was shocked when I saw this. My key takeaways:

- Not a wise pairing from Bon Jovi's perspective. As others noted, Adams will not upstage Bon Jovi with his show or decorations, but he absolutely will with his performance. He is in a very short list of peers who still sound amazing at his age. In some ways, his voice is even stronger now and he doesn't sound like he's pushing hard and straining to reach the same notes he did in his young days. Something Jon has never learned obviously. I can definitely see the press headlines about how Bryan Adams still got it and all Jon had was his smile and stage banter. It's one thing when you have a local or unknown support act, but another when it's someone from the same era with (I would assume) at least somewhat overlapping fanbase. I'm amazed that Jon signed up for this to be exposed like that. Especially when you consider that he had no interest in having big-name support acts for most of his career even when he was still good. But hey, congrats to Americans going to those shows, that's a good value for the price of one ticket, that's for sure!

- After the initial shock, my reaction then was "well, it must be a massive stadiums tour", but then I saw that it's all in the arenas - largely, the same arenas that Bon Jovi played on their own the last tour. I don't know how the ticket sales went (relative to the actual building capacities, and not the Billboard's misleading "sold out" figures), but on the surface, it seemed well enough for them to not need a huge support act like Adams. I don't how popular he's in the US nowadays, but in Europe, Adams is still an arena act. So combining two arena acts for an arena tour does not seem like a wise business move, given how expensive he probably is to be hired as a support act.

Is it ironic that the only date NOT to feature Bryan Adams is in Canada?

At least in Canada he's still touring arenas and sheds but hasn't had much radio relevancy barring the songs classic rock stations play ad nauseum. Canada is weird in that when one of our own breaks through to success in America we kind of turn our backs on them so I don't know his relevancy in America currently.

https://youtu.be/BcxLrLf5e3w

Oh yeah, what a terrible frontman... especially near the end, he doesn't have any qualities needed for any type of a stage performer left at all, he's absolutely horrible...

Am I exaggerating on purpose? Yes. Bottom line is, sometimes it really feels like that for some of you, Jon can't do anything anymore. When he's not moving, people are complaining that him being static only highlights his poor vocals when there's nothing else to focus on. When he's moving, he's supposedly no longer a great frontman (and that was just Seb's opinion, but then again he seems to care only about Jon's vocals) and when he can't sing, he basically can't do anything else either and him moving around is suddenly just a cover-up to take the crowd's attention away from his voice - which is probably true to an extent, but let's indeed remember that he's been doing this for a long time and moving around, the different types of interaction with fans, etc. is not only what's expected from him, but by now all of this has basically become second nature for him.

In addition to him not having been able to sing for years now anyway, I was very disappointed with him as a frontman on the 2017 North American tour as well as during the two shows in Japan 2018, where he indeed was glued to the mic for (more than) half the time. That said, he seemed to flip some switch by the time they hit Brisbane and Sydney during the Australian tour following it and was suddenly very active on stage again. The sudden increase of energy continued on and on during the European tour and Jon's regained frontmanship made the Nijmegen, Dublin night #2, Düsseldorf and Rio shows last year very enjoyable in comparison to most late 2013-2018 shows. Of course his vocals were still awful, but him working the crowds like crazy and pouring every bit of energy into his performances he could manage made a huge difference. That's something I won't deny, no matter which kinds of contradictions I'll get from this post.

Aloha !

Are you annoying? Yes.

Your endless list of youTube links constantly prove my point. For every bum note he hits, he's throwing a smile. For every bum note he hits, he's waving his arm. He's painfully aware of all his shortcomings a vocalist and tries to make it up by endless arm-waving and what-not. His insecurity is painful to look at as he overcompensates while nothing comes naturally anymore. If you honestly, after the shitloads of youTube videos you've watched and posted, can't see the difference between Jon working the stage while singing compared to Jon working the stage to hide how he can't sing anymore there's really no saving.

A good frontman fronts a band and commands the stage while doing his job. That doesn't define Jon Bon Jovi anymore and anyone who says differently has to take a reality check and go watch other frontmen who move around a lot less but still draw all attention to them anyway because they're doing the 1 thing they're supposed to do just right; sing. Everyone who's saying Jon Bon Jovi is still a great frontman is essentially saying it's great to have a goalgetter who can't score a goal but at least entertains the audience by the utterly useless tricks he can pull off.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I’m in New York in April and I don’t give a crap that I’m missing this.