Tour Statistic & Summary
Tourname: One Wild Night Tour
Legs: 4
Shows: 54
Canceled: -
The One Wild Night tour was some sort of extension of their 2000 concert run and probably done to capitalize on the success of their comeback album Crush the previous year.
So all the places (Japan, Europe, USA) that had been visited for Crush just a few months prior made the tour calendar again for the One Wild Night tour.
Spontaneously, while already having been on their way to Japan, the band stopped in Melbourne for a concert to support farmer’s that had been flood-stricken. During the encore, Bon Jovi jammed for a few songs with local hero Jimmy Barnes, whom they had been friends with since the late 80’s, on stage and the concert grossed around $850,000.
Only four days later, they kicked off their Japanese leg of the tour in Yokohama. It was to be one of the most special shows of the tour: In Japan, One Wild Night wasn’t released, but a compilation album (of non-live cuts) called Tokyo Road got published instead. The release date coincided with the concert and Bon Jovi played the full tracklist as on the album which lead to songs like Hey God, Tokyo Road, Something For The Pain and electric version of Runaway (very rare in 200/01) entering the setlist.
After five shows in Japan, they returned to playing a month-full of US arena dates two weeks later. By that time, it became obvious that the band had started to drop cuts from the Crush album. Say It Isn’t So, Two Story Town and Mystery Train were only played less than a handful of times. However, fans were treated to a few rarities as well. The opening night in Phoenix was to have the only electric Something To Believe In performance in North America between 1995 and 2011. Furthermore, Wild Is The Wind got played a few times and even Homebound Train made a comeback – for the only time since the New Jersey tour and most likely for the last time with Jon on vocals. It was to return again in 2010, then being sung by Richie though.
Their return to Europe also marked the point where Raise Your Hands steadily came back to the setlists, something that (bar the odd exception) hadn’t been the case since the Slippery When Wet tour. It has remained more or less a regular ever since. At the second show in Werchter, the PA system blew out multiple times, ultimately being gone for good during the encore with I’ll Be There For You. The band directed the crowd to “sing it out” and then left the stage. Ever since the US leg, Jon (who had undergone surgery the previous year) seemed to be hindered by knee problems and it appeared to affect him at the start of this leg as well. However, after a few shows, he seemingly regained his fitness and the shows ramped up with outstanding shows in Dublin, Cardiff and Cologne. The final show in Munich turned out to be legendary and was in fact the start of the “Munich-myth”: While the band was playing Something To Believe In, a giant thunderstorm erupted behind the stage and when the rain drops started to fall, Jon and Richie looked up to the sky with big grins on their face. The rain started to pour for the remainder of the night with Jon, obviously being fueled by that and the loud audience, carrying the show on to a total of four encores.
For this leg, the band had taken Southside Johnny, a big idol of Jon’s youth, with them as a support act. While they obviously are quite successful in the East Coast area of the US and undoubtedly a very good bar band, they seemed to fall flat with European audiences in stadiums which often lead to Jon joining them at the end of their set to get the overall atmosphere up again before going on with “his” band.
The tour wrapped up with a string of outdoor shows across the US, mostly in amphitheaters. It culminated in the band’s big-celebrated return to Giants Stadium, a place they hadn’t played since 1989. Not only did they sell it out twice this time and got it filmed for a TV broadcast, diehards were also treated to a special surprise when Alec John Such joined the band in Camden and at the final night in Giants Stadium to perform Wanted Dead Or Alive with them.
Interesting about the setlist structure of this tour was that the combo Tequila / Twist & Shout closed many shows which usually made for a good, easy-going party atmosphere, but which also was seen by many fans as a wasted opportunity to have played some own rare material. Tequila remained an exclusive cover in 2001, as were the one-off acoustic rendition of U2’s hit One and Springsteen’s Pink Cadillac. While quite a few covers got played throughout 2001, ironically both tracks that had ended up on One Wild Night, Rockin’ In The Free World and I Don’t Like Mondays, never made it onto any setlist that year.
Song statistic
The shows had songs from 10 different albums (incuding Jon's solo album Blaze Of Glory and Richie's solo album Stranger In This Town).
No album had been ignored although from 7800° Fahrenheit only Tokyo Road got played once and Runaway from their first album only twice.
You Give Love A Bad Name, Bad Medicine, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, One Wild Night, It's My Life and Just Older were played at every show.
Livin' On A Prayer, Wanted Dead Or Alive and Born To Be My Baby were only dropped once.
The rare songs of the tour were Tokyo Road, Living In Sin, Something For The Pain and Two Story Town with only one performance followed by Runaway (2),
Homebound Train (2), Thank You For Loving Me (2), Mystery Train (2), Never Say Goodbye (3), Hey God (3) and These Days (3).
(Click on the images to enlarge them)
