Tour Statistic & Summary
Tourname: Bounce Tour
Legs: 5
Shows: 83
Canceled: -
The band’s Bounce tour these days is remembered for its variety – not in terms of setlists, but in terms of Jon’s voice. When they started to hit the road in the autumn of 2002 for the promotion cycle, people were thrilled by the energy the band put into their performances and Jon’s seemingly improved voice. Most notable for that era were probably the band’s NFL season kick-off concert at Times Square in New York with an estimated attendance of 100,000 people in the streets surrounding the location and their concert at Shepherds Bush Empire in London which is still regarded as probably their best promo gig due to the electric atmosphere and the high energy coming from the band.
After three shows at festivals in Australia which were regarded as the tour start in December 2002, the “real” tour kicked off in January of 2003 in Japan. Setlists were still quite varying at that time with them obviously still looking for the right flow and order of the songs. With performances of songs like I Believe and Wild Is The Wind, the Japanese audience was treated to some of the biggest rarities of the tour. As it often happened when the band played there, some members (including Jon) had caught a cold and therefore the special acoustic concert in Yokohama, which was originally meant to be recorded and released, turned out not to live up to their standards. However, a few tracks got published afterwards via internet and on Bonus DVDs.
From February to April 2003, Bon Jovi toured the states, playing 38 arena shows in 9 weeks. In hindsight, this can be regarded as the essential part of the Bounce tour since these concerts had the highest amount of new tracks in them and Jon’s voice was at its peak of that era. Breathtaking performances like extremely extended renditions of Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night and Keep The Faith with screams and many additional lyrics are still regarded as some of the band’s best efforts by fans.
After a one-month break, they took off to Europe for their stadium tour. One show, in Barcelona, was held indoors at the start and originally, this was supposed to be it. But the band’s concert in Neumünster got rescheduled to an indoor location in Kiel on a short notice. Official reasons were that “unforeseen” logistics in terms of bringing the needed stage from Munich to Dublin had delays that made a concert impossible due to changed shipping plans and local restrictions in Ireland. It is, however, more likely that the ticket sales for the planned outdoor show in Neumünster were too low.
On that leg, setlists had gotten pretty static already and songs like Right Side Of Wrong, Misunderstood and Hook Me Up which had pretty much been regulars during the US leg, were rotated more and more. Even though a few songs changed on nightly basis, the core of the setlist was pretty much set in stone. These shows also marked a turnaround in terms of vocal performance by Jon. Full-throttle usage of his then-capabilities in the previous months, combined with reoccurring hay-fever attacks lead to a rather rapid decline. There were, however, still some absolutely outstanding shows with their concert in Munich not only being the essential show of the tour, but most likely of the whole post-2000 era. Both band and audience fed off each other’s energy and Jon was literally out of his mind, going absolutely insane on some songs and pushing it across the three-hour mark with three These Days songs in the set, something that was extraordinary for that time. Many attendees, including myself, couldn’t believe what they just had witnessed and, to this day, many claim to not have seen anything remotely close to this by the band or any other artist ever since.
Other special shows were the band’s performances in Dublin, Vienna or Mannheim. The final gig of the tour was in London’s Hyde Park and had an extremely ecstatic crowd of over 90,000 people (unofficial reports state numbers as high as 120,000+ attendees). While the fans were making that concert something very memorable, it was Jon being plagued by allergies and his voice having pretty much gone that prevented it from being one of the top performances of the tour.
While there were many highlights, this leg also marked the time of Jon being moody on some occasions and not really putting too much effort in some performance whereas he was going all-in on other days. The lowlight probably was Gelsenkirchen were Jon threw a bottle of water into a photographer’s face right before the concert for unknown reasons, didn’t really interact with the band or talk to the crowd for most of the night and finished the show with an impromptu acoustic rendition of All About Loving You while some of the band members had already left the stage and others were at their instruments not knowing what to do.
Bon Jovi returned to North America for another month of outdoor shows and to round up the tour there. Six of these concerts were turned into half-acoustic / half-electric shows since the band obviously was desperately trying to string together more valuable footage for a live acoustic release. However, Jon’s voice had kept on declining since Europe and none of the material was used any further. Fans were even shocked at the state of his vocals when the band had held a poll about the encore of Alpine Valley on their web site and consequently streamed it, making his struggles on These Days more than obvious.
Similar to the One Wild Night tour, they finished the Bounce tour with two concerts at Giants Stadium as well. While the first night had been plagued by torrential rain downpour, the second night was to be held under good weather and made for a decent finish of the tour.
This was also the first tour where they incorporated loops into their live sound, due to the changing production style of their albums and the music scene in general. Whereas, on later tours, crew members would add them from special computers underneath the stage, this time around it was still David Bryan who triggered the samples via his keyboard. The Bounce tour also proofed to be the last tour with just the five “original” members on stage.
Song statistic
The shows had songs from 9 different albums (incuding Jon's solo album Blaze Of Glory).
7800° Fahrenheit is the only Bon Jovi album that had been completely ignored.
Though it was the Bounce tour the band never opted to play the whole album. Love Me Back To Life and Open All Night weren't played at all (with the latter one at least making its live debut 5 years later during the Lost Highway tour). All About Loving You and You Had Me From Hello only made one appearance and never saw the light of day again.
The rare songs of the tour were Wild Is The Wind and Mystery Train with only one performance, followed by Damned (2), Living In Sin (4), I Believe (4) and Something To Believe In (5).
Only 3 songs were played every single show - Livin' On A Prayer, Wanted Dead Or Alive and Everyday.
You Give Love A Bad Name and It's My Life were left out once (the acoustic show in Yokohama). Bad Medicine (81), I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (80), Born To Be My Baby (79), Bounce (78) and Raise Your Hands (77) were the other most played songs on that tour.
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