Tour Statistic & Summary
Tourname: Lost Highway Tour
Legs: 5
Shows: 99
Canceled: -
Originally, the plan for Lost Highway had been not to tour the album. The band did a couple of promo shows during the summer, including their first unplugged concert which was broadcasted by VH-1, CMT and MTV. During that show, it became obvious that something was seriously off with Richie since he couldn’t even play the signature lick to Wanted Dead Or Alive. After the show, he checked himself into rehab and the band went on to play a promo gig in Puerto Rico. Not only was it the first time they played that country, it also was the first time that Richie was absent from a band’s gig. His comeback was shortly afterwards when the band played the newly-built O2 arena in London and stunned everyone by spontaneously busting into a long outro solo during Any Other Day.
In the autumn of 2007, Jon felt the urge to perform the album more and told his manager to “find me ten shows at home. It was meant to be ten shows and nothing else.” They opened the Prudential Center in Newark with ten consecutive shows. To emphasize the sound of their most current record, Kurt Johnston joined them on the pedal steel guitar, Lorenza Ponce on the violin and Bobby Bandiera remained as an additional guitar player while Jeff Kazee dropped out from the line-up of the previous tour.
The first ten shows saw them playing the Lost Highway record in its entirety once, but overall criticism arose after the first few shows since both violin and pedal steel guitar were quite prominent in the mix which alienated many fans, especially on the older songs. After some rather bad reviews, the sound mix was noticeably adjusted as the stint went on. During that time, it had already become clear that the band didn’t just want to do these ten shows since a full US leg for the rest of the year, plus further dates for 2008 all over the world got announced within a short period of time.
For the remainder of 2007, they kept touring the states and Canada, just to wrap it up there shortly before Christmas. The saloon-like, country-themed stage was only used up until then and especially the last few shows were loved by the fans since the band really shook up the setlists with the last concert of the year not only featuring a second full performance of the Lost Highway album, but also having the most songs the band had done in one night since 1996! Furthermore, the 2007 concerts had them (at least partially) return from the This Left Feels Right versions of I’ll Be There For You and Blaze Of Glory to the original ones.
The year 2008 kicked off with the band touring Japan and raised some concern since a show at the Tokyo Dome was broadcasted live via Japanese TV and showed Jon having some vocal troubles. In the long run, it just turned out to have been him and Richie both having caught the flu. What followed was the band travelling further to New Zealand and Australia where they played their first proper tour since 1995!
Bon Jovi then continued touring the states for the entire spring and went on to perform the arena shows with a completely revamped stage design since Jon had asked for something that looked “more like rock’n’roll”. This leg was the first sign of their big renaissance as a live act. Whereas Jon had been struggling with strongly declining vocal abilities in the previous five years and Richie had been fighting a broad variety of issues, they both very much returned to form at that part of the tour. Jon seemingly had relearned a slightly different singing technique and kept refining it as the tour went on. His newly-gained confidence also pushed the band to new heights and inspired them to play songs many fans had already lost hope to ever hear again. The band stunned audiences with the return of the original Always as well as with renditions of songs like One Wild Night, Hey God or Blood Money. Furthermore, the opening act Chris Daughtry joined the band onstage numerous times for sharing the lead vocals with Jon on Blaze Of Glory which rapidly turned into fan-favourite performances.
In order to prepare for their European tour, Bon Jovi went to Abu Dhabi to play their first ever gig there. At that moment in time, their concert was the biggest ever to have been held there. After the return of Blaze Of Glory, I’ll Be There For You and Always on previous tour shows, Bed Of Roses finally got played in its original version again, making it the final one of the four songs that had once been dropped in favour of their respective TLFR versions.
Europe saw the band at their absolute peak and many fans even compare the quality of some of the performances to their shows in the 90’s. They continued to play more and more rarities, making every show very exciting since it was pretty much impossible to predict what was going to be played. Songs like Lie To Me, I Believe, This Ain’t A Love Song, Last Cigarette, Hey God, Dry County, I Got The Girl, Damned, Garageland, Fever, Wild Is The Wind, Here Comes The Sun, Undivided or Stick To Your Guns showed that they were willing to completely loosen things up. The latter was performed spontaneously in Amsterdam after fans had held up banners with the lyrics on them. Amsterdam, together with Frankfurt, Punchestown and Barcelona can be regarded as the band’s most outstanding concerts of the tour, even though they all were at a pretty high level.
Once again, Bon Jovi went back to America to wrap up their tour there. On the first concerts, Richie got to sing both I’ll Be There For You and These Days in one show which seemed a bit strange since he was suffering from a sinus infection and clearly had a hard time singing. The grand finale were two concerts at Madison Square Garden, preluded by a performance on the Great Lawn in Central Park. It was connected to a MLB All-Star game with tickets being given away for free and about 60,000 people attending the band’s show that evening. The last two concerts at the Garden were captured and cut together for an official release, but it took until the autumn of 2009 until that was made available. To the delight of many, Bon Jovi gave in to the massive fan requests and played Dry County, Always and Living In Sin spread over both nights with them all making the final cut. However, after the European leg, many had hoped for some even rarer tracks to appear during these shows. Furthermore, the tour from the Abu Dhabi concert onwards was filmed for the When We Were Beautiful documentary which got released simultaneously with the following album and the Madison Square Garden Live Video. Bon Jovi ended their Lost Highway tour on an absolute high, leaving fans longing for upcoming material and a new tour.
Song statistic
The shows had songs from 13 different albums (incuding Jon's solo album Blaze Of Glory and Richie's solo album Stranger In This Town as well as the Box Set).
7800° Fahrenheit is the only Bon Jovi album that has been completely ignored.
This was the last tour where a high amount of songs from the Bounce album were performed.
With Open All Night there was even a song performed for the first time live that wasn't done on the tours before.
After Bed Of Roses, Always, I'll Be There For You, Lay Your Hands One Me and Blaze Of Glory were done only in the TLFR versions during the Have A Nice Day Tour this tour they played the original versions again.
The band variied the setlist a lot more than during the last tours and played a lot of songs that weren't played live for more than a decade just like Stick To Your Guns, Hey God, This Ain't A Lovesong, Lie To Me or One Wild Night.
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