Tour Statistic & Summary
Tourname: Bon Jovi Live 2011
Legs: 2
Shows: 59
Canceled: -
With the release of their Greatest Hits album in late 2010, Bon Jovi had another album to tour on the back on for 2011. In fact, the various legs pretty much morphed together with them also playing one of new the cuts, No Apologies, already in Australia in 2010. All four tracks of the Greatest Hits Deluxe edition were to be performed on that tour, but much like with Brokenpromiseland, the fan favourite this time around, This Is Love, This Is Life was again only done once.
Something that became very clear on this tour was that the band needed about one or two shows after a break to get back into the grove. This became very obvious since Bon Jovi decided to stream parts of their first show live via internet. Ironically, while it quality wise was the best webstream of the entire tour, the flaws in the performance were very obvious with them not finishing one song without some mistake during the entire broadcast and them even forgetting the solo in Make A Memory. Just like in 2010, the band got back on track within very few shows and actually kept varying the setlists quite a bit for US standards.
Most notably on this first leg probably was the band’s third night at Madison Square Garden. While they had had some sound failures and PA problems in the shows leading up to it (with the sound going completely out for some time in Boston), allegedly a drunk fan spilled beer over the mixing console at that concert. So the band was even forced to leave the stage at the end of their acoustic set and returned in style. They cut all the encore breaks out of the rest of the set and just played straight to the end with sky-high energy and a determination that stunned everyone in the audience, making this one of the best shows of the entire tour!
That part of the tour featured a break of about one month from the end of March until April 30th and this is where things began to become unhinged: During the hiatus, it became public knowledge that Richie had checked himself back into rehab for the second time after 2007. Meanwhile, Phil X was announced to replace the lead guitarist on the upcoming shows. The Canadian-born guitarist made his debut at the New Orleans Jazz festival concert and there it became obvious how high the weight of having to make up for Richie’s absence was on Jon’s shoulders. They finished up the US leg which became especially known for some very emotional I’ll Be There For You performances where Jon added a lot of extra lines to the end and a Wanted performance with him placing a Richie doll that someone had thrown up from the audience on his guitar. In hindsight, Richie’s absence and especially his missing vocals put a considerable strain on Jon’s voice and first signs of it were to be heard on the following leg. However, at that moment in time no one connected these two reasons with each other and it could only be recognized many years later with the knowledge of what was to happen to Jon’s voice after Richie’s final departure.
For the final leg of the long 2010/11, Richie rejoined the band and played his comeback show in Zagreb, Croatia on June 8th 2010. On this leg, they visited Croatia, Romania and Greece for the first time in their careers and also returned to Turkey where they had not done a show since 1993.
Nowadays, these final shows are remembered amongst fans as the last great peak of the band with setlists varying a lot on a nightly basis and them, similar to Europe 2008, churning out a lot of rarities. As great as it sounds, this leg wasn’t to be without a few flaws either. During a performance in Helsinki, Jon tore his knee ligaments on stage. He bravely fought his way through the show and performed the following concerts with a cast on his leg to stabilize the knee until he used the one week gap between the shows in Dublin and Istanbul to undergo surgery. A lowlight surely was the band’s performance in Dusseldorf where everything just felt off and many fans were raging since the anticipation, especially after the concert in 2006, had been quite high. In the long run, the show surely was just a little below average, at the time it felt like a huge dip in quality though.
Some of the most remarkable shows were held in Mannheim, Barcelona and at the Hyde Park in London. The latter got broadcasted live on radio and fans were stunned at the quality and the pace of the three-hour performance! In Lisbon, Bon Jovi wrapped up what had essentially been a 18-month tour and they did it in style! For that final night, they fired on all cylinders, playing songs like Get Ready, (It’s Hard) Letting You Go, Any Other Day, This Ain’t A Love Song and I Believe all in one set. Two months after the tour, the official website streamed most of the concert and many fans now look back on this gig with a lot of nostalgia because, especially knowing what was to come afterwards, it had been the perfect ending to a great tour.
Song statistic
Including cover songs the band played a total of 102 songs.
The average setlist contained 26 songs (including covers), with the US getting a average setlist of 25,46 songs and Europe getting an average of 26,79 songs per show.
The shows had songs from 14 different albums.
Only from 7800° Fahrenheit and This Left Feels Right no songs were performed.
(Click on the images to enlarge them)
