On April 14, Bon Jovi will wrap the 30-date first leg of the band’s This House is Not For Sale tour at Denver’s Pepsi Center, in many ways a tour of “firsts” for the venerable Jersey band.
This was Bon Jovi’s first tour launched without founding guitarist Richie Sambora, who left the band early in the 2013 Because We Can trek (Phil X and producer John Shanks take on axe duties this time out). It is the first tour with legendary manager Irving Azoff overseeing management duties (the band had been managed in-house through Bon Jovi Management). This is the first tour under a newly-restructured label deal for Bon Jovi, continuing a 34-year relationship with Universal Music Group (the band’s 13th album “This House Is Not For Sale” is on the Island imprint). Tour manager Thomas McAndrews is on his first tour with the band (former TM Scott Casey is now with U2). And, finally, the 2017 run is Bon Jovi’s first tour with Live Nation as the global promoter (each of the four preceding tours were promoted globally by AEG Live).
Of course, many aspects of Bon Jovi remain consistent, first and foremost continuing to blow out arenas, grossing $51,738,625 from 479,572 tickets sold on the first leg, according to the tour. Live Nation’s Ryan McElrath, senior VP of domestic touring, running point on the Bon Jovi tour, said the band has “never been stronger in the marketplace,” citing “incredible sellout business in markets like San Diego and Sacramento, where Bon Jovi hasn’t been in years. The major markets are smashes, as they have always been for Bon Jovi.”
Bon Jovi is still represented by Rob Light, managing partner at Creative Artists Agency, and tour director Paul Korzilius, who started with Bon Jovi on Feb. 1, 1987, still oversees touring. Most importantly, Bon Jovi is still led by front man Jon Bon Jovi, the driving force of the band both creatively and on the business front.
Ultimately, it is Bon Jovi the bandleader who signs off on most all of the critical decisions that led to this tour of “firsts.” That includes playing markets they’ve not played in years, like Legacy Arena at BJCC in Birmingham, Ala. Bon Jovi told Venues Today that going into some of these markets was his idea, including Birmingham, where the band hadn’t played since 1989. “I know there are people down there, I know the country guys are going down there,” he recalled telling Korzilius, whom Bon Jovi credits with the decision to launch the tour in Greenville, S.C., at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena on Feb. 8. “The last tour started in a blizzard in Connecticut, so we said, ‘not this time, let’s stay South.’”
Korzilius agreed that sometimes markets like Birmingham can get “looked over” on major tours, and that city fit well in the routing scheme this year. “We had a show in Tampa (Amalie Arena, Feb. 14), and our next show was in Nashville (Feb. 18). Birmingham was right along the way, so no reason not to go back, and we had great results there,” he said. “The great thing was, the fans were always there. You just have to get to them.”
They got to them in Birmingham — 14,130 of them, to be exact, a sellout. “The crowd embraced Bon Jovi when returning to Birmingham after 28 years,” said an enthusiastic Susette Hunter, director of sales at the arena, who added that Bon Jovi “set fire to the stage in a ‘Blaze of Glory’ as the crowd danced and sang along.”
Playing these “places we hadn’t been to in quite a while” proved two points, Bon Jovi said: “How deep the roots of the band are, nationwide or worldwide; and also that people will come out to see live music if it’s presented in a venue that’s close enough that it makes sense for them. For a big band saying ‘I’m not going to Alabama,’ there are enough folks in Alabama that would want to see a U2 show.”
Live Nation’s McElrath points to Bon Jovi’s “multi-generational” fan base, which allows the promoter to make use of a wide array of promotional tactics. “From a marketing standpoint, we use all of our tools, from traditional radio to digital media,” McElrath said. “Bon Jovi fans are incredibly passionate, engaged and on their feet for every song.”
NEW ARENAS, OLD FRIENDS
Several new arenas have opened in North America since the band last toured, so buildings like T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (Feb. 25) and Golden 1 Center in Sacramento (Feb. 28) hosted the band for the first time. Of course, many arenas on the route have been rocked many times by Bon Jovi. “Some of the old buildings are like old friends, but they get new shoes,” Bon Jovi said. “Like Dallas. American Airlines Center is different backstage, but it’s just a great building, with a lot of [development] around it now. Things like that are very different but, generally speaking, the buildings have been great.”
Bon Jovi set a concert attendance record at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville with 18,514 in the house. That topped the previous record set two years ago by Eric Church, who packed in 18,411 to his Outsiders tour date on Jan. 10, 2015. “To be able to still set attendance records like in Nashville, where everyone and their mother always plays, is reassuring,” Bon Jovi admitted, noting that there was plenty of meat left on the bone in several markets. “To know we could have done four or five, six Gardens, four nights in Toronto, easily, and multiples in Philly, and didn’t even put the Bostons and Washingtons on the schedule yet, is very, very nice.”
A sold out crowd of 18,500 turned out for the band’s March 31 appearance at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, which Comcast Spectator President John Page called a “second home” for the band. “We continue to do great business here at Wells Fargo Center every time the band comes through,” Page said. “We’re grateful to Jon and the band, as well as Paul Korzilius and his team, for another sell out. We hope to get them back again soon.”
Playing the Forum on March 8 was another special gig on this tour for Bon Jovi. “My memories of the Forum are so deep that when we played there back in the ‘80s on the New Jersey record, we had the No. 1 album, the No. 1 single, [and] I went back to the St. James Club—which it was called at the time (now the Sunset Tower Hotel)—on the Sunset Strip, and looked out my window at a huge billboard of the five of us,” he recalled. “I said to my girlfriend next to me in the bed, ‘let’s get married, now.’ She said, ‘what are you, nuts?’ Twenty-eight years later, she’s still my wife. That’s the Forum I remember. So to go back there now, after all these years, was a treat, to see what they did to that old building and that landmark, turning it into an incredible-sounding experience. I hope to go back sometime and see the rest of it.”
Armed with the renewed vigor that comes with a well-received new record (“This House Is Not for Sale” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, the band’s fourth consecutive to top the chart), Bon Jovi debuted the songs with a series of small venue live “listening parties” last fall. As McElrath pointed out, “a No. 1 record is great way to kick off a touring cycle.”
A whopping six songs from the new album appear in the 2017 tour set list, as Bon Jovi refuses to become simply a nostalgia act. One would be hard-pressed to find another 30-year touring band playing 25 percent newly-released material, at least, “not my peer group,” Bon Jovi said, adding that many of the bands that broke alongside Bon Jovi in the mid-‘80s are out in classic rock packages, playing strictly their hits from the era. “I’ll walk away before that day comes. I said it when I was 25, I’ll say it again now: I ain’t doing it.”
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BON JOVI’S BLOCKBUSTER TOUR WRAPS FIRST LEG
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