Jon Bon Jovi and Friends at the Starland Ballroom
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By Tris McCall/The Star-Ledger
Tim Farrell/The Star-Ledger Here to help: Jon Bon Jovi, singing for Parker Family Health Center at Starland Ballroom
Seven months ago, his performance of his signature song felt completely different. Backed by the world-famous band that shares his last name, Jon Bon Jovi belted out “Livin’ on a Prayer” exactly as he had when it became a hit in 1986. Under a high summer sky at the public unveiling of New Meadowlands Stadium, no other approach was possible: It was a day for grand gestures and big, romantic statements.
But on Thursday night, New Jersey slept under a blanket of snow. And he was singing not for revelers in a football stadium, but to a sold-out house at the relatively intimate Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, on behalf of a charity meant to assist the impoverished. So he turned the song inside out, substituting acoustic guitars for the distorted six-strings that are Bon Jovi’s preferred method of pop-hook delivery, and trading the fist-pumping refrain for a low-key arrangement that felt ruminative and maybe even spiritual.
Bon Jovi must have known that his fans were expecting to hear a more upbeat rendering. But the rocker, who grew up in Sayreville, had a point to prove, and a fundraising effort to support. To that end, he enlisted his best-known characters: Tommy and Gina, the down-and-out couple trying desperately to hold on to what they’ve got. These kids, Bon Jovi seemed to want to say, are exactly the sort of people who might need the assistance of the Parker Family Medical Center, a nonprofit clinic in Red Bank that provides primary care to the uninsured.
The veteran rocker didn’t preach at the 90-minute Jon Bon Jovi and Friends concert. He simply told the audience what the Parker Family Medical Center means to him and to his family, praised a few doctors by name, and let the songs do the talking. Most of these were covers. Bon Jovi led a 17-piece band through enthusiastic renditions of rock standards (”Start Me Up,” “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star”) and blues classics (”See See Rider,” “634-5789″). Southside Johnny joined him for four numbers, including a convincing duet rendition of Sam and Dave’s “Hold on, I’m Comin.’ ” A few of these interpretations were awkward — Bon Jovi’s industrial-strength pipes do not easily wrap around a song as sultry as “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Others, like a boisterous version of “Glad All Over” by the Dave Clark Five, flashed a rare glimpse of Bon Jovi the pop geek. Only deep into the set did he turned his attention to his own material, performing hits such as “Prayer,” “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.”
The performance of “Bad Name” had a whiff of obligation about it. The song, which calls a lover “a schoolboy’s dream,” is sung from a young man’s perspective, and Bon Jovi is now a grown-up with concerns far wider than those of a jilted playboy. The better he could apply a song’s lyrics to the Parker Center’s mission, the more enthusiastically and emotionally he sang. He opened the show with a slow acoustic version of the Beatles’ “Help!”, got alive during the anthemic “We Weren’t Innate to Pursue,” and voiceless new spirit into the businesslike “Unfrequented,” an outtake from sessions for the 2007 “Confused Highway” album.
Bon Jovi’s lasting attempts to sympathise with the down-and-out and spotlight his real’s sociopolitical import suggested that he is obsessed by economical inequality and set to do something roughly it. In late years, he has been as good-hearted as anybody in pop, tattle for temblor succour and the Red Interbreeding and sponsoring the building of new homes done his own SOULFULNESS Innovation. He repeatedly has denied any sake in world billet, but late recognized an fitting to the Albumen Family Council for Community Solutions.
How cryptical into world overhaul is Jon Bon Jovi volition to go? With Bon Jovi drummer Tico Torres angling, in a late consultation, for a suspension from earth touring, we may shortly discovery out.
He’s already got the staple mechanics of American government covered: he’s a redoubtable fundraiser. At $250 per fine, Thursday’s concert brought in thousands of dollars for the Parker Folk Wellness Clinic. Bon Jovi rung, informally, approximately his unveiling to the clinic and his cryptic roots in Sayreville; he reminded the herd that Bon Jovi victimized to exercise in the board that became the Starland, and revealed that his wife had erst been a pelage curb girlfriend thither. He grew pensive as he talked roughly his cause to the nightspot. He may be nigh at domicile in Hollywood or on his go bus, but his hope to helper New Jersey done ruffian multiplication — and not just by cantabile at us — couldn’t appear more echt.
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