The band fronted by Jon Bon Jovi, above, is the first act to headline at the new Prudential Center in Newark. The band began a 10-night stand on Thursday.
NEWARK, Oct. 25 — The night was almost over and Jon Bon Jovi had a serious request: “Will you please rise for the playing of our national anthem?” And if you didn’t know what he meant, Richie Sambora’s 12-string guitar probably made it clear. O say does that snug-trousered cowboy still ride? Indeed, and on a steel horse, too. Thousands of New Jersey patriots helped Mr. Bon Jovi finish the chorus: “Wanted — wanted! — dead or alive.”
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Prudential Arena
As you might have guessed from the red carpet outside and the omnipresent police officers, this was a special occasion: opening night at the Prudential Center, the gleaming new arena in downtown Newark. No N.B.A. franchise calls it home, so the building’s flagship team is the New Jersey Devils, who play a sport known as ice hockey. (Apparently it’s like curling mixed with lacrosse.) And to celebrate the grand opening, the center — which may or may not come to be known by its publicist-approved nickname, the Rock — booked New Jersey’s most indefatigable rock band, Bon Jovi, to play a 10-night stand.
Certainly Mr. Bon Jovi was pleased to play the dual role of gracious host and proud native son. “I’m the Jersey Devil, and this is my new house,” he said. And for more than two hours, his band played on (and on!). By 11:07, when the time finally came for the aforementioned “Wanted Dead or Alive,” it seemed that the people onstage (and maybe some of those in the well-padded seats, emblazoned with the Devils logo) had gone from excitement to weariness and back again.
It’s hard not to marvel at this band’s career. “Slippery When Wet,” Bon Jovi’s third album, from 1986, was a career-making blockbuster, spawning three songs that helped define an era: “Wanted Dead or Alive,” “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.” Then, having lit the fire, the members of Bon Jovi merely needed to stoke it with a new album every few years, and the occasional hit single.
One need not be a record executive (though it probably helps) to admire Bon Jovi’s unabashedly practical approach. At the turn of the century, when teen-pop was ascendant, the band collaborated with the teen-pop mastermind Max Martin on a bubblegum rock song, “It’s My Life,” that soon became a worldwide favorite. And when “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” a Bon Jovi song that was rerecorded as a duet with Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles, unexpectedly topped the country chart, the band members merely shrugged and got to work on “Lost Highway” (Island), a Nashville-influenced album released in June.
“Lost Highway” hasn’t (yet) given the band another country-radio favorite, but for now the members are part-heartedly embracing country-rock. Thursday’s set included “Summertime,” a song from the new album that bears a faint resemblance to a 2005 country song by Kenny Chesney. (Perhaps you remember it? It was called, um, “Summertime.”) And the extended band included a violinist and a pedal steel guitarist, who spent part of the night nudging Bon Jovi away from the synth-rock sound that made it famous.
To underscore the notion that this 10-night stand is something special, the band booked five different opening acts, each scheduled to play two nights apiece. In that sense, Bon Jovi was actually the second band to play the Prudential Center; the first, about an hour earlier, was My Chemical Romance. That band, which rose from the New Jersey emo scene, played a typically great set full of theatrical tantrums and neo-goth love songs, ending on an audacious note with the piano ballad “Cancer.” Later, Mr. Bon Jovi called My Chemical Romance “the next generation of Jersey band,” and for the encore he emerged in a My Chemical Romance T-shirt. (The other opening acts are Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich, Daughtry and All-American Rejects.)
Halfway through the concert, Mr. Bon Jovi announced that this extended run was the start of a world tour. “After these shows sold out, we decided that it was time to hit the road,” he said, although perhaps he was overstating the case slightly. As of Friday afternoon, tickets to eight of the remaining nine concerts were still available from Ticketmaster.
Still, no one can deny that Mr. Bon Jovi remains an A-list rock star, in New Jersey and far beyond. He has some of what Bono has: likable self-regard, an infectious belief that his rightful place is onstage, with thousands of fans singing along. What he doesn’t have, of course, is U2. While Bono sings grand, important-sounding choruses about nameless streets and beautiful days, Mr. Bon Jovi’s solemn confessions are more along the lines of “Your love is like bad medicine.” To elaborate on this point: “Bad medicine is what I need.” Furthermore: “Oh-oh-oh.”
When he strains for gravitas — or, maybe, for Springsteenishness — the results can be ludicrous. Exhibit A: an overlong rendition of “Blaze of Glory,” Mr. Bon Jovi’s half-twangy solo hit from 1990, which came lumbering back to life just when it seemed to have finally expired. But most of the hits work as well as ever, thanks partly to his breathy, still-boyish voice, which always seems to be delivering the same two messages: “We’re gonna make it” and “C’mere.”
For that matter, the building put on a pretty good show, too. The sound was great, for an arena, and the nearby train station is now the site of a continuing science experiment. What happens when you cram a PATH train full of unabstemious revelers and shut the doors? Preliminary results on Thursday night were intriguing but inconclusive; expect better data by the end of hockey season.
And what can concertgoers expect from the Prudential Center? After Bon Jovi, the arena’s schedule includes lots of hockey and college basketball, some mixed martial-arts fights, and shows by the tween-pop star Miley Cyrus (also known as Hannah Montana) and the reunited Spice Girls.
But the presence of Bon Jovi on opening night only underscored the fact that there aren’t many young bands that can reliably play rooms this big. And all night long it was possible to marvel at the contrast between the sleek new building and the un-sleek, decidedly un-new band onstage. Good news for developers, bad news for promoters, mixed news for Newark: it seems arenas have outlived arena rock.
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