BON JOVI – Oslo – Ullevaal Stadion

Never in all my years did I ever think that I would be standing alongside around 30,000 people as a willing and able participant in an Oprah Winfrey live broadcast and how did I get here in the first place? What if someone sees me? Oh the shame…

The confusion lifts all too slowly but it does begin to lift. There are tell tale signs – women one would never associate with Madonna circa 1985 type clothing…, simply because they have perfectly tanned skin and brilliant white teeth instead of the other way around… Yet here they are in luminous mini(ish) skirts yet just look far too posh for this to be their usual attire. Oprah would never stand for her audience to dress in this manner. It is simply not becoming. I can just see Dr. Phil dropping his head, shaking his solar dome and uttering those words – "You’re medicating yourself with partial nudity".

Now I am worried. Is this a parallel universe? Is this is not an Oprah event after all? Then why the legions of MILFs? Could it be that I am at a…? No sooner had my mind began to utter the question crossed with the answer that out run the boys. Tico Torres, David Bryan and his thirty year allegiance to the perm, Richie Sambora, the ghost of Alec John Such ands then the man of the moment. Jon Bon Jovi himself.

That’s it. Yes. Yes. Not the great global MILF magnet herself but rather one of the only boys around who could make Oprah go more than a couple of rounds in the MILF’lympics.

 

Bon Jovi ladies and gentlemen – the band that have kept more than a few menopausal women ticking over in the knickers department. Are in Oslo for one night only. Oprah? Pffff… as if! (our legal department informs that my mistake is widely accepted and understood).

 

Bon Jovi swallow the stage early by stepping onto it, this is their territory – a football stadium. They burst into something from "Slippery When Wet"…, was it "Wild In The Streets"? "Raise Your Hands"?  Whatever it was it has global smash hit written all over it even though I believe it was not one of the MTV defining gazillion sellers that were peppered on this disc.

Released even when people did buy albums, this album never the less broke all kinds of barriers and records. As it edges itself close to hitting 30 million sales globally, it is very easy to see that not only was it an album that connected with a time and a place for the record buying public. It also became an album that sunk itself deep into the conscience of a million or two or more.

That this is slicked and spit shined to beyond perfection takes away nothing from it in the slightest…, this music is not meant to be measured alongside "Dark Side Of The Moon". JBJ despite all his mirror fetish’ing does not try to pass himself off as the millenium’s Freddy Mercury or any such thing…, he has even gotten over his wanting to be Bruce Springsteen it would appear and realises that this is simply a case of giving people timeless Pop tunes served with a good lashing of the old Hard Rock stuff and making them feel good for a few hours. I swear, at some point I was longing to be a MILF, if only even for one night.

That there were a number of songs that left me clueless and lost mattered not. It is my own fault for jumping ship when the videos became more about Jon’s smile than cowboy hats. Regardless, there is a magical communal feeling generated by these feel good anthems and my own euphoria was simply tripled once we got something from "New Jersely" or "Keep The Faith".

Great night, great fun. Complications left at the door and not even a whiff of Oprah.

www.bonjovi.com