Bon Jovi Pack in Hits and Hardcore Fans at Free Central Park Show

"This is the Great Lawn in the greatest park, in the greatest city in the universe," Jon Bon Jovi marveled before performing what easily could have been one of the biggest concerts New York City's Central Park has ever seen. Over 67,500 free tickets were distributed to the 50,000-capacity space — a solid chunk going to fans who flew in from other states, bid desperately on eBay and even camped out from 6 PM the night before to attend the two-hour MLB All-Star Week performance.

A woman in the front of the crowd with an ankle-to-knee cast spoke before the show about how she popped her knee Thursday. "All I could think was: how am I going to get to Bon Jovi?" she said.

The band played hits spanning a 25-year career — everything from "Livin' on a Prayer" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" off 1986's Slippery When Wet to more recent hits like "Have a Nice Day" and "Who Says You Can't Go Home." The band spiced up tunes like "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" with bridges from the Beatles' "Twist and Shout," and interrupted their performance of "Bad Medicine" with a high-energy excerpt from the Isley Brothers' "Shout."

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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