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

By 
July 14, 2008 5:31 PM ET

"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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“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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