During promotional work for the album in September, Jon and Richie appeared on Westwood One, at a “Premier Party”, which meant they played the new album plus old songs, and Jon and Richie did a few acoustic numbers, including the very first public performance of Diamond Ring which was one of the many tracks written for the album but didn’t make it. That month they also went to the LA Forum for the now legendary filming of the Bad Medicine video, the first single release from the album.
Dublin R.D.S. 31 October 1988, was the start of the Jersey Syndicate tour proper. There had been warm up shows including one in New Jersey 2 weeks earlier, and also another event days prior to that first show. A “feud” developed between the band, well to be honest Jon, and American shock jock Howard Stern. Stern had been a long time supporter of the band from Runaway and felt hurt that the band wouldn’t come on his show to promote New Jersey, when they had been appearing on almost every other station in New York, Sterns broadcast area. On the day Jon was leaving for Dublin, Howard got through on the phone to wherever Jon was staying (the number was provided by a listener, and a female answered), and spent the next 60 minutes berating Jon and the band for screwing him over as he put it. To Jon's credit he admitted on air that it had happened but it was the record company who told him he couldn’t go on the show, which inflamed Stern even more, commenting that after making X millions of dollars for Polygram he should tell them to stick it and that he would go on radio shows of his choosing not theirs. Jon agreed, and basically spent the time eating humble pie, even when Stern had fun with the song titles, You Give Friendship a Bad Name, ooh he’s a little traitor etc. etc. This feud as he called it lasted until 1992 when the band showed up at Sterns birthday show for an impromptu jam session. If you ever want to know any of Richies “exploits” with past girlfriends, check out any interviews they’ve done with Howard. They played 2 nights in Dublin to kick off the tour, the first night included Wild Is The Wind, plus a host of covers, including AC/DC’s Long Way To The Top (if you wanna rock n roll), something that was to become a feature of the whole tour, the now legendary “patented jam session”. The 2nd night saw Joe Elliott ( a resident of Dublin) join them on-stage for Boys Are Back In Town. I was at this show, and it still ranks of one of my favourites, even when Richies guitar broke as he was about to play the solo for Wanted.
They toured Europe right up until Christmas, with the final show again having a great jam session, featuring Cinderella and the Scorpions all on-stage together, where they ran through 4 or 5 covers including Get Back, Helter Skelter, Travellin Band and Jonny B Good. A show earlier that month at Wembley Arena, also featured a session with Brian May, Elton John, Rick Allen and Lita Ford who was opening on the first leg of the tour. You may have seen footage of this on the Access All Areas video.
New Years Eve 1988, saw the band headline a festival in Japan which included Britney Fox, Kingdom Come and RATT, who BJ had supported in the USA, in the early days. This preceded a short Japanese tour before the band made their way back to the States, via Hawaii. The 2nd single Born To Be My Baby had been released by this time and followed Bad Medicine’s success in the charts, gaining the band more TV exposure, and thus more TV appearances to do. When they got back to the States, they made time in the schedule for an appearance on the USA Syndicated show Rockline. Setting a precedent that they would later follow, Jon and Richie decided to play something special. The acoustic version of Living On A Prayer was first played on this show, 13 February 1989.
March 1989, saw the band back in New Jersey for an indoor show in the Meadowlands Arena. The local radio station ran coverage of this show, not actually broadcasting it but regularly going over to its reporters for updates on how it was going. Its actually funny to hear them at the start of Lay Your Hands On Me, you know the drum intro, asking each other, “Is this Raise Your Hands?, “No, I think its Let It Rock..”, obviously fans of course!!
By now Skid Row had had their debut album released on Jon and Richies New Jersey Underground label, via Atlantic, and were now the opening act for Bon Jovi. Despite starting out as friends, later developments saw them split from the Underground label, which in turn was disbanded soon after. Details of the “fight” between the bands have been well documented elsewhere, and don’t need repeating. I’ll Be There For You was the 3rd single release from the album and the CD single included 2 Slippery out takes that hadn’t been released on CD before.
By June, they had made their way across America, and had more special guests join them on-stage, including Mike Tramp from White Lion, Steven Adler who was still in Guns n Roses and Billy Squier, who would later join Jons JAMBCO label . The Backstage fan club arranged a trip for the biggest show in the bands career at that stage, The Homecoming,June 11 Giants Stadium. An outdoor show at one of the biggest American Football stadiums in the USA. Again there is a lot of coverage on the Access video, showing them at soundcheck walking out over the specially built runways that went out over the crowd, just trying to take in the spectacle. There is an excellent bootleg video of this show, shot from about 12 rows back which really grabs the atmosphere. During the encores, they were joined on-stage by the late Sam Kinison (a preacher turned comedian), Skid Row, Billy Squier, and one lucky fan who got on to the stage and was saved from the security guards by Jon and was allowed to sing backing vocals at the same microphone as Richie and Snake from Skid Row !! Wow!!
This is also where Richie and Cher allegedly got together, but thats another story!!
The summer of 89 was a lean time for Rock bands in America. The nation was following on from the recession that was hitting Britain, a Monsters Of Rock tour that featured Van Halen, and a host of other top name bands, was having to cancel shows due to poor ticket sales, but BJ were able to at least sell ¾ of the venue on each show, and tried where possible to have 3 or 4 opening bands, which at various times included, Skid Row, Cinderella, Winger and Bulletboys.On Richies birthday, at the show in Largo MD, Skid Row “TISWASed” Richie during one of the encores. For those of you not old enough to remember TISWAS, its the old custard pie in the face joke.
In August the band “headlined” the Moscow Music Peace Festival. Set up as penance for their manager Doc McGhees drug convictions, the idea was to promote drug awareness and rehabilitation centres, in Moscow of all places. By doing so he was kept out of jail, merely fulfilling a condition of his non custodial sentence. By the way the crime he was convicted of normally carries a mandatory 15 years in the USA. The show was a gathering of the top hard rock/heavy metal bands of the time, Ozzy, Motley Crue, Scorpions, Cinderella, Skid Row (all of whom excluding Ozzy were managed by Doc McGhee at the time). Despite fights backstage between egos, BJ stole the day with Jon entering the stadium through the crowd dressed as a Russian soldier, and working his way up a “gauntlet” of real soldiers who had separated the crowd. Just in time he climbed on to the stage for the first verse of opener Lay Your Hands On Me. There were rumoured to be around 100, 000 people at the show in the Olympic Stadium, and SKY broadcast 4 or 5 songs from each band on the bill. A week later the guys were again playing a huge show, although not quite as big as Moscow, Milton Keynes provided the “Bowl” for 50,000+ fans. Again a collection of good opening acts was arranged, Skid Row, Vixen and Europe, provided the early entertainment while the crowd waited on the self proclaimed “Heavyweight Champions of the World”. Radio 1 typically ignoring rock music, broadcast 60 minutes of the show a few weeks later, but at least they did broadcast the high point of the show, an appearance by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith, who jammed on Walk This Way. At the time something Jon said at the start of Blood on Blood struck me. “ And though we’re going to be going away for a while, ....” At the time I remember thinking, did he mean going away as in to the rest of the world or disappear from public view? Lay Your Hands was released, to coincide with the MK show,among its variations were Red, White and Blue 7”.
The band headed to Canada and then back to the USA for another visit before heading to Australia in October. The Australian shows by all accounts were exceptional, even playing out the back of the hall, when the fans wouldn’t go home (see Access). They also put in a couple of record store appearances at HMV and Virgin, playing an acoustic set at each show, usually Ride Cowboy Ride, Love For Sale, Wanted and Prayer, to traffic stopping crowds, something the London police wouldn’t allow them to do during an instore appearance at Tower Records earlier that year. By December, the proclamation on advertising for Milton Keynes that read “Their only UK appearance this year”, was proved to be untrue. The band were back in Europe with UK dates lined up for early January. Living In Sin with its “controversial” video was released. Finally an unreleased track from the New Jersey sessions surfaced. Love Is War was included as a b side.
Three consecutive nights in Wembley Arena had the band pumping with different set lists each night, including a reappearance of Raise Your Hands as the opening tune. They tried out some different versions of songs, for what turned out to be preparation for a special show at the Hammersmith Odeon on the 10th January. In-between they also got to Belfast, which was an okay show, not one of my favourites that I have been to, and Dublin where by all accounts they played a great set. The Hammersmith show, was in aid of Music Therapy and featured acoustic versions of Prayer, Never Say Goodbye plus loads of cover versions and two rarities, Cadillac Man and We All Sleep Alone, for details on this show, see issue 4. Jimmy Page even jammed with the band on-stage. Radio 1, again afraid of broadcasting live rock music, put out 50 mins of the 150 minute show a few weeks later.
A final tour of South America would round off the world tour, but it was going to be another 5 weeks before it was all over. They played the Rock In Rio festival, which was broadcast on Brazilian television to hundreds of thousands of viewers. They continued through South America, playing a show in Santiago, Chile, again to a national TV audience, and radio broadcast. Then it was off to Mexico where as you see on the Access video, rioting students postponed the show they were due to play, and they ended up playing 2 shows, one in the afternoon and the other at night. The final show, Monterey, Mexico was also broadcast on radio.
So 16 months, 5 singles, X million albums and people later, it was finally over. As was later revealed the band just went their separate ways to get planes to wherever they were going, the stress and strain had taken its toll and the following break was well earned and well needed. A live album and video had been planned, and was due to include some unreleased and new stuff, but it never materialised, possibly due to Jons involvement with the Young Guns project. Some of the footage shot for the live video, has leaked onto the bootleg market, including the Largo 89 show where Richie gets “creamed”. The “grey” period that was to follow almost split the band, but it had been a “wild and wonderful ride” to get there.
written by Darren Seaton
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