The Mandela Effect | Bon Jovi 1987 05 26 | Detroit (first night) | Concert Reading

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

Today’s card is:
The Mandela Effect

Bon Jovi
26 May 1987
Detroit
🏟️ Slippery When Wet Tour

🎛️🎶🎧->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFcptAy3Cps

A video registration remastered by YouTube channel hAnD90, in 2020. The description box:
(this show)  “somehow always captured the magic of that era for me.“

And the description box also contains context to the entire Slippery When Wet Tour, by quoting Richie Sambora:
“Slippery’s success took us all by surprise. So much that our entire stage setup wasn’t prepared for these big arenas. Not the sound system, not the lightning setup, nothing.”

The video
Bon Jovi | 1st Night at Joe Louis Arena | Detroit 1987
was uploaded on the 21st August 2020 already.
So it’s not its newness that sparked my interest and made me select it to create a new card.
The context to this concert reading is an entirely different one altogether!

And one that could have been predicted by any Bon Jovi fan, with or without clairvoyance skills.

 

Backstory 

“25 may 1987 Philadelphia”
(hear me out!)

.
The official Bon Jovi account on Twitter has got a bad reputation.
Although in light of the post-2022 slippery slope of the medium, it could have been worse.
It’s not like this account has become hateful, or went down the drain like the rest of them, but “we see it as” unreliable, fake motivational, a laughing stock, etc. Quotation marks because many fans have stopped seeing it altogether.
I know I did.

So when on the 25th of May I saw a colorful mid-80s Bon Jovi concertposter commemorating their show that day 38 years ago in a venue called The Freedom Hall?
I liked it!
Not only because I liked the poster, but also because it had been weeks since I liked one of Jane’s posts who posts daily about Bon Jovi, and the majority are dated as “On this day” (in 1987 f.e.)
I automatically assumed the poster was posted by her.

But it didn’t take long until I saw claims this poster was fake. That Bon Jovi did not play a concert on the 25th of May 1987;
Their concert on the 24th had been Thornville and on the 26th had been their first night in Detroit.
Philadelphia didn’t have a Freedom Hall.
And the photo was “clearly” (quotation marks because I am blind to this, but clear for those in the Know!) from 1988 and not from 1987.

Over 24 hours passed before the account took the fake poster down, but if you have X you can still see a picture of it here, on the account of Mitch Lafon, in a tweet on the dates surrounding the 26th which I used for this article🙏

Meanwhile the generator to make your own fake concert posters had been tracked down and an extra thousand jokes about the interns who were apparently in charge of running the Twitter/ X account, were cracked.
Including someone remembering that time the account congratulated Richie Sambora for his birthday, despite him never having been included in any of the stories from the account.

But with this fake poster to a concert that never happened the account had crossed the line between ignoring a band member who had been instrumental to Bon Jovi’s success;
And was now knee deep in distributing fake news.

If I was their spindoctor, I’d suggest a statement that the account had been hacked.
Hell, I still think that is the most plausible explanation!
Surely better than the intern, since A. no serious band leaves their social media to chance and B. we all know interns do an amazing job at social media, so whomever has been in charge of it, is clearly not a Gen Z intern.

But I digress.

Because by far the most interesting thing I have for you is the possibility that the concert on 26 May 1987 did take place. In the Freedom Hall in Philadelphia and that people will remember having been there.

Something known as “The Mandela Effect”, after people who have vivid memories of Nelson Mandela having died in prison in the 80s, despite that not having been the case.
If you’re interested in knowing the scientific explanation you can watch this video:
The Mandela Effect Finally Explained

This is why I have chosen Detroit on the 26th of May 1987;
It is the concert that did take place, one day after the alternative fact-poster.

Bon Jovi Detroit on the 26th of May actually happened, we have a two hour video proving so. Just like Nelson Mandela really lived to be very old and did not die until 2013 when he was 95 years old.

With explanations for the Mandela effect going deep into quantum physics and the multiverse, and the idea that there is an infinite number of realities, the question raises;
Has Bon Jovi 26th of May 1987 actually taken place, in one of them?

 

The Mandela Effect

the card

The Mandela Effect Card means you have shifted.
And now your memory of what happened is different to other people’s versions of reality.

The theory stems from the Double Slit Experiment where observation influenced how particles behaved.
When observed the particles behaved like little pieces of matter. When not observed “they” were a wave, like light or water. They were still in potential, infinite possibilities.

This reality crossed time and space:
If a recording of the experiment was made without looking, and the tape was studied in the future, the same thing occurred.
Indicating the particles still felt it, even though the looking happened in the future.

When the Mandela Effect cards shows up in your reading, it means you need to be reminded that from a quantum perspective, what you think about, you bring about. And if you keep thinking about it, you keep bringing it about.

Alternatively, you are invited to see if you can change the past by going over the event in your mind, and creating a new memory of it. Of people lovingly supporting you. Of you being happy. Of safely taking the kettle off the stove and pouring the water in the tea pot, effortlessly.

You’re free to create, change or take out the whole layer of reality, that responds to thoughtforms.
The boundaries of reality may come with a lot more give, than you give it credit for.

Without your observation, none of this would be here.

~Suzanne Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

.

about concert readings

.
Founded on the 4th of December 2024, Concert Readings are the Bon Jovi equivalent of a Tarot reading.

Can we find the stories still buried deep inside the bootlegs?
Can we elevate the ones already told a thousand times?

This series is intended to run for ten years, covering a good part of the available 20th century concerts.
And who knows?
Maybe from 2035 up, we’ll do what Jon calls a round two!
Covering the tours 2000 – 2010.

Map out your future but do it in pencil.
Jon Bon Jovi

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

.

subscribe to my SUBSTACK
for all my English articles.

The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn –
And YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

The Fortnight | Bon Jovi 1993 04 09 | Rotterdam, The Netherlands (first night) | Concert Reading

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

Today’s card is:
The Fortnight

Bon Jovi
9 April 1993
Rotterdam
🏟️ Keep the Faith Tour

🎛️🎶🎧->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfQTmF1-ONg

A rare video registration remastered by YouTube channel hAnD90, with extra credit in the description box of the video on how the result was achieved:
“one of my best long-standing Bon Jovi pals sat down and substituted the sound with one from an external tape. With both analog sources running off speed, it was a close-to-impossible task, but he managed to keep it close to working well. Special thanks, Ronny! “

And my personal note of appreciation for integrating the pro-shot clip from You Give Love A Bad Name at 11:33, broadcast by Countdown Live (the V in the upper left screen is from the broadcast organization Veronica)

This new video version of
Bon Jovi | Live at Sportpaleis van Ahoy | Diehard Recording | Rotterdam 1993
Was uploaded on the 5th of October 2024.

 

Backstory 

9 Apr 1993 Rotterdam

.
It was 1993, and Bon Jovi had not visited the Netherlands since their bootleg bestseller (the concert has been recorded on video and is one of the most well-known shows from the New Jersey Syndicate Tour) concert at the same venue, late 1989.
That concert too, was one booked by popular demand, since the band had visited Rotterdam already in the earliest weeks of the New Jersey tour.

So they knew Holland was digging them;
The question was, after four years and with the musical landscape having changed from rock to techno and grunge, would the Dutch still want Bon Jovi?

Late 1992, the band had broken their 1990-1992 silence with their comeback album Keep the Faith, which had a surprisingly different sound.
The single Keep the Faith is generally regarded as the closest they’ve ever come to dance! Due to the beat.

And Jon looked different too: His hair was cut, and he was sporting flanel shirts.

With this first single and the new look Bon Jovi had thrown the decade a few boons. And  it worked! Coupled with an excellent album and a tight promotional tour where they performed in tv studios all over the world including Dutch Countdown;
Bon Jovi was in!

Perhaps another reason they managed to survive the 80s had also been the allure of having been the rock band that had retreated from the public view those first years of the decade.
They had not desperately tried to keep up to make the first mark and win the decade.
Instead they had given the decade time to find its feet, and had had time to adjust and see what they wanted to pick up, and what they’d leave in the 80s.
Their management, for starters.

Whether it was the hitsingle, the new album, the late 1992 Countdown performance or the Dutch liking Jon’s new looks?
It was more than enough to sell out the 9th of April in a heartbeat, and a second date on the 23rd of April was immediately scheduled.

So when they took the Ahoy stage for the first time in four years, they knew they would be back in two weeks.
Something which Jon refers to frequently, during the show.

And from the description box of an earlier upload of hAnD90:
“The band was clearly thrilled by the overwhelming demand (for tickets) as well as Richie being fueled by the visit of his friend Jimmy Page that night. As it was the standard for Bon Jovi’s shows at that venue, the energy of band and crowd was to go through the roof!“

The encore closes with: “We’ll see you guys in two weeks!”
And then they throw in an extra song:
An acoustic version of Never Say Goodbye.
Not yet, anyway. 

 

The Fortnight

the card

The Fortnight Card means you are weaving your own timeline, most likely over the span of two weeks but it could be any amount of time you are able to create an arc for.
Like a storyteller tying two events together, or a painter creating a diptych, an altar piece of two hinged wooden panels that can be closed like a book.

You’re giving a performance, creating an experience for someone, or making a piece of work but you’re also holding something back.

You’re giving your audience something to look forward to, leaving them in the sweet bliss of a promise of something yet to come.

You’re whispering in their ear:
“We’ll do this again. Soon.”

~Suzanne Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

.

about concert readings

.
Founded on the 4th of December 2024, Concert Readings are the Bon Jovi equivalent of a Tarot reading.

Can we find the stories still buried deep inside the bootlegs?
Can we elevate the ones already told a thousand times?

This series is intended to run for ten years, covering a good part of the available 20th century concerts.
And who knows?
Maybe from 2035 up, we’ll do what Jon calls a round two!
Covering the tours 2000 – 2010.

Map out your future but do it in pencil.
Jon Bon Jovi

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

.

subscribe to my SUBSTACK
for all my English articles.

The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn –
And YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

The song that summoned the album | Wild in the Streets | Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (new video)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

new story on YouTube:
click here to see it->
https://youtu.be/_aJZADqRxpc

#29 Wild In The Streets
| life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

Welcome back, Jovi friends!
Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs continues with Wild in the Streets.

It is the 10th song of the album Slippery When Wet (1986), and the final track.

If you’re not familiar with the song – or simply long to be taken back to 1987 when this video was created – you can listen here, to the official video.

It turned out this was a song that had a lot of storytelling attached to it. So much that I even forgot to mention that the innerest of inner circles of Bon Jovi fans may jokingly refer to it as “Wild Industries”, because there once was a bootleg that incorrectly listed this track as such.

And it surely lives up to its name.
Wild Industries it is!

In this video:

1. Welcome to another episode 00:00
Of Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs.
And a turbulent week where I have cut out a lot of channels through which I worked.
This series will stay on!
But if you want to know more about the 4 blogs and YouTube channel I did end, you can check my farewell video to that era here:
https://youtu.be/pMHJTSKlYqc

2. A change! 01:13
We are going to include the rare Bon Jovi songs, after all.
Rare songs are songs that were recorded but never made it to the album.
Listen to find out how they will be weaved into this series.
Starting with the next one!

3. Initially lukewarm 04:55
I was not looking forward to covering this song!
And for at least semi-good reasons, I’d say.
But I warmed up to it fast!

With thanks to a biography of this album:
“Let it Rock” by Neil Daniels
Who hailed it as the perfect ending to this album.

4. Was BON JOVI BIGGEST ALBUM, actually SUMMONED?! 10:20
( source quote Jon Bon Jovi: https://twostorytown.com/wild-in-the-streets )
Sit back for this story about brotherly love and the bigger context of guitars that brought their owners success;
With help from the other side 😈

Reference to Sinners (2025) and The Devil At The Crossroads (2019)

5. Here’s your recap 18:45
1 minute on why Wild In The Streets is probably the best song of the album, simply by its backstory alone.

6. Wrapping up the Slippery When Wet album.
And before we move on to the album that probably could have been a triple album, that’s how much material they had (New Jersey, 1988) ;
We’re going to do something entirely new!

We’re going back to the beginning, and start picking up all rare tracks or outtakes, that never made it onto the first three albums.

Check the full playlist with rare songs here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SfkAr0Ll4wz-GlGnZJNZDYh&si=x3mA6MQtkafEfI9I
Rolling List of Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – current day

Next stop, the first outtake:
We Rule The Night!

~Suzanne Beenackers
🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

get all articles without ever visiting social media and read without ads?
subscribe to my SUBSTACK
The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn – YouTube

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

Playlist Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeCKg4jvR2EoVHBOfXzHm_R

Businesses

Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

Dutch:

de Club
yoga voor generatie X

On the road | Bon Jovi 1989 12 23 | Frankfurt, Germany | New Jersey Syndicate Tour (14th month)| Concert Reading

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

Today’s card is:
On the road

Bon Jovi
23 December 1989
Frankfurt 
🏟️ New Jersey Syndicate Tour

🎛️🎶🎧->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAO0fG8bUe0

by YouTube channel hAnD90, uploaded 23 December 2023.

Backstory 

23 dec 1989 Frankfurt

.
With a four band line-up (Bon Jovi, Alice Cooper, Great White and Dan Reed Network) , this concert shortly before Christmas was actually a festival and not a regular concert.
It was called “Christmas Rock”.
At this point Bon Jovi had been touring for 13 months, three weeks and two days, and fatigue was setting in.
Where the first concerts had had their own challenges, Jon Bon Jovi was now dancing a very fine line between collapse and just pulling it off, legend has it with help from steroid injections in his throat.

When YouTube channel hAnD90 unlocked this recording after 34 years, I immediately wrote a whole article about it on my website Daily Bon Jovi Yoga.com. This site will almost certainly be dropped, for a number of reasons but one is that WordPress has eaten the layout and I would have to manually change html codes of all archived posts, if I would like to keep it operational.
But I did renew the domain recently, and changed the html, so the link to the Frankfurt 1989 article will probably work until March 2026.

I will use that 2023 article for the backstory.
The paragraphs below are from this article “a Christmas concert avant-la-lettre” (link works until March 2026)
The On the Road– Card Reading below it, is new and was written today.

“A Christmas concert, before Bon Jovi even knew they had Christmas concerts!

Frankfurt 1989, is when the band hit what must have been their Christmas-infused homesick rock bottom, playing night after night in another city in Germany.
You can hear the melancholy drip off Blood on Blood’s introduction, and throughout the show every time Jon Bon Jovi drops the word Christmas – which is often and a concept that clearly means more to him than to the 1989 German crowd, where Christmas still revolved around baby Jesus not Santaclaus (who some say was given life by Coca-Cola!)- 
the pain of missing home is almost palpable.

A year after this concert, they were indeed home.
Exactly as they had longed for, playing Germany around Christmas time, having been 16 months on the road and counting.
But they would not just rest on their laurels.

For seven years, from 1990 to 1996, they would play New Jersey’s Count Basie theatre, in the week before Christmas;
The Christmas Shows
(link to the bjtours website where you can find them all)

But nothing explained the profound meaning it had to them, to spend Christmas at home;
Than Frankfurt 23 December, 1989.”

 

On the Road

the card

The On the Road Card means you’re bypassing your own needs, claiming you are accepting and even choosing for things to be this way.
Labeling your version of working at Christmas as purpose, as inevitable, as what you have to do because it is the right thing.

You can deceive other people, but the heart is not so easily betrayed.

You have come to the brink of exhaustion, convincing even yourself this is your divine duty.
But you’re working yourself to death.

Go home, Rock Star.
Or did you not see A Christmas Carol.
I

~Suzanne Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

.

about concert readings

.
Founded on the 4th of December 2024, Concert Readings are the Bon Jovi equivalent of a Tarot reading.

Can we find the stories still buried deep inside the bootlegs?
Can we elevate the ones already told a thousand times?

This series is intended to run for ten years, covering a good part of the available 20th century concerts.
And who knows?
Maybe from 2035 up, we’ll do what Jon calls a round two!
Covering the tours 2000 – 2010.

Map out your future but do it in pencil.
Jon Bon Jovi

 

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

.

subscribe to my SUBSTACK
for all my English articles.

The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn –
And YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

The Ghost Album | Bon Jovi 1988 | Concert Reading | New Jersey – alternative double album

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

Today’s card is:
The Ghost Album

Bon Jovi
May – July 1988
Recording Studio Vancouver Canada
or unknown demo recording location 1987-1988
🏟️ New Jersey album

🎛️🎶🎧->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKOymf1mhkw&t=441s

by YouTube channel hAnD90, uploaded 2nd April 2025.

Back Story 

1988 demos new jersey album

.
Oh, THEBONJOVINEWJERSEYALBUM THEBONJOVINEWJERSEYALBUM THEBONJOVINEWJERSEYALBUM!
I ask of thee!
What could POSSIBLY have been more brilliant, more seductive, more the pinnacle 80s rock than Bon Jovi’s 1988 New Jersey album?!

The answer is of course TWO 1988 Bon Jovi New Jersey albums. 

Which is exactly what was forged, in the creative fires of the Little Mountain Sound Studios, Vancouver.
The same place where biggest-80s-rock-album Slippery When Wet had been recorded two years prior.

The band wanted this successor simply called “New Jersey” after their homestate, to be a double album.
December 1987 the band already had 30 demo songs.

But the record company didn’t want a double album, claiming the fans would not be prepared to invest that kind of money.
For context: in 1988 I would have been prepared to give my life for a new Bon Jovi record, and I was not the only 16 year old who thought that way!
So clearly the band was in the position they could have created anything they wanted, ask any price they wanted, and still have us screaming for more.
But okay.
Record companies, you know how it is.

Anyway!
What followed was one singular New Jersey album, and decades of rare recordings resurfacing in different shapes and sizes.
The band’s 2014 Deluxe edition from the album New Jersey is the most official, most complete version we have, of how this album would have sounded if the band had gotten their way and the album had been a double one.

Under the working title Sons of Beaches, recording took off.
And although I like to think that all songs had the honor of being performed at least once in the studio in Vancouver Canada, it is possible some versions were never brought into the studio.

But what we do know is that there are multiple versions, even from songs that never made it to the album!
In April 2025 hAnD90 on YouTube gave us a new interpretation of how Sons of Beaches (meaning: an alternative version to the New Jersey album) could have sounded.

The description box says:

“They’ve been around as part of the Sessions From The Vault demo bootleg collection and widely spread across the fan base and on YT. I think back in around 2011, my good friend Felipe Fontoura (some may remember his amazing acoustic Bon Jovi covers back in the day!) fine tuned the wobbly old tapes from this session and brought them up to the right speed and pitch. I slightly enhanced his work by balancing the instruments a bit more and refining some things”

This is your cue to click it, and let yourself be absolutely rocked (this is a f*ing promise!) by this jaw dropping alternative version of a double album that never existed in the first place.

🎛️🎶🎧->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKOymf1mhkw&t=441s
Bon Jovi | Sons Of Beaches | New Jersey Demo Tapes | Vancouver 1988
1hour 16min 28sec

The superb quality of their writing, music and OMG can we talk about Jon’s voice?!
Because of ALL of those things, and the crazy number of songs from this era, New Jersey will never stop being:
The Well That Keeps On Giving  

The Ghost Album

the card

The Ghost Album Card means you’ve been overpowered, most likely in the area of creativity. Capitalism and its henchmen have you in a chokehold, making you take your creative work back, or altering it.
They’re making you change the message, or cutting it in half.
Watering it down.

The power to create was given to you. The time has come to summon that same power to send the work into the world, exactly as it was intended.

Your call will be answered.

~Suzanne Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

.

about concert readings

.
Founded on the 4th of December 2024, Concert Readings are the Bon Jovi equivalent of a Tarot reading.

Can we find the stories still buried deep inside the bootlegs?
Can we elevate the ones already told a thousand times?

This series is intended to run for ten years, covering a good part of the available 20th century concerts.
And who knows?
Maybe from 2035 up, we’ll do what Jon calls a round two!
Covering the tours 2000 – 2010.

Map out your future but do it in pencil.
Jon Bon Jovi

 

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

.

subscribe to my SUBSTACK
for all my English articles.

The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn –
And YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

A Time Capsule Ballad | Never Say Goodbye | Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (new video)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

new story on YouTube:
click here to see it->
https://youtu.be/sQ-2DHUtQYE

#28 Never Say Goodbye
| life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

Welcome back, Jovi friends!
Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs continues with Never Say Goodbye.

It is the 9th song of the album Slippery When Wet (1986), and the second to last track.
It is also the very first real Bon Jovi ballad.

If you’re not familiar with the song – or simply long to be taken back to 1986 in this TIME CAPSULE OF A SONG! – you can listen here, to the official video.

In this video:

1. Welcome to another episode 00:00
Of Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs.
And why this song is such a watershed moment, in the Bon Jovi repertoire.
And a bit of an 80s time capsule 🤗

2. The 1987 Prom Song 01:34
And why it was such a darn On Point one! 😅
NB In the video I date it as “1986’s Prom song” but even with my non-existent experience with proms, I’m almost a 100% sure I should have said 1987.

3. Never released as a single?! 03:20
Or was it?
Why there is so much confusion about so many of the songs on this album, whether they were or were not released as singles.
And why they deliberately capped this mega successful album after only the third single, Wanted Dead or Alive.
Their heartfelt Swan Song.

4. Famous for these reasons 07:36
With this song never having been a single, why did it became a fan favorite?
Well!
Because this baby was the living, breathing, exhausted HEART of the show from 1986 to 1988!
It was what Jon Bon Jovi sang AFTER he FLEW over the audience, all the way to back of the venue.
All alone, an exhausted rock star, isolated, on a plateau.
For some of us, and by some of us I mean me, this pinnacle of rock star symbolism would become impossible to top.

5. the 3 different live VERSIONS 09:40

Over the course of 9 years Never Say Goodbye would be sung in three different ways.

The 1987 version: In the back of the room
https://youtu.be/p9FrdyS_RJs?si=jvxTMKCmkVuUsCfX
Vancouver

1990: the double guitar acoustic version, together with Richie Sambora
https://youtu.be/WKW6rPT6aNg?si=2s9tqFjhyrPHQqsi
Rock in Rio

1995: The Even-The-Critics-Loved-Bon Jovi Era, of musical perfection:
https://youtu.be/GTc7UR7P0bQ?si=-nbkpMovwl7uGHJJ
Jakarta

6. The 3 Groups in fanbase 12:04
Every version of Never Say Goodbye has its own fanbase!
With a special story about how Bon Jovi won over even the hardest critic. Forever.

7. How the song was created 17:17
Jon has gone on record saying Never Say Goodbye was inspired by Bruce Springsteen/ Southside Johnny’s song Hearts of Stone.
But with a demo sung by Richie Sambora, and the claim he actually wrote it about Jon and Dorothea, it is hard to get to the truth about who did what.
What we do know is that this song would never have been on the album. had it not been for the Pizza Parlor Jury!

8. The Life Lessons here 19:24
Don’t knock the power of the Pizza Parlor Jury!
And sometimes it takes 9 years before something has reached its full potential.
And even then?
Someone, somewhere, will prefer the raw 1987 Jon-is-exhausted version 😅

Next stop:
Wild In The Streets!

~Suzanne Beenackers
🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

get all articles without ever visiting social media and read without ads?
subscribe to my SUBSTACK
The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn – YouTube

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

Playlist Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeCKg4jvR2EoVHBOfXzHm_R

Businesses

Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

Dutch:

de Club
yoga voor generatie X

Double down on guitar | I’d Die For You | Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (new video)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

new story on YouTube:
click here to see it->
https://youtu.be/q9S2qqgnPkc

#27 I’d Die For You
| life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

Welcome back, Jovi friends!
Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs continues in 2025 with the most beloved fan favorite of Slippery When Wet.

To mark this special occasion, I made us an I’d Die For You playlist!
From the earliest demos to its 1996 mastery when it was turned into a ballad
I’d Die For You – Bon Jovi | Playlist – >
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeysU97wXZfucyBQSgVh0V4

I’d Die For You is the 8th song of the album Slippery When Wet (1986), but its core identity is actually being second!

For years this song was absolutely GLUED, to the spot of being played second at Bon Jovi concerts. And for good reason; With the magic of Jon Bon Jovi also playing electric guitar on this one, joining Ritchie Sambora, the song doubled down on being a rock song for the ages.

In this video:

1. Welcome to another episode 00:00
Of Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs.
The first video of 2025 and I’m happy to report I’ve made video-making the heart of my planning.
Because over the past years, it just didn’t get done!
So it promises to become a productive year.

2. Slippery When Wet Album 01:36
We’re still at the album that was their absolute biggie.
The book behind me, Let it Rock, is also about the creation of this record.

3. I’d Die For You 02:30
A fan favorite to die for that had its own designated place on every setlist for absolute years! It came second, every night from 1987 to 1989

Link to this channel’s I’d Die For You playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeysU97wXZfucyBQSgVh0V4

4. “Hey operator” 04:07
The first two on the playlist are demos which have entirely different lyrics.
Recognizable by the verses starting with “Hey operator”.
This is the version before Desmond Child came in.
And I was ON THE VERGE- of telling you this version had won me over.
Until I heard the official one (song 3 and up on the playlist)

Unbeatable!
To die for! 😉

5. Always in second place 06:32
For the longest time, I’d Die For You was glued to the second spot in their setlists!
Giving us the first life lesson:
There’s no shame in being second!

6. Less is more 08:26
The second life lesson this song brings us, is less is more.
The new lyrics are more intimate because they have less characters (the operator was no longer in the story).
In particular because the music is already so rich, it pays off to have less “exposition” or complexity, in the lyrics.

🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛
The little cat peeking into the frame every now and then is Zaza.
The pluche toys on the couch are little bear Puux, Fleurtje the Monchhichi and Master Grogu. And it’s winter so they’re all snuggled up in their blanket.
(Zaza and Flip’s baby blanket, but they’re okay with them using it)

7. Saved the best for last!! 11.22
This song live has Jon Bon Jovi on electric guitar!!
Double electric guitar really makes this song kick in.
But in recent years, something happened that broke this ancient custom.

8. The future of Bon Jovi live 14:02
Will we ever hear I’d Die For You, in its former glory?

Next stop:
Never Say Goodbye!

~Suzanne Beenackers
🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

get all articles without ever visiting social media and read without ads?
subscribe to my SUBSTACK
The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn – YouTube

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

Playlist Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeCKg4jvR2EoVHBOfXzHm_R

Businesses

Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

Dutch:

de Club
yoga voor generatie X

Codename “The List” | Rolling List of Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – current day | episode 1

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

I could not believe my eyes….
All 102 tracks on the original playlist, as created January 2021, were all still there.

And for anybody who ever tried to keep a playlist alive on YouTube, you know how easy it is for videos to fall out. Something which is indicated when it will say something like “videos which are no longer available have been hidden”

Listen to the original playlist here:
Bon Jovi 1985 – 2020 Hidden Gems In Chronological Order

When I clicked this 2021 playlist with 102 Bon Jovi gems, and this message did not show up?
I just couldn’t believe my eyes.
Surely, this could not be true. Somewhere along the list things must have gone missing.
So I printed the 2021 blogpost where I wrote out a list of all songs, and checked them one by one.

Yeah!
All there!
The original playlist is in mint condition.

In the description box I did find a 2022 note, about 5 missing songs which I had replaced at the time. But apparently after that, it had all held up.

So what I’m going to do the upcoming years, is to use this original list as the basis;
But then finetune it further.
Listing the entire catalog of rare Bon Jovi songs.

Obviously, we’re gonna add songs I found or which were brought to my attention since then.
There are actually several extra playlists on my channel already, where I collected quite a few, but it’s going to be a messy process. Did not keep any of it updated, but it’s a start.
And even this step of attending to what I collected, new songs wise, will require time to sort out.

But there is also at least one very principle choice I need to attend to;
Do I still want covers on this list, or not?

In the original list there were a few covers, but I could go without them to be honest.
But I also found new covers which I am dying to add… so I’m unsure which route to take!
Go purist and only have original material?
Or include Bon Jovi’s covers? Usually in the form of live recordings.

I called this blogpost, and the new list on YouTube “Codename: The List” which is a reference to the movie Atomic Blonde (2017).

In this movie (a fictional setting of London England and Berlin in the weeks around the fall of the wall in 1989) there is a referral at MI6 headquarters to a watch which contains a list of all spies/ operatives on all sides and all their shady deals, as having:
“Codename, The List.”

Which made a YouTube channel who had looked up all flaws in this movie, wonder why you would give something a codename that was the exact representation of what it actually was.
In other words “The List” is not really a codename for something that is an actual list.

In the same way codename The List is of course a bit silly for a list of rare and unknown Bon Jovi songs.
But in our defense;
We no longer want these songs to be a secret.

In the upcoming decade, through these blogposts as well as my YouTube (Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs);
Let’s find out who these songs are.
Learn their correct names.
Bring them out of anonymity.
To these improvised Rock Star Writer headquarters.

And offer them a chance to tell their story.
And shine.

 

~Suzanne Beenackers
🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

THE NEW list, which is starting out 29th January 2025 as a copy of the old, can be found here:
Rolling List of Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – current day

Foundational post (2021):
102 Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – 2020

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

get all my international articles without ever visiting social media
and read without ads?
subscribe to my SUBSTACK
The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn – YouTube

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

Playlist
Rolling List of Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – current day:

A Designated Cover Song | Without Love | Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (new video)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

new story on YouTube:
click here to see it->
https://youtu.be/XH5TcMJAGgE

#26 Without Love
| life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

Welcome back, Jovi friends!
Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs continues with the least recognized song of the album, Without Love.
It has the questionable honor of being the only song on this album that was never performed live.

Without Love is the 7th song of the album Slippery When Wet (1986).

In this video:

1. Welcome to another episode 00:00
Of Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs.
This sure feels like ages ago!
(in reality it was one packed December month ago)

But this song has the perfect line for it:
🎵🎶 “I’ve been through some changes
But some things always stay the same” 🎵🎶
There’s nothing “without love”, and I do love making these videos!
So of course, I am back.

2. One of 4 Siblings 01:20
Desmond Child co-wrote several songs for Bon Jovi’s album Slippery When Wet.
Without Love is one of the two lesser known songs.

The fourth Desmond Child song is I’d Die For You, which is up next;
And about which I already have a lot of emotions! 🥶😬

As opposed to the usual suspects on this album, competing for Best Song, it appears to be the upcoming I’d Die For You that seems to be presenting the biggest challenge so far in this series!

3. A designated Cover Song 04:57
The unusual thing Jon Bon Jovi said about Without Love
(source: https://twostorytown.com/without-love)

4. What would Tony Kuzminski say about this song?! 06:14
Always a great question to ask oneself.
(read his answer for any Bon Jovi song here: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/bon-jovi-songs-ranked/)

5. The Life Lesson! 07:37

Okay!
So we’ve definitely had lessons that were more tightly knit to the song itself.
But my friend, rarely will you get a “deeper cut” of insiders-only yoga knowledge!
Colored in, by yours truly.
So this theory was passed down to me, in an era long gone. But I expanded on it, and developed it into my own thing.

I’m not even going to say what it’s about.
Because YouTube has probably got me shadow banned enough based on verbal analysis alone.
But it’s good 😉

Next stop:
I’d Die For You!
🥶😬

~Suzanne Beenackers
🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

get all articles without ever visiting social media and read without ads?
subscribe to my SUBSTACK
free memberships provided
The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn – YouTube

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop

Playlist Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06SeCKg4jvR2EoVHBOfXzHm_R

Businesses

Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

Dutch:

de Club
yoga voor generatie X

The Rough Start | Bon Jovi 1988 10 31 | Dublin, Ireland | New Jersey Syndicate Tour (first concert)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

Today’s card is:
The Rough Start

Bon Jovi
31 October 1988
Dublin, Ireland
🏟️ New Jersey Syndicate Tour

🎛️🎶🎧->
https://youtu.be/0WIxdPC_H4o?si=YSliENQq6UFdOxzk

by YouTube channel hAnD90, uploaded 31st October 2023.

Back Story 

31 Oct 1988 Dublin

.
The first concert of the New Jersey Syndicate Tour is best known for appearing in the opening scene of the Bon Jovi documentary Access All Areas, as being plagued by technical issues and arguments in the dressing room afterwards.
The setlist and concert analysis available at Bon Jovi Tour also points to an anomality of 6 out of 7 of the final songs having been covers.

The recording became available in YouTube channel hAnD90’s 2023 Halloween series!
Meaning it was so bad, it was scary 🎃👻
But with regard to what was actually on the tape, the general reception was that the concert had not been bad at all.

Maybe there is a lesson for us all, about how sometimes our own insecurities are our biggest enemy.

The Rough Start

the card

 

The Rough Start Card means you’ve probably started something without giving it the right amount of thought to prevent flaws, mishaps and mayhem coming your way.
“What are you doing back on the road so soon?” a reporter asked Jon Bon Jovi, at the start of the New Jersey Tour.
At the time he had thought it was a stupid question.

It wasn’t until years later he realized the reporter had had a very good point, and that it had indeed been borderline irresponsible, returning so quickly.

In particular because the tour would be extended and overbooked, keeping them occupied for 16 months and pushing them to breaking point.

And yet, Bon Jovi’s New Jersey Syndicate tour would ultimately go down as their most impressive, legendary, and daring undertaking.
And it established their reign.

The messy start in Dublin would amount into an accomplishment that would echo into eternity. 

The Rough Start Card is both a warning and an omen.

You are starting the journey of a lifetime. 

.
~Suzanne
🇳🇱 Tikkie
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🌎 Paypal

You can follow all content on:
Twitter, Facebook, and I am new on Instagram.

.

about concert readings

.
Founded on the 4th of December 2024, Concert Readings are the Bon Jovi equivalent of a Tarot reading.

Can we find the stories still buried deep inside the bootlegs?
Can we elevate the ones already told a thousand times?

This series is intended to run for ten years, covering a good part of the available 20th century concerts.
And who knows?
Maybe from 2035 up, we’ll do what Jon calls a round two!
Covering the tours 2000 – 2010.

Map out your future but do it in pencil.
Jon Bon Jovi

 

That was it! 

Thank you for reading my Rock Star Writer blog!
Subscribe to the blog, to get them in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

.

subscribe to my SUBSTACK
for all my English articles.
Fair warning the videos will no longer be included there

The Socials:
Instagram – Twitter – Rock Star Writer Facebook – Facebook Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver – LinkedIn –
And YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs

my business since February 2023:

Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

+ Dutch 

🇳🇱 de Club op YouTube
yoga voor generatie X

🌍🌎 📚🛒
Online bookshop