Jon Bon Jovi recalls Giants Stadium glory days with Bruce Springsteen music on SiriusXM
The former Giants Stadium in East Rutherford was the top of the mountain for Jon Bon Jovi.
“I’m all choked up,” said the Sayreville-born rocker when he finally made it there with Bon Jovi in 1989.
Bon Jovi talked of the magic of Giants Stadium when he played “Wrecking Ball “ by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as a surprise guest deejay, playing all Springsteen songs Nov. 25 on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio.
“This song was about the tearing down of Giants Stadium,” Bon Jovi said. “Giants Stadium: the place where the New York Giants played football and the Jets, of course, played football. The place that, in rock history, was the place that you dreamt of playing. This was beyond your wildest, wildest dreams. The first time that I played there was 1989.”
Skid Row and Billy Squirer opened for Bon Jovi on June 12, 1989. Giants Stadium was open from 1976 to 2010, and Springsteen and the E Street Band played there 24 times, starting in 1985 with the “Born in the U,S,A, “ tour.
E Street closed the stadium with a five-show run in late September and early October of 2009, when they debuted “Wrecking Ball.”
“This is our last show at Giants Stadium, where we’ve had many victories,” said Springsteen from the stage of the final show.
The last song was “Jersey Girl.”
“The E Street Band were closing the building and Bruce writes ‘Wrecking Ball,’ said Bon Jovi on Monday. “The agreement was, they were going to close the building, and we were going to open MetLife (Stadium in May of 2010).
“But this song, and that lyric, ‘Bring on your wrecking ball,’ it’s just the perfect song for what that was, and the majesty and the memories and the rubble. Being in that building, and going there for games, and going there for shows, and being blessed enough to play there.”
Bon Jovi also spent fall Sundays in MetLife Stadium in the ’80s hanging out with the champion Giants.
DJ Bon Jovi also played “The Promised Land,” “Born to Run,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Atlantic City,” “Adam Raised a Cain,” “Murder Incorporated,” and a duet with Springsteen on Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name,” recorded in 1998 at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank during a benefit concert for a slain Jersey Shore police officer.
“The E Street Band were the Beatles, when you grew up in New Jersey,” Bon Jovi said. “When I was a boy, I would drive down to Asbury Park, just cutting my teeth in the music business, playing in the bars.
“If you were lucky enough, you’d walk into one of those bars and there were 10 members of the Jukes, and seven members of the E Street Band. One of them would be somewhere, almost every night — and if you got really lucky, you would run into Southside or, on a magic night, Bruce.”
