New remaster  Bon Jovi 7 May 1985 L’ Eldorado Theatre Paris, France 🇫🇷 🏟️ 7800º Fahrenheit Tour new remaster AM Broadcast 🎛️🎶🎧-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei8Z5a5WgAI Full Show  🎛️🎶🎧-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxHcX9TYYL4 a previous missed-by-me upload from 5 August 2020 One week ago, on 24 September 2023, the hAnD90 channel uploaded a remastered audio of Bon Jovi’s first headliner concert on European soil; Paris, France, in the spring of 1985. Bon Jovi had just released their second album 7800º Fahrenheit, and although in North-America they would still be cornered in the opening slot for the rest of the year; Japan and Europe were ready for more! So before duty called touring North-America with RATT, they toured Japan in April, and Europe in May. On their own accord. The European leg of the tour started in Paris, in a place which I think has an early 20th century ring to it! L’ Eldorado Theatre Wikipedia tells us the Eldorado was indeed a mid 19th century theatre. One of Toulouse Lautrec’s most famous works, an advertisement featuring a man with a cape, hat and a red scarf, was for a show at the Eldorado. It was commissioned by the artist himself, the man portrayed on the poster, entrepreneur and singer songwriter Aristide Bruant. The venue was still functioning under its original name when Bon Jovi played there, and a selection of songs from the show was broadcast on French radio. It is this broadcast that is now available in a new remastered upload. When I saw the new remaster, I checked to see if the concert was already in my playlists of 20th century Bon Jovi shows, or if it was newly available. The answer was that I had managed to miss it. So it was new to me, but it had been there all along. Earlier uploads were not spotted by me, and the show was missing from my playlists. So I have added an earlier upload of the show as well, also because this older recording, although still incomplete, does include the first four songs: Tokyo Road, Roulette, Breakout, Only Lonely. With the new hAnD90 remaster, Bon Jovi’s historic first headliner concert is one step closer to being immortalized, just like Aristide Bruant will forever be remembered by the art work Toulouse Lautrec made for him.

Bang Bang!

👩🏼‍💻 the story 1 October 2023

 

You were five when I was six We rode on horses made of sticks When you were nine and I was ten You swore our love until the end

Bang bang! 

 

the first four songs

For the first four songs, we’re going to turn to the longer, older upload: Bon Jovi – Live at L’Eldorado | Full Concert in Audio | Paris 1985 length: 1:13:17 by Bon Jovi Live Concerts

“Will you please welcome, from the streets of New York City back to the streets of Paris France, Bon Jovi!”

The recording opens with a single electric guitar and a voice-over introducing the band, and as irrational as it sounds, I cannot hear anyone else in this voice but Jon Bon Jovi himself. So I will go with the assumption he did their own introduction, still off-stage, and then they walked on stage to kick it off with Tokyo Road – a song from their second album 7800º Fahrenheit, which was then 6 weeks old – and straight into the second song Roulette, from the first album.

Bon soir Paris! It’s good to be back, real good to be back. We ended our last tour here with KISS in November. And we knew you guys knew how to rock, but now we gotta know if you guys know how to sing.

At this point, before Jon has given away he’s hinting at the acapella Woo-woo sing-and-answer live intro to Breakout; A few people in the audience are already singing it! A sign there were dedicated fans in the small crowd. The venue has a maximum of a thousand, but judging from the sounds of the audience I sincerely doubt they had this.

We got a brand new album out, and we had to start our tour in Paris. 

Only Lonely is introduced with the announcement of the new album and the reminder that they had to start the tour here in Paris, after having ended the previous one here as well. And after this second album song, we’re already moving into the piano driven harmonies of the cover song “Bang Bang”. A song which was not carved into my memory until the turn of the century movies Kill Bill 1 and 2, but which Bon Jovi had picked up on and integrated into their earliest of shows. This is where the French radio edit starts, and we can switch to the new upload. .

the french radio broadcast

Bon Jovi | Live at L’ Eldorado Theatre | AM Broadcast | Diehard Audio | Paris 1985 length: 50:22 by hAnD90  Whomever directed the radio edit, they sure knew what they were doing! Not only do the haunting harmonies and lyrics of Bang Bang make a compelling show opener, the song also functions as an introduction to; -a song that surprises me -and wins me over -and has me writing things on my notepad like “best song ever?!”; Time and time again! The absolutely unmatched first album song “Shot Through The Heart”! Later on, after the first two albums of Bon Jovi had quietly sunk away into oblivion, the title would still be immediately recognizable because the words have been repeated in Bon Jovi’s breakthrough hit “You Give Love a Bad Name”. But in 1985 Paris, France, Shot Through The Heart was still a standalone and captivating song. It was their best song to date, and apparently it still has the power to make bloggers wonder 40 years later, if perhaps it was still their best song ever! The audio from Paris does not come with a visual, but there is a pro-shot video from Tokyo on the 28th of April, so less than 10 days prior. It gives you an impression of how the performance of Bang bang/ Shot Through The Heart in Paris, must have looked like: Bon Jovi – Bang Bang / Shot Through The Heart (Tokyo 1985) After Shot Through the Heart, Jon Bon Jovi addresses the crowd again, but his introduction of the ballad Silent Night, trying to get the crowd in a more gentle mood, goes a bit off-point when Jon also tries to address someone named Gus, about the feedback. This is a definition of what feedback is: “when the amplified sound from any loudspeaker re-enters the sound system through any open microphone and is amplified again and again and again.” Silent Night, another brand new song from the Fahrenheit album, would stay on the setlist for almost two years, until early 1987. That’s when Never Say Goodbye would take over its ballad spot. Again, footage from Japan from the 28th, a crisp video makeover of much higher quality than Shot Through The Heart, gives an impression of what Silent Night looked like at the time. However it does not give us a second go at a husky sentence Jon speaks to close the song, because it has been edited out, or Jon didn’t say it in Japan. “Bye bye baby” he whispers in the microphone. Sans break, the show rolls into The Hardest Part is the Night. Probably the most “80s rock” song, Bon Jovi ever made! But I’m open to be proven wrong. Then Jon addresses the crowd asking them if they believe in rock n’roll, and after both the floor and the balcony have given satisfying roars back, he gives the stage to Richie Sambora’s guitar solo. An eclectic mix but if you listen closely, you can already hear which parts would be taken along for the ride, becoming Wanted Dead or Alive’s introductory song, or transform into the musical intermezzo of Bad Medicine, played live. The guitar crosses over into In and Out of Love, another one from the Fahrenheit album. Next up is Runaway. Opening with a synthesizer intro, keyboard player David Brian drives the crowd wild, playing only a few chords and then halting. Breakout’s catchy call-and-response from the earliest part of the show, is still not forgotten, and you can hear a few audience members on the verge of belting it, the moment they lose their patience being teased. What I’m going to dub the final song of the main set, is an exciting version of Get Ready, including a long improvised interaction between Jon’s call to “Raise your hands”, Richie’s guitar and the crowd bravely trying to keep up with everything happening on stage!   “We’ll see you again!” Jon closes. The same members of the audience immediately fill the silence with the Woo Woos from Breakout, although at this point their knowledge of the exact melody has been lost. And then, le moment supreme! At least to me, because hearing stories like this really teaches me about resilience, about showing up, giving all you’ve got, and all those more personal qualities, that are the reason Jon Bon Jovi and band got to the top, and stayed at the top! And I honestly do not understand the whole story, I think that would take someone who is a native English speaker. But Bon Jovi tells the crowd that they have lost all their equipment coming from Tokyo to Paris, and then he thanks what appears to be another band for lending them their equipment. Wait, what right?! You’re making your debut as a headliner on European soil, and you made your mark using someone else’s gear?!  And without a clue where your own stuff is? That’s tenacity! Jon thanks the Paris’ crowd, and then the encore follows. With one howling guitar, Jon Bon Jovi sings a slow intro to Burning for Love:

Your love keeps me burning. I don’t know what it is…. Paris France; You keep me burning for your love

We listen to the encore, until a French broadcaster interrupts, and the recording fades out. An unworthy ending of a concert edit that was well-thought through, beginning to almost the end. It had resisted making it too smooth by cutting out all intros or speeches. And yet it was concise enough to fit into 50 minutes, giving listeners all over France an impression of Bon Jovi. You do not want to butcher the ending, after putting so much thought into the rest. And yet by cutting in bluntly, that is exactly what they did.

Bang bang! You shot me down Bang bang! I hit the ground That awful sound bang bang My baby shot me down

 

Newly added

The two recordings of Bon Jovi 5 May 4, Paris, France have been added to: New in Bon Jovi concerts before 1997 And I have added this show to the playlist: “Part II: Bon Jovi concerts on this day 6 Dec-9 June (before 1997)” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06ScAo9UN4GyhtQWYfl3d6jMT at May 7