By Michael Swanger

Like a lot of fans, Alicia Lopez fell in love with Bon Jovi at an early age… the eighth grade, to be exact. Right about when the band’s 1986 “Slippery When Wet” album [first available on vinyl] featuring the hit video songs [when MTV played them] “You Give Love A Bad Name” and “Livin’ On A Prayer” was catapulting the moderately popular rock band from Sayerville, N.J., into the stratosphere of global rock stars, Lopez’s Bon Jovi crush was beginning to bloom. She bought their records, hung their posters on her bedroom walls, saw them in concert when she was 16 years old and drove to Kansas City to see them again.

“Oh, I love them,” she said. “I’m so excited to see them again I can’t stand it!”

Similarly, Dean Hermsen, who grew up in Carroll but moved to Des Moines eight years ago, admits to being bitten by the I Love Bon Jovi Bug in 1983.

“My brother turned me on to them,” he said. “At the time, I was into different kinds of music, and I was making fun of him for being a fan of those ‘hair bands.’ Then I listened to them and I thought, ‘Oh, crap, this is good!’ From there I started buying their records and going to their shows, and I’ve been a fan ever since. I just love their music.”

Lopez and Hermsen are just two of the more than 32 million faces Bon Jovi has rocked since forming in 1983. They are also among those who have purchased some of the more than 120 million records Bon Jovi has sold. But perhaps most important to the band, they are the kind of loyal fans responsible for passing the Bon Jovi torch to a new generation of followers, as it is not uncommon to see three generations of fans at one of their concerts.

Now a 34-year-old wife, mother of four and marketing administrative coordinator at an insurance company, Lopez counts down with her children the number of days to Bon Jovi’s concert on Sunday at Wells Fargo Arena. “Every time I do it, my 11-year-old daughter rolls her eyes,” she said. “They think I’m a freak.”

But, Lopez admits, the exposure seems to have an effect. “When I’m in the car, they have to listen to my Bon Jovi CDs, which they’re beginning to enjoy,” she said. “And when I tell them to have a nice day, they think I’m saying it because that’s the title of one of their records [2005’s “Have A Nice Day”].”

Over the years, however, Lopez’s fandom has grown beyond the music. Excited as she is to see them in concert, she has also grown to appreciate their charitable work.

“I love the fact they’ve all stuck together and they do good things for communities and their fans,” the West Des Moines woman said. “I never miss Jon when he’s on ‘Oprah’ to give money to her causes.”

Hermsen, who sells retail electronic equipment and works part-time as a bartender and DJ, scored third row tickets for he and his daughter, Brittany. The tickets are a gift for Brittany’s 16th birthday. It also marks the sixth or seventh time Hermsen has attended a Bon Jovi concert, dating back to his first in 1989, when he and a group of friends brought a keg of beer into the hotel room they were staying at in Ames before they went to see the band play Hilton Coliseum to promote its 1988 “New Jersey” album. There won’t be any kegs of beer or hotel rooms this time around for Hermsen, but he said he is just as excited to see them again as he was for the first time almost 20 years ago.

“They put on a very high-energy show,” he said. “It’s a spectacle — something to see.”

A lucky fan might see their handiwork with a video camera on one of the big high definition screens that make up the concert stage Bon Jovi is bringing to town on its “Lost Highway World Tour” in support of its 2007 album, “Lost Highway” — a title that suggests a never-ending journey. With each tour, Bon Jovi — whose founding members include singer Jon Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan and drummer Tico Torres [bassist Alec John Such left the band in 1994] — finds a new way to pay homage to its fans through some form of interaction. But their latest marketing invention is downright savvy — create a contest [www.bonjovilovesmytown.com] where fans in each city compete for the opportunity to show raw footage of their hometown while the band performs the song “I Love This Town.” A panel of judges and fans select the winner of each grand prize, which includes two tickets and the chance to be onstage with the band. [One Des Moines entry featuring footage of Gray’s Lake, the A&E cow and Wells Fargo Arena was available for viewing at press time.]

The contest isn’t the first time the band has enlisted the help of its fans to make a video. The 1988 video of “Bad Medicine” rocketed to the top of the Hot 100 Billboard chart featuring footage captured by fans.

Drummer Tico Torres said fan interaction is key to the band’s longstanding success. Just look at the awards they’ve amassed, from 1987’s MTV Video Music Award for Best Stage Performance to 2007’s People’s Choice Award for Best Rock Song for “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”

“We’ve always been a fan-based band,” he said. “We encourage participation. You come to see us, we want you to forget your troubles for a couple hours — to get away from your normal life.”

Torres said he doesn’t get to see the videos while they play onstage because of his location behind the drums, but he enjoys seeing the audience’s reaction when they are played.

“It’s sort of like they just saw their picture up there,” he said. “There’s a lot of pride to that. They’re proud of their town, and that makes them feel good.”

Like any other major rock act that has achieved the kind of success and popularity Bon Jovi has, Torres said the fans motivate the band to continue to tour. After having played more than 2,500 concerts, he said life on the road continues to evolve, though it is not as glamorous as most people think because it involves a lot of travel and rest.

“Every day is different, but the best part is the immediate reaction from the fans. There is a lot of gratification in seeing a smile on somebody’s face or seeing somebody cut loose and singing,” he said. “Sometimes you’ll get somebody and you can tell it’s their first show and you watch the progress on their face and it’s like some kind of metamorphosis goes on. It’s kind of cool.”

To keep things fresh for the band and crew, Torres said Bon Jovi changes its set list for each show. The current tour also features for the first time giant LCD video screens that never stop moving during the band’s 150-minute show so that fans in the round can see every angle. Torres said the band likes to do things that have never been done before when incorporating advanced technology into their show, but without being a slave to it.

“The music comes first,” he said. “The rest of it complements the music, but we never rely on it.

“I don’t know if it’s our East Coast upbringing, but we have always wanted to put on the best show humanly possible. It’s important to us to satisfy. I guess we’re co-dependent because we like to be sure everybody has a great time and we don’t let anybody down.”

Not everyone, though, has embraced the band’s new album. Despite the fact that Bon Jovi is the first rock band to top the country music charts, its new album “Lost Highway” has received some criticism for its country-tinged sound. Some have posed the question of “When did Bon Jovi become a country band?” even though the line between rock and country has increasingly blurred over the last three decades.

Bon Jovi promotes the record as a tribute to Nashville — particularly the song “I Love This Town” — and the influential songwriting community there. The album also includes “Stranger,” a duet with country singer LeAnn Rimes, who has enjoyed some crossover success of her own. Keyboardist David Bryan said the band plays a handful of songs from the album each night and the audience is enthusiastic about them.

“For us it’s not a country album when you listen to it,” he said. “It’s country flavored, if you will; it has some banjo and fiddle in the mix. We always want to grow and progress, but we don’t want to leave our fan base behind. We’re not going to do something so left field like a techno record. I think it’s an addition to what we do. It’s what keeps us classic and current.”

Lopez said “Lost Highway” is another example of the band’s musical growth. “A lot of people are judgmental about it, but I think it’s a great album. There’s country flair to it, but they’re not a country group. It just shows that they’ve grown with their fans because we’ve grown through the years and you have to change with the fans and give them something new.”

Hermsen agrees, adding that Elvis Presley was able to traverse genres and his fans followed.

“Elvis sang gospel and country music, and he’s still labeled the King of Rock ‘n Roll,” he said. “People want to make fun of it, but they’re in good company. It’s just Bon Jovi being Bon Jovi.”

Part of being Bon Jovi is banding together. Over the years, the group has endured some distractions offstage: see recent headlines regarding Sambora’s arrest for drunk driving, for example. “It’s a matter of helping each other through the good times and the bad times,” Bryan said. “We’re friends and brothers. We’re more of a family than our own families.”

The band’s occasional negative press, however, doesn’t deter Lopez. “If anything, it makes me more supportive of them,” she said. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

Another part of being Bon Jovi, Torres and Bryan said, is not resting on your laurels.

“You’re only as good as your last gig,” Torres said. “We give it our best every night, and we don’t take anything for granted. You learn after 25 years that people pay their hard earned money to see a show, and you want to make it worth their while.”

“We’ve always said it takes a hell of a lot of hard work to get lucky, and we’ve put in our time and got our fair share of luck,” Bryan added. “We’re proud and honored to walk out on that stage and do what we do and kick ass for two-and-a-half hours. And it’s fun, and creative, and new. As long as those three factors keep going forward, so will we, and I don’t foresee any hitches in the road.”

That’s good news for diehard Bon Jovi fans like Lopez who are hooked for life and retain some youthful enthusiasm for the band.

“They’re easy on the eyes, even as they’ve gotten older,” she said. CV

Bon Jovi “Lost Highway World Tour” by the numbers

60 Total North American Lost Highway Concerts

36 Total North American Cities

966,022 Total Projected North American Audience During Lost Highway Tour

5 Record-breaking number of concerts that Bon Jovi will perform at Air Canada Centre on a single tour

5 number of Fender & Takamine guitars Jon Bon Jovi uses on tour

24 number of guitars Richie Sambora currently is traveling with including Gibson, Fender, ESP (Sambora model), Floyd Rose (original Sambora model), Martin (Sambora model) PRS, Taylor (electric and acoustic), Yamaha (acoustic), and Zemaitis

21 number of tuned guitars in Richie’s private guitar vault room located just below the right side of the stage. The remaining 3 are used in his dressing room and hotel room. They all get played.

4 average number of drumsticks Tico Torres breaks per show

14 number of PEARL drumheads on Tico’s kit

4 number of keyboards that David Bryan uses throughout each concert including 2 Yamaha Motif XS-8 keyboards, and Oberheim OB5 organ and a Yamaha P-500 Clavinova Piano

9 number of buses used to transport artist, band and crew

100 number of touring crew members

100 number of additional local crew members recruited in each city

8 Hours it takes to set up the production/staging.

3.5 - 4 Hours it takes to break down stage and load trucks

13 number of trucks used to transport stage and tour materials

32 number in million of fans who have seen a Bon Jovi concert

10 number of concert that Bon Jovi performed in a row to open the new Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

#1 Grossing event of 2007 (Prudential Center opening) * Pollstar

#6 Grossing event “of all time” in North America (Prudential Center opening) * Pollstar

2 Number of 2007 Grammy Awards Nominations (Best Pop Vocal album for Lost Highway and Best Pop Vocal Performance and By A Duo or Group for “(You Want To) Make A Memory.”

1 number of 2007 Juno Awards in Canada that Bon Jovi is nominated (International Album of the Year)

120 number in millions of albums the Bon Jovi has sold globally

2,500 number of worldwide concerts that Bon Jovi has performed

4 number of Venetian blind video screens, suspended on the Lost Highway stage (designed by Tait Towers)

360° view the Venetian blind video screens provide the audience of the stage

2 number of techs responsible for operating the Venetian blind video screens throughout each concert to ensure seamless choreography of stage movement and video imaging

9 miles length of cabling required to set-up the tour’s audio & video including 2 miles of High Definition Video cable

295,000 watts of power generated by the tour’s 155 speakers

93 number of microphones used to amplify the band and 80+ music instruments/inputs on the tour

9 High Definition Saco V-9 LED video screens

$7,250,000 cost of video gear on tour

9 number of High Definition Saco V-9 LED video screens made up of 2080 tiles or 1,198,000 individual Light Emitting Diodes

10 High Definition Broadcast cameras (Thomson Grass Valley Kalypso)

150 number of road cases to haul the tour’s lighting

35-65 in gallons of fuel saved per week, per truck, by using Upstaging tractors equipped with APU, (Auxiliary Power Unit)

15 number of state of the art televisions on band member’s tour bus

20 x 40 size (in cubic feet) of the ocean freight container that will be used to transport Bon Jovi’s European tour — loaded with 16 tractor/trailers , 7 tour buses and the entire Lost Highway stage production — from Randers, Denmark to Glasgow, Scotland

415 number of nautical miles Bon Jovi’s ocean freight container will travel to cross the North Sea from Denmark to Scotland in approx 25 hours

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