Thursday, October 23, 2008

Bon Jovi, Rapid City, SD

It's Bon Jovi opening for RATT at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City, SD on Sept. 10, 1985. I believe this was Bon Jovi's first big national tour.



I have better closeup pictures of Bon Jovi at this show, but I shot them on Kodachrome film and the combination of my slide scanner and my lack of knowledge of how to use it makes the images unusable. Perhaps some day I'll have someone show me what I'm doing wrong.

Anyway, here's the good story from this show. With my photo pass, I was able to be in the "pit" between the audience barricade and the stage for the first three songs. As seemed to be very common back in those days, the crush of people in the front center area of the audience (plus whatever substances they had been using) was a bit overwhelming for some. The security guards began lifting a passed out girl over the barricade to get her to some medical attention. In the process they were bumping into me as I tried to shoot, so I was doing my best to get out of their way. I leaned forward toward the stage and reached for the edge of it to steady myself. You guessed it - Jon Bon Jovi choose that moment to run to the edge of the stage and step right on my fingers!

Here a couple shots of RATT at this show, which I've already covered at RATT.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like Bon Jovi. I also like the song, "Who says you can't go home" that he sings with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles.

Were you at the Pete Good/ Angel Dean/ Phil Joel concert last night? Wearing a black long sleeved shirt? If so, for a while, you were nearby me taking pics - not that you would know me! I thought about saying, "hey, are you Chad?", but then if you weren't, I would have felt weird.

Chad Coppess said...

Nope that wasn't me. I'm much older and have more gray hair. :)

Haven't been to a live concert in a couple months now, feeling withdrawals.

Matt Becker said...

Cool pictures as always Chad! It would have been fun to be around in those days.

Looks like Sturgis isn't wasting any time putting their line-up together - might just have to make it down there in 09.

Matt

Chad Coppess said...

Hey Matt,
I talked to Rod Woodruff that owns the Buffalo Chip Campground the other night and Aerosmith actually came to him and said, "We want to play next year."
Woody is also working with some other "big name" rock band on a video game concept that sounded intersting. We'll have to wait and see how that turns out.
Chad