’80s rock image still appealing

March 5, 2008, was either the most horrifying or exhilarating night of my life. Or both. I’m… March 5, 2008, was either the most horrifying or exhilarating night of my life. Or both. I’m really not sure.

You see, that particular Wednesday night I somehow procured a pair of free tickets to the Bon Jovi show at Mellon Arena.

Now, I don’t particularly like Bon Jovi music, nor do I have a mullet. And when the band’s most epic album, Slippery When Wet, came out, I was a seven-month-old fetus.

The only tie I really have to these New Jersey-ites is that I appreciate exactly one of their songs when drunk and I know that my mom has a huge crush on that lead-singer hunk. Sorry dad, you had to find out somehow.

So why go to a show that I had no true interest in? What can I say, I was intrigued.

I wanted to find out why this band could fill the biggest venue in Pittsburgh, not once, but twice (the band played a second show on Monday night).

I wanted to see who actually went to a Bon Jovi show, and I wanted to get drunk and sing “Livin’ On A Prayer.” Plus, the tickets were free.

Having purposely arrived late enough to miss that dreadful Daughtry, my buddy Wexler and I reached our seats in the middle of “Runaway.”

In front of us stood a man in a pink polo, white scarf and perfectly groomed goatee who pumped his fist in the air during every chorus. Next to him was a woman who – I could just tell – drove a minivan. We’d arrived in yuppie hell.

The band members played with razor-sharp precision on a huge stage adorned with school-bus-sized screens and special boxes for foxy 40-something fans. Yet every time Jon looked at guitarist Richie Sambora and flipped his hair, it seemed rehearsed. Every time he groaned “Ah!” all sexily or pointed to the ladies (yes, all the ladies), it seemed rehearsed.

I felt like I was at a Broadway performance, not a rock show.

There was no spunk, no creativity and no passion, just choreographed stage jumps to songs right off the radio. The spectacle in front of me represented everything I loathe about mainstream rock ‘n’ roll.

And yet I couldn’t look away.

Somewhere deep down in my soul, I accepted the show for what it was: entertainment.

This was not some sweaty basement show or the latest art-rock band from Brooklyn – this was a very well-oiled performance from a band who reigned supreme in the ultimate era of showy, performance rock: the ’80s.

Let’s be real – bands like Poison, Motley Crue and Def Leppard were never really about the music. They were about the hair, the image, the lifestyle – they were all about the performance, “American Idol” with drugs and guitars.

And the crowd ate it up. The arena full of folks two generations older than us were reliving that life right in front of Wexler’s and my amazed eyes.

They remembered 20 years ago when this stuff wasn’t nostalgic, it was badass – it was dangerous. At least that’s what VH1 would lead us to believe.

Sure, Bon Jovi wasn’t, say, R.E.M. in 1986 (when that band was considered edgy college-rock), but they had some element of rock ‘n’ roll in them. I mean, hell, I’d rather have been backstage at a hair metal concert than an R.E.M. show any day.

But as they, and their audience, got older, all that danger, all that attitude slipped away.

Camaros turned into station wagons, living paycheck to paycheck turned into living prosperously.

When Sambora took center stage to play a solo jam, it seemed that we might see some passion.

But at the end of the song, a single column of light shot down from the ceiling onto the lone, Jesus-esque Jon Bon Jovi, who stood atop a raised platform in the middle of the audience.

Two women, presumably mother and daughter, were standing right behind him and screamed so loud it seemed both of their heads would actually explode. The elder of the two reached out to him, nearly falling.

“Jon!” she seemed to cry. “Yes, I am old. Yes, I have white hair. But damn it, I can still party!”

So there I sat, caught in a schism between hating and loving Bon Jovi – realizing that this was not the same caliber rock show it had been in 1986, when even then it was more of a put-on than a concert, and yet not hating it completely.

At some point I stopped looking for creativity, for passion, for rock ‘n’ roll.

Mainstream rock isn’t about all that. Mainstream rock is just pop music with better innuendo – it’s just entertainment.

The band encored up with “Livin’ On A Prayer,” but the $8.50 beer price ate my wallet before I felt any sort of buzz.

The closer, “I Love This Town,” featured an impressive, if not comical, montage of down-home folks at gas stations and other American places holding “We Love Bon Jovi” signs and ended on some Pittsburgh images, including our divisive Otter-Panther logo.

The whole thing was further proof that Bon Jovi was not – if the band ever had been – metal, but rather was now actually channeling John Mellencamp as all-American good ol’ boys.

Wexler and I traveled home confused and hungry, pondering this thought: Which band of our generation will, in 20 years, transform into tools who play to nostalgic 35-year-olds wearing yuppie clothing, longing for the day when the entertainment factor was at least rivaled by some semblance of real rock ‘n’ roll?

The answer is Green Day, and that band is already half-way there. But we’ll all be there, myself included, singing along, pumping our fists in the air, reaching for a time when we were still cool and the music still kicked ass.

Just don’t expect me to wear a white scarf.