Lars gave Jon some tips ahead of Bon Jovi’s 2026 world tour dates
Let’s face it – picking songs for a setlist isn’t easy. It gets especially tough for bands like Bon Jovi, who have amassed a huge catalog filled with multi-platinum hits and fan favorites. To further complicate things, Bon Jovi aren’t heading out on a greatest hits tour next summer. They have a brand new album to promote, and they certainly want to showcase some material from their latest effort. So, how on earth do you begin to narrow a 40-year career down for a 2-hour concert?
Well, one legendary metal drummer has some ideas.
Next summer, the rock icons are returning to the road. The group have announced an exclusive run of shows around the globe, including a huge 9-show residency at Madison Square Garden in New York City before they had across the pond for stadium shows in Ireland and the UK. The Forever Tour is in support of the band’s latest album, Forever. More dates are expected to be added in the near future.
Currently, metal titans Metallica are on tour in Australia. The stretch of shows is part of their massive ongoing M72 World Tour. The run, which launched back in 2023, has seen the band roll out a unique concept. The entire tour has been comprised of No Repeat Weekends – with two shows in every city that see the band play two completely unique setlist each night, without repeating a single song throughout the entire weekend.
So, Bon Jovi namesake Jon Bon Jovi decided to reach out to Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich to get some insight on the sometimes monumental task of crafting a setlist.
In a recent interview with Planet Rock‘s Ian Danter, Jon Bon Jovi said he’s currently having “a lot of fun” putting together some sample setlists for the band’s upcoming run because of the ample amount of material in the band’s arsenal.
“I talked to Lars, I said, ‘So let me get this straight – if you’re doing Master of Puppets on one night and One on one night, is the audience mad that they’re not there?’ He goes, ‘Nope, we have enough songs that it works.’ He goes, ‘And your catalog…’ And I went, ‘I am digging that concept.'”
“The one thing that I am in control [of] – and the only thing I am in control of at this point – is I do two hours a day, four days a week of sets, of shows. I was looking to the Metallicas. And I talked to Lars, I said, ‘So let me get this straight – if you’re doing ‘Master of Puppets’ on one night and ‘One’ on [another] night, is the audience mad that they’re not there?’ He goes, ‘Nope, we have enough songs that it works.’ He goes, ‘And your catalog…’ And I went, ‘I am digging that concept.'”
Jon did confirm that he isn’t planning on fully embracing Metallica’s No Repeat concept, he did acknowledge that he very well could.
“So, not that we’re going to do that, but I have enough songs and enough hits. I could do two separate entire shows and have hits on both sides. I’m having a lot of fun putting together shows that are multiple night shows.”
When asked if Bon Jovi’s stage setup will be in-the-round, Jon replied: “No, that much I think I know. I’ve seen a couple of couple of diagrams that they’d like to go and build.”
The band’s return to the stage comes to much relief for fans. Over the last few years, Jon Bon Jovi has endured vocal issues that culminated with surgery. Jon’s voice first faltered in public during the band’s spring 2022 U.S. run, when the frontman struggled to project and control pitch—later revealing that one of his vocal cords had begun to atrophy. After the tour wrapped, he underwent major reconstructive surgery in 2022: a medialization (thyroplasty) procedure that places an implant to push the weakened fold toward the midline so it can meet its partner and vibrate again.
He then embarked on the long, athlete-like rehab such operations demand, retraining breath support and laryngeal muscles with speech-language pathologists and singing specialists. In interviews tied to the band’s Hulu docuseries “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story” and the album “Forever,” Bon Jovi explained that recovery was steady but incomplete; he could sing, but not the two-and-a-half-hour, four-nights-a-week marathon a Bon Jovi arena show requires. He was candid that there was “no miracle”—only hard work and time—describing how an implant addressed the physical problem while therapy rebuilt stamina and finesse.
Those realities shaped the band’s 40th-anniversary year. Jon said plainly in June 2024 that he couldn’t tour while he finished rehab, reiterating that his “bar” was being able to deliver a full-length show to standard, night after night. As a result, the anniversary cycle unfolded without a road campaign: not a postponement of dated shows, but a deliberate decision to forgo a tour rather than mount one he couldn’t fully front. In other words, the spirit of a 40th-anniversary tour was effectively canceled by circumstance, even if no formal itinerary was ever announced.
Bit by bit, Bon Jovi tested the waters. Jon returned to the stage for brief appearances (including MusiCares) and, by mid-2025, played an intimate, phones-off Nashville set that mixed classics with “Forever” material—an encouraging proof-of-concept for fans tracking his progress. Through it all, he kept the messaging consistent: he would not lead a full-scale tour until he could sustain it at a world-class level. That discipline—paired with an implant, methodical therapy, and gym work to rebuild core support—gradually paid dividends. By late 2025 he was publicly optimistic, noting he felt “more than capable of singing again,” even as he emphasized that stamina, not single-song ability, was the roadblock during the anniversary year.
The coda to that story arrived alongside fresh momentum: after sitting out the 40th-anniversary road show, Bon Jovi began plotting a proper return to the big stage, with media outlets reporting initial 2026 dates and the band framing it as the payoff to a three-year rehabilitation odyssey. It’s a neat narrative turn—an injury that threatened a legacy voice, a high-risk surgery and long rehab, a hard choice to skip the anniversary tour rather than deliver a compromised version of Bon Jovi, and finally a measured comeback aimed at doing it right rather than fast. If the 40th was a celebration mostly on record and film, the next chapter points back to the arena, on terms Jon Bon Jovi insists his voice—and his fans—deserve.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers’ sixteenth studio album Forever came out on June 7, 2024 through Island Records and UMG. It is available on CD, signed CD, cassette, standard black vinyl, limited edition Ocean Waves vinyl, limited edition Ocean Waves vinyl plus an exclusive Instant Photo, limited edition 45 RPM double-LP gatefold black vinyl, and digital download. The lead single “Legendary” is available now as a clear 7-inch vinyl single. Additionally, the band has curated a special merchandise line surrounding the release, which includes t-shirts and hoodies.
“This record is a return to joy,” says frontman Jon Bon Jovi. “From the writing, through the recording process, this is turn-up-the-volume, feel-good Bon Jovi.”
On October 24, the band reissued the album as the Forever (Legendary Edition). The new edition features special guest musicians on every track. The staggering list of talent includes Jelly Roll, Avril Lavigne, Joe Elliot of Def Leppard, and Bruce Springsteen, among others.
Many fans were hopeful that this new record could mark the reunion between Bon Jovi and former founding guitarist Richie Sambora, who left the band back in 2013. Although it’s confirmed that Sambora was not involved with the new album, the door for future collaboration isn’t completely shut. In a recent interview with Audacy, Jon Bon Jovi said that there’s “nothing but love” between Sambora and the band.
“Hey, the door would always be open,” Jon said when asked about the possibility of performing with Sambora again. “It’s not that, but 11 years ago for reasons that were certainly nothing to do with the band, he walked out. There was no animosity, there was nothing but love. But we had a show that night and subsequently had one the next night, and for 11 years, I’ve been making records and doing shows. So everyone knows where the bus stops, you show up at work…but there’s nothing but love. So Richie’s gone on, on his own and he raised his daughter. So if he wanted to show up and play sometime [with Bon Jovi], he knows the songs. No animosity, I could promise you that.”