Feature: Bon Jovi tour kicks off

The New Jersey rock band Bon Jovi has never scrimped on staging for its tours. But for the quintet's latest road trip, frontman Jon Bon Jovi says he wanted to vault above any of its previous standards.

"We wanted to do something comparable to what the (Rolling) Stones would do, something Pink Floyd would do, something that's so over the top ...," explains Bon Jovi, 40, who formed the band during the early 1980s in Sayerville, N.J., and has gone on to sell more than 95 million albums.

The result of that ambition is a stage set that resembles the satellite-laden cover of Bon Jovi's latest album, the platinum "Bounce," which came out in October and rocketed straight to No. 3 on the Billboard charts.

Its first single, "Everyday," is nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group.

The show also incorporates custom-made "mini-movies" for the songs from the new album, as well as an extensive light show. But while Bon Jovi has been known to fly above his audiences on previous tours, this time he says "I just keep my feet on the ground and play."

"We really know how to spend money," Bon Jovi, who was born John Bongiovi, Jr., says with a laugh. "But I'm real happy we did it. It's a hell of a production, which is really cool. It's going to blow people's minds.

"And we'll be playing songs that people have known for 20 years. You want to make sure it's an event at this point."

Bon Jovi has actually been on the road since shortly before "Bounce's" release, doing a series of promotional appearances and dates in Australia and Japan before bringing the tour home on Thursday [Feb. 13] in Atlanta. The group also hooked up with the NFL to help open and close the football season, and its hit "Everyday" has been tagged as the theme song for the trophy presentation at the Super Bowl each year.

After two months in North America -- including Tiger Woods' Tiger Jam charity event April 19 in Las Vegas -- Bon Jovi will spend May and June in Europe before returning for another U.S. leg of the tour that is slated to wrap up on Aug. 8.

"It's not going to be that long a tour," says Bon Jovi, who spent 18 months on the road supporting the group's 2000 album, "Crush."

"There's so many other things I want to do and that the other guys in the band want to do. You don't want to completely tie yourself up around a touring schedule."

Among Bon Jovi's plans is more acting. His previous roles include "U-571," "Moonlight and Valentino," "The Leading Man" and TV's "Ally McBeal," and he's been batting away scripts that have come along since the band started recording "Bounce."

"I don't want to do both at once; that's a sure way to burn yourself out," he says. "I'm really happy with ('Bounce') and just that we can still go out and play and have people come to the shows and buy the records.

"That we're able to be on Top 40 radio still and competing with J-Lo and Justin Timberlake is hard, y'know? We're lucky enough to even have the opportunity to do it. Look at great guys like (Tom) Petty and Bruce (Springsteen), and these are important artists to me. But radio doesn't want to know from them, and even though they're older than me, I'm a lot closer to them than I am to the J-Lo world. We don't take this for granted at all."