Jon Bon Jovi has returned to the stage performing at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night for the first time in four years following surgery to repair a damaged vocal cord.
The 64-year-old rock icon kicked off Bon Jovi’s Forever Tour at the iconic New York venue, delivering a set of over two hours and 21 songs to a rapt crowd.
He opened with the first line of The Beatles’ With a little help from my friends, a knowing nod to what he had been through.
“What would you do if I sang out of tune?” he sang, before reflecting from the stage on how much the moment meant to him.
“I haven’t heard the roar of a crowd in four years and I didn’t know if I would remember what it was like.”
He described himself as “grateful and humbled by this whole ordeal.”
The return was far from guaranteed.
After the surgery, Bon Jovi said publicly in 2024 that he did not know if he would ever be able to tour again.
The road to recovery was longer and more disorienting than he had expected, not least because the vocal cord injury came for no apparent reason.
“I had often joked that the only thing that had ever been in my nose was my finger. I never did anything to damage the wires; I had no excesses,” he shared. PEOPLE.
“I’m a trained vocalist. I’ve practiced the craft. So when a doctor had to explain to me that one of the cords was literally atrophying, it was confusing.”
At the time, he said people had to “talk me off the ledge.”
He also ruled out the obvious solutions. When asked whether he would consider lip-syncing or using auto-tune live, his answer was unequivocal: “I’d rather get hit by a bus on the freeway.”
