Richie Sambora World Tour 2012
Richie Sambora, legendary guitarist and founding member of Bon Jovi, played to a sold out audience at Shepherd's Bush Empire before being told to "go on full vocal rest".
Sambora seemed to have mesmerised the crowd throughout his set, everyone in the room looked on adoringly and sang along with practically every song played from Aftermath Of The Lowdown, despite its recent release.
Despite the crowd looking on in awe and Sambora having spent the best part of three decades working in the music industry he seemed to lack something, he wasn't engaging, he didn't have the aura of cool about him, but being practically the only non Bon Jovi super fan in the crowd it would be fair to say I was one of the few people feeling that way.
Sambora's band were very tight and well rehearsed, there was no doubting that they are an extremely talented group of musicians. Needless to say, Sambora has a huge back catalogue of music thanks to his work in Bon Jovi, however, he only opted to play Dead Or Alive. Apart from that one song and his solo work, his set was compiled of an interesting mix of covers which included; Don't Look Back In Anger by Oasis, The End by The Beatles, Van Morrison's Wild Night and Bruce Springsteen's Hungry Heart.
Richie Sambora played a diverse set which was good to see, but it would have been nice to hear some classic Bon Jovi tracks. To give credit where credit is due, you could not tell that Sambora was struggling with laryngitis, but his upcoming shows have now been postponed.