Las Vegas Weekly

March 5, 2010 · 2:09 PM

Barry Manilow premiere at the Paris is canceled; Bon Jovi rocks MGM Grand

By Robin Leach

Barry Manilow at the Clio Awards.

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

UPDATED @6:58 P.M.

Barry Manilow’s premiere tonight has been canceled due to a power surge, which effectively shut down the music and audio-visual components of the show. Technicians will be working to alleviate the problem so that the show can go on tomorrow night at 10. Check out my tweets for the latest updates.

It’s an extraordinary showdown between two masters of music here on the Strip this weekend, and one mixes love and romance with the standards while the other is out-and-out rock and roll. Only in Las Vegas could Barry Manilow premiere the first of his 156 shows over the next two years on the same weekend that New Jersey rockers Bon Jovi make a stop with their new The Circle Tour.

Guests at last weekend’s Keep Memory Alive: Power of Love gala watched Barry ahead of his premiere tonight, and he has said that the show is a lot different than his five-year run at the Las Vegas Hilton. He’ll play his hits including “Mandy” and “Copacabana,” but there’s a lot more love and romance in this show. It all ties into his newest compilation CD Greatest Love Songs of All Time, which was released in January.

I’m told that it’s simultaneously a masterful spectacular and intimate. Overcoming technical obstacles of new sets in a new setting with a larger backing band has proved a major challenge, but everybody is excited about this becoming talked about as the best new musical show on the Strip.

Barry told me backstage last weekend: “It’s great. We couldn’t be more pleased. We set out to achieve something that should have been impossible, but we pulled it off -- and we still had a lot of fun doing it. The theater at the Paris is perfect for what we wanted to do, large but still intimate. It’s a beautiful room, and I’m proud to call it home for the next two years. The city of Paris, this Vegas hotel called Paris, it all marries beautifully as love and romance, so it will be a romantic show.”

BON JOVI

Meantime, less than a half-mile south on the same side of the Strip, the New Jersey rockers led by Jon Bon Jovi will be thrilling a sell-out crowd with The Circle Tour stop tomorrow night. The global tour that runs through 2011 hitting 30 countries with 130 shows is in support of their album The Circle, which was released last year and debuted at No. 1. A greatest-hits compilation is due for releaser this year.

I’m told that the MGM Grand Garden Arena has been configured during the past two days to add in a semi-circular ramp to get the rockers closer to the audience and that the stage features robot-moving video screens for close-up shots for fans. Bon Jovi has talked about possibly playing tracks from The Circle, Lost Highway and Slippery When Wet as part of the mix.

We’ll have full photo reports of both shows on Monday right here at Vegas DeLuxe.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.

Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

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