CORRECTION: Skillet singer John Cooper on Tuesday told a Salem Civic Center audience about his band’s Christian faith: "Some have said, ‘I don’t know know what Jesus has to do with rock ‘n roll.’" His quote was reported incorrectly in a review of the show published on Wednesday and in an earlier online version.

Behind the big beat bombast and positive lyrics of rock band Skillet is a frontman who just wants to be Jon Bon Jovi.

The band’s John Cooper clued in his Salem Civic Center audience well into the band’s headlining set Tuesday night, after strumming a chorus of the band’s old-school smash, “I’ll Be There for You.”

“I wish I wrote that song,” Cooper said. “You guys would not judge me if I told you I still want to be Bon Jovi?”

Judging from the screams and applause, the answer was no.

But Cooper’s raspy voice sounds more like one-time Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale. And his band, driven by the cymbal-torturing, double-bass pounding Jen Ledger, has a metal edge. The hooks, though, would make Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora proud.

The Christian-leaning crowd of 1,582 in the venue that seats about 6,000 sang along to practically everything, even to more recent tunes from the recently released CD “Awake.”  Not that some of those tunes are obscure. Cooper and company must be racking up paychecks for the songs “Hero” and “Monster,” both featured on a variety of televised spots.

The audience also responded to “It’s Not Me It’s You” and “Awake and Alive.”

Of the latter, he said: "I hate people telling me what I have to do to be cool."

He would prove his point throughout the set. Introducing the 2006 song “Yours to Hold,” he waxed about Bon Jovi and power ballads, telling the guys in the audience that “the more you like the power ballad, the more the chicks like you.”

His chick — rhythm guitarist/keyboarist/singer Korey Cooper, was onstage with him, providing color and contrast to lead guitarist Ben Kasica’s guitar-hero shred. And Ledger showed depth beyond snare- and tom-bashing, singing sweet and high on response lines in “Hero” and other tunes.

Second-on-the-bill Hawk Nelson provided contrast to the heavy rock that ruled the night, rolling out anthemic, hook-laden pop-punk from its new CD “Live, Life , Loud!”