Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” was a multi-platinum international Top 5 smash that topped the American charts for an entire month in 1987. This no doubt came as a surprise to the group’s frontman, who really didn’t like the song when it was first written.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to record it, but I wasn’t all that impressed on the day that we wrote it,” Jon Bon Jovi tells People magazine. “It was the simple chord progression, the melodies and the lyrics.”
Then Hugh McDonald made an uncredited contribution, and “Livin’ on a Prayer” suddenly had new momentum. “The bass line came to life in the demo studio, when we took it back to the band and worked it up,” Bon Jovi said. “That’s how it became what it is.”
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He says Bon Jovi “knew what we wanted. We just didn’t have it, and so I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s good. Good day. Good day at the office,’ and I was wrong.” Then, stating the obvious, he adds: “It’s one of the biggest songs in our catalog.”
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Bon Jovi Was Wrong About Another Smash Hit, Too
Bon Jovi’s private life has been in the news lately following his statement that he got “away with murder” over the course of his 35-year marriage to high-school sweetheart Dorothea Hurley. They began dating in 1980, four years before the arrival of Bon Jovi’s self-titled first album. “I’m a rock ‘n’ roll star. I’m not a saint,” he told Michael Strahan on ABC’s Halfway There special. “I’m Jon Bon Jovi. It was pretty good.”
By the way, “Livin’ on a Prayer” wasn’t the only single that Bon Jovi was wrong about. He also had his doubts when it came to “Always,” the million-selling No. 4 hit from 1994.
Noting that it’s “also one of our biggest songs ever,” Bon Jovi told People magazine: “When I’d written that, we demoed it for a movie that I had written it for, and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s not very good.’ Put it on the shelf, and an A&R guy who was a friend of ours was listening to some of those lost songs, and he said, ‘You know, this is a monster hit.’ He was right.”
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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