FEATURE:
Groovelines
Bon Jovi - Livin' on a Prayer
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I was tempted to feature…
Bon Jovi’s third studio album, Slippery When Wet, in Vinyl Corner. The album turns thirty-five in August and, from that 1986-released album, I will select its best-loved track for deeper study. Livin’ on a Prayer is considered one of the biggest tracks of the 1980s. On an album that featured other big hits like You Give Love a Bad Name, and Wanted Dead or Alive, I think the New Jersey-based band were in terrific form! They never hit the same peak they did on Slippery When Wet; I wonder what it was about that album and time period. With Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and Desmond Child in excellent form as songwriters, we got an album with some stunning hits and deeper cuts that are realty strong too. I am going to bring in a piece of Wikipedia information about Livin’ on a Prayer and its legacy soon. It is said that Bon Jovi did not original version of the song. Lead guitarist Sambora convinced him the song was good…so they reworked it with a new bassline (recorded by Hugh McDonald), different drum fills and the use of a talk box (to include it on Slippery When Wet). It is another case of a band member seeing the potential of a song but the original sketch not being quite realised. I am glad that there was discussion and experimentation because, upon its release, Livin’ on a Prayer became a huge smash!
The song spent two weeks at number-one on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart; four weeks at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100. It also hit number-four on the U.K. chart. A recent article came out that revealed how Jon Bon Jovi was not a fan of one of the band’s biggest hits:
“Richie Sambora called Jon Bon Jovi an "idiot" for not realizing the potential of "Livin' on a Prayer" when they wrote it.
"I remember walking out of the room with Richie," the singer told The Irish Times, "and I said, ‘Eh, it’s okay. Maybe we should just put it on a movie soundtrack.’ Richie looked at me and said, ‘You’re an idiot. It’s really good.’ I said, ‘I just don’t know where it’s going.’ But it didn’t have that boom-boom-boom bassline yet, so it sounded more like the Clash.
“That song, God bless it," he continued. "But, my God, who knew? Not us, I can assure you. It was created on a day when none of us had any ideas. We just had a conversation, and it came out of that. I’m sure happy my name’s on it!”
Released as the second single from Bon Jovi's 1986 album, Slippery When Wet, "Livin' on a Prayer" became their second consecutive No. 1 single and sold 3 million copies. The song not only bought him a house, he added, “it bought a lot of people houses.”
A year and a half ago, during a Q&A session on his Runaway to Paradise cruise, Bon Jovi said his doubts about "Livin' on a Prayer" stemmed from his belief that it "didn’t sound like anything. You know, ‘Runaway’ had eight notes, like a lot of songs on the radio at the time. Even ‘[You Give Love a] Bad Name’ was reminiscent of other songs that were on the radio. ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ didn’t sound like anything. So, I was sort of indifferent. I thought, ‘Well, it’s different, but is it a rock song? Is it us?'”.
It is a good job Sambora had a good ear and identified Livin’ on a Prayer as a promising gem! In the almost thirty-five years since its release, the track has become this anthem and fan favourite. At the time of writing this feature (3rd February), the song’s video has amassed 759,929,460 views on YouTube. In terms of its impact, Livin’ on a Prayer has been lauded and celebrated through the years:
“In 2006, online voters rated "Livin' on a Prayer" No. 1 on VH1's list of The 100 Greatest Songs of the '80s. More recently, in New Zealand, "Livin' on a Prayer" was No. 1 on the C4 music channel's show U Choose 40, on the 80's Icons list. It was also No. 1 on the "Sing-a-long Classics List". After Bon Jovi performed in New Zealand on January 28, 2008 while on their Lost Highway Tour, the song re-entered the official New Zealand RIANZ singles chart at number 24, over twenty years after the initial release.
Australian music TV channel MAX placed this song at No. 18 on their 2008 countdown "Rock Songs: Top 100". In 2009, the song returned to the charts in the UK, notably hitting the number-one spot on the UK Rock Chart.
In 2010, it was chosen in an online vote on the Grammy.com website over the group's more recent hits "Always" and "It's My Life" to be played live by the band on the 52nd Grammy Awards telecast.
In the Billboard Hot 100 Anniversary 50, "Livin' on a Prayer" was named as 46 in the All time rock songs. After the song was released for download, the song has sold 3.4 million digital copies in the US as of November 2014.
The song, including its original ending, is also playable on the music video games Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2. The song was re-worked and made available to download on November 9, 2010 for use in the Rock Band 3 music gaming platform to take advantage of PRO mode which allows use of a real guitar / bass guitar, and standard MIDI-compatible electronic drum kits / keyboards in addition to up to three-part harmony or backup vocals.
In November 2013, the song made its return to the Billboard Hot 100 at number 25, due to a viral video.
In 2017, ShortList's Dave Fawbert listed the song as containing "one of the greatest key changes in music history".
I want to look at a great article that dove deep inside Livin’ on a Prayer and discussed the relationship between the band and producer Bruce Fairbairn; how the song came together and what its lyrics mean. I am not going to include the entire Stereogum article, but there are some fascinating segments that caught my eye:
“According to Bon Jovi, the trio wrote “Livin’ On A Prayer” “on a day when none of us had any ideas.” They got to talking about all their backgrounds. Bon Jovi and Sambora had both grown up working-class in New Jersey. Bon Jovi’s high-school girlfriend had stayed with him as he tried to land a record contract. (They got married in 1989, and they’re still together now.) Desmond Child had worked as a cabdriver in New York in the ’70s, when he was dating Maria Vidal, one of the singers in his group Desmond Child & Rouge. Vidal worked in a diner, and her coworkers nicknamed her Gina because she looked like the actress Gina Lollobrigida. (Maria Vidal’s highest-charting single, 1984’s “Body Rock,” peaked at #48.)
When Child first came up with the “Livin’ On A Prayer” lyrics, the song told the story of a couple named Johnny, Child’s birth name, and Gina. Bon Jovi knew that wouldn’t work, since his name was Jon. The song had to be third-person. Child changed the guy’s name to Tommy, which is a better name anyway. (When I was six, I made one of my worst decisions ever, insisting that I wanted to go by “Tom” instead of “Tommy.” “Tommy” sounds so much cooler. Fuck.)
The band and Fairbairn kept working on “Livin’ On A Prayer,” layering on more and more ideas: The synth-drone intro, the blazing guitar leads, the whoa-whoa-whoa talkbox riff. Fairbairn and Sambora found that talkbox while digging around in Sambora’s box of guitar effects. (From what I’ve read, the talkbox — a device built on a clear plastic chord that goes from your mouth to the guitar — really hurts to use. It makes your skull vibrate and your eyes feel like they’re going to explode. I love that.) The sound that the weird machine conjures — like a giant evil robot doing the bass voice in a street-corner doo-wop group — gives the song a whole new cinematic dimension.
The finished version of “Livin’ On A Prayer” is light-years beyond that demo. The song only really works if it’s all drama, if it explodes out of the speaker. However long it took, the band turned “Livin’ On A Prayer” into a perfect engine of drama. They shaped it into a true soul-shaking cheap-seats howler.
Tommy and Gina are pure archetype. Tommy used to work on the docks, but the union’s been on strike, and he’s down on his luck. It’s tough. So tough. Tommy can’t support himself and his girl, and he can’t even express himself artistically, since he’s got his six-string in hock. Gina works the diner all day, working for her man. She dreams of running away, but when she cries in the night, Tommy whispers, “Baby, it’s OK.” And then: “Someday.” That “someday” is a mythical time when things won’t be so hard. Tommy and Gina don’t know whether this time will ever arrive, but they have to believe in it. They have to believe they’re halfway there.
PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Harbron
Bon Jovi himself has said that “Livin’ On A Prayer” was a response to the Reagan era and the suffering that so many people were going through. Reagan certainly did everything in his power to cripple organized labor in America; maybe that’s why Tommy’s union was on strike. But the lyrical concerns of “Livin’ On A Prayer” aren’t tied to any particular moment in history. They’re elementally simple, like an early-’60s girl-group song.
The music, on the other hand, is extremely of its moment. Even more than “You Give Love A Bad Name,” “Livin’ On A Prayer” is a terrifying display of supercharged ’80s pop-metal that just goes for the car-stereo jugular. The production is so clean you could eat off of it. The synths and guitars glitter and gleam. The bassline and the simplistic drum-stomp are practically disco. Everything on the song works as a hook. The verses sound like choruses, and the choruses sound like suns exploding”.
I am not a massive fan of Bon Jovi, but I do love their Slippery When Wet album and the signature song, Livin’ on a Prayer. Whilst the album is not just about this track, I think it is so weighty and important that one cannot help but discuss and dissect it! From the dissatisfaction from Jon Bon Jovi when he was presented with the song, to the fact that the band have played it in stadiums to generations of fans ever since its release, Livin’ on a Prayer has a wonderful success story behind it! You may say you dislike the song but, once that chorus kicks in, you are helpless to resist…
SINGING along loudly.