Livin' on a Prayer is one of the most popular and loved songs of the iconic American singer, songwriter and guitarist, but the creator Jon Bon Jovi says that he wasn't quite impressed with the song initially.
The 62-year-old rock icon recently opened up about his four-decades-long career and recalled that he didn't initially connect with the band's chart-topping 1986 hit, reports a magazine.
"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." Upon writing the song, "it was the simple chord progression, the melodies and the lyrics" at first. "But the bass line came to life in the demo studio, when we took it back to the band and worked it up," recalled the Grammy winner. "That's how it became what it is".
He added, "We 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. It's one of the biggest songs in our catalogue."
According to the magazine, the song, written by the Bon Jovi frontman, former bandmate Richie Sambora and songwriter Desmond Child, was released on the group's 1986 album Slippery When Wet, which also led to the hits, You Give Love a Bad Name and Wanted Dead or Alive.
The band's story is chronicled in You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, a new docu-series. One episode dives into the making of Livin' on a Prayer, detailing that Sambora and Child got on their knees and begged Bon Jovi to record the song.
