Song History
Jon Bon Jovi did not like the original recording of this song, which can be found as a hidden track on 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong. Richie Sambora convinced him the song was good, and they reworked it with a new bass line, different drum fills and the use of a talk box to include it on their Slippery When Wet album. It spent two weeks at number one on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, from January 31–February 14, 1987, and four weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, from February 14–March 7. It also hit number four on the UK singles chart.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks – in which New Jersey was the second-hardest hit state after New York, suffering hundreds of casualties among both WTC workers and first responders – the band performed an acoustic version of this song for The Concert for New York City. Bon Jovi performed a similar version as part of the special America: A Tribute to Heroes.
Read more about this topic: Livin' On A Prayer
Famous quotes containing the words song and/or history:
“And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)