Bon Jovi – Livin On A Prayer

“Livin’ on a Prayer” – Single by Bon Jovi from the album Slippery When Wet
B-side “Wild in the Streets”
Released October 1986
Label Mercury
Songwriters Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Desmond Child
Producer Bruce Fairbairn
Charted No.1 in US, No.4 in UK, No.1 in Norway, No.1 in Canada, No.20 in West Germany, No.4 in Scotland

The music video was filmed on September 17, 1986, at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California and was directed by Wayne Isham. It starts with a silhouette of the band walking down a hall, followed by shots of the band rehearsing, filmed in black and white, then playing in front of a crowd, in color. Near the beginning of the song, Jon puts on a harness that is being attached to wires by professional stunt coordinators and stunt spotters, and during the final chorus, he soars over the crowd.

Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, the main songwriters in the group, wrote this with Desmond Child, a prolific songwriter who was brought in by the record company to give them a more commercial sound like he did for Kiss on “I Was Made For Lovin’ You.”

The characters Tommy and Gina were based on a real-life situation Desmond encountered in the late ’70s with his then-girlfriend, Maria Vidal, whom he was living with. According to the notes in his Desmond Child & Rouge: Runners In The Night album, Desmond was a New York taxi cab driver and Maria was a singing waitress in a diner. Vidal used the name “Gina Velvet” – she was nicknamed Gina by her fellow employees because she looked like the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida.