‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’: How Bon Jovi Became Rebels With A Cause
By melding country, blues and rock, the band created one of its most enduring ballads.
Outlaw imagery is frequently evoked in both rock ‘n’ roll and country music, yet Bon Jovi succeeded in melding the two genres especially seamlessly on “Wanted Dead Or Alive”: an epic slow-burner of a song which still ranks among the band’s greatest ballads.
The third of three huge U.S Top 10 hits culled from 1986’s multi-platinum Slippery When Wet, “Wanted Dead Or Alive” was something of a stylistic departure from the New Jersey rockers’ trademark anthemic sound. Yet it emerged from the same disciplined songwriting sessions which also produced the album’s evergreen chart-toppers “Livin’ On A Prayer” and “You Give Love A Bad Name.”
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“When writing the songs for [Slippery When Wet], I’d go to [guitarist] Richie [Sambora]’s mother’s place, which was where he was living at the time,” Jon Bon Jovi revealed in a 2009 interview with Inside The Actor’s Studio. “We’d lock ourselves in a room for about six or eight hours a day at least, five days a week and write. We’d come out of there with a good part of a song each day, sometimes two songs a day. I remember ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’ was one of two songs we wrote in one day.”
The two musicians had a head start with “Wanted Dead Or Alive” in that Sambora already had the song’s intricate initial riff ready to go. His guitar figure’s roots-y, Nashville-esque flavor went on to inspire Bon Jovi to write a lyric loaded with Old Western-style imagery. Indeed, lines such as “I walk these streets, a loaded six-string on my back/I play for keeps ‘cause I might not make it back/I’ve been everywhere, still I’m standing tall/I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve rocked them all” drew vivid parallels between the heroic Wild West cowboy’s ability to conquer his foes and the modern day rock ‘n’ roll outlaw’s quest to win over an audience – an art Bon Jovi had mastered through five years of constant touring.
Of course, with Slippery When Wet about to transform them into global superstars, Bon Jovi were no longer the maverick outsiders romanticized in “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” yet that made little or no difference. The song’s romantic outlaw imagery still appealed to pop fans of all persuasions and its finely-crafted, radio-friendly tunefulness has since ensured its legacy. In fact, the song has repeatedly connected with new audiences through usage in TV series such as Miami Vice, The Sopranos, and The Vampire Diaries and it’s now regarded as one of Bon Jovi’s signature songs – an appropriate result for a song which directly mirrored its creators own lives during their early days.
“[“Wanted Dead Or Alive”] was directly inspired by our life on the road,” Jon Bon Jovi said in 2009. “Here we were…this young band of thieves, if you will, rising into town, stealing the money, the girls and the booze, and leaving before the sun came up. That was the lifestyle of every rock band.”
