By Brian Ives
On Minimation, we comb through the archives of legendary New York radio station WNEW-FM and animate interviews with legendary rock artists. This installment is taken from a 2010 interview with Jon Bon Jovi, where he discusses two characters from one of his biggest hits.
Bruce Springsteen will probably always be New Jersey’s favorite son. But, by the ’80s, he’d expanded his view to the entire country on albums like Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. During that decade, there was nothing more “Jersey” than Bon Jovi, and none of Jon Bon Jovi’s lyrics spoke to Jerseyites more than “Livin’ on a Prayer,” telling the tale of Tommy and Gina.
But really, “Livin’ on a Prayer” resonated far beyond the Garden State: 1986’s Slippery When Wet, the album which featured “Livin’,” (as well as “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Never Say Goodbye”) has gone 12x Platinum. As Jon says in this interview, “A lot of people related to this song as if they were these two people.”
