Wanted Dead Or Alive

This song uses Old West cowboy imagery to describe the lonely life of a rock star. At the time, starting with their debut album in 1984, Bon Jovi played about 300 shows a year, using the remaining time to work on albums. When it came time to write for their third album, Slippery When Wet, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora wrote this song about what they knew: performing to lots of people who all blended together after a while.

This was the song that kickstarted the "Unplugged" craze. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora performed this with just their acoustic guitars, giving the network the idea for the "Unplugged" series.

The video was directed by Wayne Isham, who did most of the band's early videos. Shot in black-and-white (they didn't have color TV in the Old West), the band is shown not just performing, but going through the process of traveling from city to city. With lots of sweaty, slow motion shots showing the band laying it out there for the fans, the video's forebear was Paul Young's "Everytime You Go Away," which had a similar look and theme. That video was directed by Nick Morris, who told us that Jon Bon Jovi asked him to submit a treatment for the "Wanted Dead Or Alive" video. "He said, 'We've got a song called 'Wanted' on our album, and that's going to be how we do the video: We're going to do it in slow motion, we're going to show how rock and roll is as exciting as it's exhausting,'" Morris said. Unfortunately, Bon Jovi's label convinced Morris that the band was looking for a more jovial video with the band larking about, and that's the treatment he submitted, which was rejected. Said Morris: "I learnt to my cost as I watched the Bon Jovi video that what they wanted was something a bit more like Jon had originally discussed. That taught me a lesson to go with your instincts and not necessarily the advice you get."