Hitmaker Desmond Child talks true identity of Aerosmith’s ‘Dude’ and Bon Jovi’s ‘Tommy and Gina,’ how he got KISS to go disco, and more

The author of the memoir ‘Livin’ on a Prayer: Big Songs Big Life’ tells the stories behind some of his most enduring and iconic songs.

Desmond Child’s biggest hits include Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and KISS’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; Getty Images, Radius Book Group)

Self-described “genre-fluid” songwriter Desmond Child has one of the most varied discographies imaginable, having written for everyone from KISS, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Joan Jett to Cher, Barbra Streisand, Katy Perry, Ricky Martin and Kelly Clarkson and even Kermit the Frog and Mickey Mouse. A musical storyteller for decades, he’s now telling his own stories in the autobiography Livin’ on a Prayer: Big Songs Big Life, which of course takes its title from one of his biggest hits for Bon Jovi.

As the memoir details, Child was grinding — something he learned from his ambitious mother, who was a songwriter herself — as early as 10th grade, when he formed a ‘70s musical duo with classmate Debbie “Virgil Night” Walstein called Nightchild. The two teens marketed themselves by dressing up like John Lennon and Yoko Ono, a brilliant promotional stunt that almost worked its magic on record mogul Clive Davis.

“We went up to Woodstock and made our first demo with Van Morrison’s band; we were 17,” Child recalls with a chuckle. “Then went back to Miami Beach, where we were from, and we went to this NARM convention, a music-business convention. We didn’t know how we were going to get in, so we decided we’d impersonate John and Yoko. [Walstein] wore all black with a floppy hat and big, black glasses, and I parted my hair down the middle and wore all white. We just kept our heads down, and everyone was saying, ‘John and Yoko, John and Yoko, John and Yoko!’ The crowds parted, we went into the showroom, and there was a table with two empty seats — right next to Clive Davis’s table.”

Child and Wall managed to fool everyone for most of the night — until the lights came on. “Clive looked at me and started laughing hysterically. I guess he really thought we were John and Yoko! But we had our tape in our hand, and I gave it to him,” says Child. “A couple of months later, I actually got a handwritten note from him telling us we weren’t ready. I mean, it wasn’t terrible, but it was bad. Maybe he felt sorry for us. But 40 years later to the day, in 2012, he hands me the Clive Davis Legend in Songwriting Award; I was the fourth recipient. So, there you go: You hand Clive a demo, and 40 years later, he hands you an award. That’s called the hustle.”

After the Davis encounter, it actually only took Child seven years of hustling to get his first big break, co-writing an unlikely and polarizing disco smash for a band of face-painted, fire-breathing arena-rockers released in 1979. Below, Child shares the story of that tune and other stories from Livin’ on a Prayer: Big Songs Big Life, about some of his most enduring and iconic hits.

“I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” KISS

Child grew up “poor as dirt” in the Miami projects with his mother and muse, Elena Casals, a Cuban immigrant and struggling songwriter who once signed a publishing deal with BMI. Casals never achieved mainstream success due to “language barriers,” not to mention sexism and racism in the industry, but Child’s home was “always filled with writing songs about what you’re feeling, what you’re going through. I didn’t know that people didn’t write songs; it came so naturally for me.” Once he began pursuing his own music career, Child “vowed I would be able to take care of my mom,” and he got that opportunity at age 24 — when he co-wrote his first big hit for KISS.

Child penned this crossover disco single with KISS’s Paul Stanley, who he’d met in the ‘70s New York City scene. “I had a group in called Desmond Child & Rouge with three beautiful women singers [Maria Vidal, Diana Grasselli and Myriam Vall], and [Stanley] saw our posters on the streets of New York and came to one of our shows and fell in love with us,” Child recalls. “It was me with the first mullet and these girls all made-up looking like hookers. He came to see our show, and it was very theatrical. He came backstage and we just became instant friends. He said, ‘Why don’t we try writing a song?’ And that was ‘I Was Made for Lovin’ You.’”

The dance-y Dynasty track, which was written with producer Vini Poncia, stirred outrage among rock-purist fans in 1979 (the year of the “Disco Sucks” movement), who decried KISS as sellouts. Gene Simmons himself wasn’t a fan, even declaring it his least favorite KISS song. But as Child notes, “Gene is going to keep performing that song, as long as there’s a big check connected to it.”

And there certainly was. “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” sold more than 1 million copies worldwide and went to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, and today it is KISS’s most-streamed song (as of this writing, it is at 807 million Spotify plays, which is nearly double the number of spins for KISS’s second-most-popular Spotify track and signature anthem, “Rock and Roll All Nite.”)

“It opened the door for people to see that dance beats and rock can work,” says Child. “It was very unexpected, and the world loved it.”

“Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” Aerosmith

Child recalls that he was initially “forced on” the reluctant Aerosmith — who until 1987’s Permanent Vacation album had never worked with outside songwriters before – “by their brilliant A&R man” at Geffen Records, John Kalodner. (Fun fact: Kalodner would eventually play the bearded bride in the “Dude” music video.) Child’s initial meeting with recently reunited Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry, in the band’s home city of Boston, did not go well. But Child’s brutal honesty would ultimately pay off, resulting in the single that would launch one of the biggest comebacks in rock history.

“They were rehearsing in this giant warehouse, with the whole tour setup on a stage — the mic stand with 20 scarves on it, rows and rows and rows of guitars,” Child recalls. Tyler was cordial at first, unlike the more skeptical Perry, and the singer began playing a “backwards loop” that was part of a new song the band had been workshopping. “Steven started singing: ‘Cruising for the ladies! Dah-dah, dah, dah. Cruising for the ladies!’ And then he said, ‘So, whaddya think about that?’ And I said, ‘I think that’s really bad.’

“I said, ‘Van Halen wouldn’t put that on the B-side of their worst record,’” Child continues. “‘I mean, what idea is that? You guys are all in a top-down pink Cadillac on Sunset Strip, cruising for the ladies? Is that what this is about?’ Joe was all arms crossed, head back, slit eyes, looking at me sideways, and then Steven said sheepishly that when he first came up with that hook, he was singing, ‘Dude looks like a lady.’ And I said, ‘What? Dude looks like a lady? That’s a hit title!’ And then, Joe said, ‘Yeah, yeah — but we don’t know what that means.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I know what that means. I’m gay, all right? Gay, gay, gay.’”

Tyler confessed to Child that the lyric had been inspired by an awkward incident when Aerosmith had visited a bar and “at the last stool was this vision of loveliness with teased-up platinum hair, black nails, very soft pale skin, curvy figure” — but then, when the band members were “drawing straws [to determine] who was going to go up and say hello” to the pretty single lady, they realized it was actually Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe. “That’s when Steven said, ‘Oh, that dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady.’ And that’s how the song was born.”

Apparently Perry was worried the provocative song title would “insult the gay community.” But the openly gay Child — while acknowledging that the track would probably be considered politically incorrect today — assured the guitarist that that would not be the case in 1987. And thus, their first joint writing session began.

“The song is really the first song where this average guy goes into a bar and falls in love with the stripper onstage, goes backstage and finds out that ‘she’ is a ‘he.’ It’s kind of like ‘Lola’ by the Kinks — it’s like a companion piece to that — but in this one, [the male protagonist] doesn’t run away,” Child laughs. “He stays and he sings, ‘Never judge a book by its cover, or who you gonna love by your lover.’ And then he sings, ‘My funky lady, ooh, I like it, like it, like it like that. Let me take a peek, dear!’ So, the song was about being open. Nothing could be more open and accepting.”

“You Give Love a Bad Name,” Bon Jovi

In a real full-circle career moment, this song, which was Bon Jovi’s first massive smash, had its ties to disco, theatrically and androgyny – when Child’s friend, Meat Loaf collaborator and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” songwriter Jim Steinman, asked Child to write for “Total Eclipse” diva Bonnie Tyler’s 1986 album, Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire.

“Jim told me, ‘The verse has to be like Tina Turner, the B-section has to be like the Police, and the chorus has to be like Bruce Springsteen. Oh — and it has to be about androgyny!’” Child was up for the task. “I had that aspiration because my managers at the time were Bruce Springsteen freaks, and just before I met them I was combining R&B and dance beats with rock and storytelling. But these managers said, ‘Oh, no — Bruce Springsteen is the king. You have to be more like Bruce Springsteen!’ And because I’m a chameleon, I started writing songs sort of in that style.”

The result was Tyler’s disco-rocker “If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man),” which Child wrote on his own. It made the top 10 in France and was a hit in several other European counties, but stalled at No. 77 in the U.S., which left Child feeling “so disappointed.” But all was not lost when Child got the chance to meet with two New Jersey musicians who owed a debt to Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.

“I had this title, ‘You Give Love a Bad Name,’ so I put it on a little piece of paper. I put it on the table. I said, ‘You give love a bad name’ — and this is the first day I wrote with Jon and Richie,” Child recalls. “When I put out that title, it was the first time I saw Jon’s multi-billion-dollar smile. He just lit up. And he had a song called ‘Shot Through the Heart’ on a previous album [Bon Jovi’s modestly selling 1984 self-titled debut]. Jon is not one to let a good hook go to waste, and neither am I. So, we put those ideas together.”

Thus, “If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)” was rewritten as “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and this time, Child was far from disappointed. The reworked song was a No. 1 hit, and it helped Bon Jovi’s third album, Slippery When Wet, go 12-times platinum – establishing it as one of the 100 best-selling albums ever in the United States.

“Angel,” Aerosmith

Permanent Vacation went on to sell 5 million copies worldwide, on the strength of both “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” which was credited to Tyler/Perry/Child, and this power ballad, which Child co-wrote with Tyler during that same first visit to Boston.

“Steven and I were sitting at the little keyboard that was at the foot of the stage, and Joe didn’t come back the next day; I think he’d had enough of me,” Child chuckles. “Later on we wrote together a lot and became very close, but he didn’t show up. So, it was just me and Steven — no roadies, no nothing — in this giant warehouse, seated side-by-side on a little piano bench at this little Wurlitzer electric piano. And I said, ‘Well, tell me about your life!’”

Child admits that “Steven loves to overshare about everything,” so that one vague question opened the floodgates. “We wrote the song in 45 minutes. It just flew by. It was one of the biggest hits that I had spent the least amount of time writing,” Child says.

“He said, ‘I had gone through a very difficult time with drugs and everything, and then I met this incredible woman, [fashion designer] Teresa [Barrick, Tyler’s second wife, who whom Tyler was married from 1988 to 2006]. And she just changed my life. She’s my angel.’ And as soon as he said the word ‘angel,’ and I saw those Mick Jagger blubber-lips that looked like he was saying, ‘Angie, Angie,’ all out of control like a sea animal or something. And I thought, ‘Oh, I have to make him sing that word, so those lips do that in the video.’”

“Livin on a Prayer,” Bon Jovi

This power ballad, also from Slippery When Wet, was an even bigger hit than “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and it became the Bon Jovi’s signature anthem — even if the band’s lead singer didn’t like it at first.

Child’s “autobiographical” lyrics had been inspired by a time in the ‘70s when he was a struggling New York University student and part-time cab driver, still closeted and living with his then-girlfriend and Rouge bandmate, Maria Vidal. “it was pretty bad. We were so poor. I mean, I’m not going to say what we shoplifted, but we did so in order to eat. Maria worked as a waitress at a place called Once Upon a Stove, and her waitress name was ‘Gina Velvet,’” Child recalls. “I kind of always bring a little of my story, to put things of myself in songs, so I suggested the story of ‘Johnny and Gina,’ because my original name was Johnny. [Child was born John Charles Barrett.] But Jon said, ‘No, no, no. It can’t be Johnny! I’m Johnny. I can’t sing about myself!’

So, I suggested Tommy; it was like a soundalike. And that is how ‘Tommy and Gina’ were born. That was really how it started. I’m sure that if you speak to Jon, he would say, ‘Well, no — there is a lot of me in that story.’ And Richie would say the same thing. Because, who hasn’t struggled?”

As it turned out, it was a universal story. Millions of Slippery When Wet listeners related to Tommy and Gina’s struggle and drew inspiration from Bon Jovi’s anthem of hope. “I’ve received countless letters from people that had illnesses, that went through hard times, divorces, so many things,” Desmond marvels. “One of the most touching letters I’ve received was from a guy who had decided he was going to kill himself. So, he drives to the bridge, jumps out of the car, leaves the door open with the radio on full blast, and goes up to the edge. He was leaning forward, and ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ started coming on. And he said, ‘Oh, that’s my favorite song. OK, I’ll make that the last song I hear.’ So, he goes back in the car to hear the song — and by the last chorus, when it modulated up, he drove home.

“So, Bon Jovi saves lives.”