It’s no doubt their most enduring song.

Jon Bon Jovi admitted he “wasn’t at all impressed” by the single that became his band’s biggest anthem. Picture: Getty/Alamy

In 1986, New Jersey rockers Bon Jovi were very much a band on the up.

The release of their album Slippery When Wet secured their status as one of the most exciting guitar bands to come out of America that decade.

Prior to that, they’d struggled to make a serious dent in the mainstream US charts, though that all changed with the release of ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’.

The single topped the US charts and established Bon Jovi as hot property. But they bettered that with their follow-up single, a song which would become their defining anthem: ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’.

Even today, fans around the world belt out ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ with the same passion as they did back in the eighties.

It’s a song that’s stood the test of time, though, it could’ve been a completely different story.

In a recent interview with People magazine, Jon Bon Jovi confessed he “wasn’t all that impressed” with the song at first.

Bon Jovi performing in 1986 (Credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Rock Negatives / MediaPunch). Picture: Alamy

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to record it, but I wasn’t all that impressed on the day that we wrote it,” the tousled rocker admitted.

He went on to detail how the band wrote the song: “It was the simple chord progression, the melodies and the lyrics.

“But the bass line came to life in the demo studio, when we took it back to the band and worked it up,” the Grammy Award winner reflected. “That’s how it became what it is.

“We knew what we wanted, we just didn’t have it, and so I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s good. Good day. Good day at the office,’ and I was wrong,” Jon shrugged.

“It’s one of the biggest songs in our catalogue,” he added, now knowing he, guitarist Richie Sambora and the rest of the band hit the jackpot.

The track eventually reached the coveted number one spot in the US Billboard charts, despite Jon believing it’d be better suited to a movie soundtrack which was standard practice at the time.

Though they might’ve not realised it at the time, Bon Jovi were well-placed to follow in the footsteps of another American stadium rock band: KISS.

That’s because the band’s record label brought in songwriter Desmond Child to boost their chances of scoring a major hit, who had previously written songs like ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ with KISS singer Paul Stanley.

“Paul Stanley taught me how to write stadium anthems the Kiss way, in which the protagonist is always the winner,” Child recalled in a later interview.

“There’s always victory. And the music is also lifting constantly upwards. I used those kinds of ideas or feelings in my collaborations with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora for the band Bon Jovi. The most perfect example of that is ‘Livin’ On A Prayer.'”

Child believed the song embodied the working-class experience of that decade, which helped imprint the anthem into the heart of popular culture.

“The message is, you work hard, you build your life, and you achieve the ‘American Dream’. You can make it.

“This whole aspiring thing. We’re not going to give up. Even in the face of failure, we keep trying. And that’s the American way.”