This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. He's a Grammy Women and Emmy nominated songwriter.
Desmond Child one of music's most prolific and accomplished hitmakers. If you not familiar
with the name, you're certainly familiar with some of the hits that he has
created, like Living on a Prayer, you gotta love a bad name,
you give love a bad name. I was made for loving you, dude
looks like a Lady, and many more. He's written all about his experiences
in a memoir called Living on a Prayer, Big Songs, Big Life,
Desmond Child. Welcome, Hey, how you doing, Lee? Good to
have you here. Now let's go back to when it started with you.
Did you start playing music or writing music or did they both come together?
My mother, the Cuban bolero writer Elena Casals, she was always writing a
song, so I would be playing at her feet, and eventually I would
climb up on the piano bench and start banging on the piano. And I
taught myself how to play, and I wrote my first actual pop song when
I was fourteen, and it was a birthday gift to this girl that I
had a crush on, and it's called Birthday Blues, and I got to
sing it to her at our fortieth high school reunion. What do you think
about that? Woo? Forty years already? Huh? Well, no,
actually the fiftieth has already gone. Oh, yes, you and I are
in the same boat here, brother Besmond. Child is where there's living on
a prayer, big song's big life. What comes first for you the music
or the lyric or both. The strongest way to write a song is to
have a title that is killer, and then everything the song just writes itself
like a song like you give love a bad name. When the day I
met Jon bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, I had that title literally written on
a little piece of paper in my back pocket, and so you know,
I had little little chit chat and then I pulled the title out and John
bon Jovi, like his face lit up. I never saw that many teeth
in my life, and I knew he was a winner. And so that
was the first song we wrote. And it was so easy because he had
a song called Shot through the Heart on a previous record, so he threw
that down shot through the heart and then then your too blame and then the
three of us into the air. You gibbl a bad name, and you
know history was made. So when you write a song like that, is
it at first do you hear it as a ballad and then John bon Jovie
gets ahold of it and really rocks it out? Or do you already hear
it as a rock song? Well in that case, you know, I
I love this kind of undulating you know, doom doom, doom, doom
doom. Do you know, like a Billy Jean or you know, you
know, or the earrhythmics, these dreams, And so I was I was
playing it on the keyboard and I was into Richie. I said play this
on guitar and said no, that that's like Michael Jacks and said, no,
no, no change these no do do do do Do Do do doo.
And he started playing that like crunchy, and you know, the song
came to life. A song like Living on a Prayer started out more like
a ballad, and so that was kind of more of a moody song.
But they applied that same idea with this motown bass underneath, and the song
just floats on top, and so you know, in the beginning, John
didn't want to record the song because he thought it was too moody. It
wasn't rocking out, but a richie and I literally half kidding, half for
real, got on our hands and knees and begged him to cut it,
and magic happened in the studio and the rest is history. More magic you
hear about in his memoir Living on a Prayer, Big Songs, Big Life.
Whether it's Bond, Jovi, Kiss, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Ricky
Martin, Katy Perry, and many many more, it's Desmond Child's memoir.
Desmond I also our paths have crossed. It was many years ago, I
want to say, maybe eighty nine, maybe nineteen ninety. You came through
on a promotional tour with your keyboard and performed on my radio show, and
I believe it was the release of Love on a Rooftop, and you played
it. I got in trouble with the general manager because we were on a
light rock station at the time and he thought it was just a little too
edgy, to which I just said, look, if you don't get a
complaint every now and then, you're doing something wrong. Hegie that song is
like the softest yeah ever. Yeah, I remember lovone rooftop. I mean
it's romantic. You were you were in morning? You mean oh you mean
that like like that implied that they were kind of doing it on the roof
tests that he thought, oh oh, I was thinking about smooching or whatever.
But I guess you guys down there have dirty mine. Yes, Desmond
Child is with us, living on our prayer. Big songs, Big Life,
Love on a rooftop is one of them. With you ever get together
with other songwriters and just talk about writing or is that shop talking? When
you're with others you just want to have a glass of wine and relax.
No, we're always talking about, you know, songwriting, and you know,
it's like we were telling dirty jokes and then we're talking about songwriting.
I mean, you know, it's sort of like it's the fun of collaboration.
And so often I've been doing these masterclasses, workshops. I did one
for the you know, Fantasy rock and Roll Camp, and it was called
the Fantasy Songwriting Camp, you know, David Fishoff and I worked with fifty
kids and each kid got twenty minutes in the hot seat. I mean,
I was there for three days and just ripping the song apart and helping them
put it back together. I just love doing that because and everybody has to
follow along. Everybody has the lyrics, everybody has to write, write all
the notes, and this way you learn. And I had mentors that taught
me, like Bob Crue who wrote all the big songs with Bob Gaudio for
the four seasons he wrote and he was my mentor, and he taught me
the art of songwriting. We're talking to Desmond Child living on a Prayer as
as memoir and it is out now, Big Songs, Big Life. Uh
do you I mean you describe how you've taught yourself to kind of play the
piano, so I gather you play by ear? Do you also score the
music when you're writing it? No? I mean I never did I hire
the Topper Rangers. Yeah, David Campbell and before Jeremy Lubbock, the late
and great Jeremy Lobbick. You know, you know that's never wanted to stop
writing the song, you know, so to learn all the things that you
know to be able to write music down and all that that takes a lot
of time. I just want to step over the body and keep moving on
with write another hit. I like the way he put that. Do you
do you read music as well? Or have you learned to read along along
the way? Barely? Yeah? I mean I can. I can follow
along with a score like oh yeah, the note goes up here, goes
down there? Okay, Yeah, but absolutely not. Maybe, you know,
I maybe think about how much bigger I would have been had I learned
all that stuff. Well, I know, that's what I tell my students.
I heard I heard an interview with Paul McCartney and he can't read or
write a note of music. Everything is by ear for him, whether it's
the bass or the guitar, or the or the piano, and he he
was worried it would it would hold him back because he'd be so worried about
the technicality of of of what the note is supposed to look like rather than
what it sounds like. I totally relate to that, because you know,
the whole idea of you know, I mean, I graduated from NYU at
music school there, but I don't know how I did it. Yeah,
maybe I cheated a little bit. Living on a prayer, big songs,
big life, it's the big Life of Desmond Child. He is a delight
to talk to and I can't wait to finish this. It's a great read
this time of year, especially if you love the behind the scenes stuff like
I do. Desmond Child, thank you for listening and joining in today.
Oh thank you, and follow me on Desmond dot Child on Instagram. I'm
there day and night. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the
Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from
five to seven. And iHeartMedia presentation.