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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. He's
a Grammy Women and Emmy nominated songwriter.

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Desmond Child one of music's most prolific
and accomplished hitmakers. If you not familiar

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with the name, you're certainly familiar
with some of the hits that he has

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created, like Living on a Prayer, you gotta love a bad name,

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you give love a bad name.
I was made for loving you, dude

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looks like a Lady, and many
more. He's written all about his experiences

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in a memoir called Living on a
Prayer, Big Songs, Big Life,

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Desmond Child. Welcome, Hey,
how you doing, Lee? Good to

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have you here. Now let's go
back to when it started with you.

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Did you start playing music or writing
music or did they both come together?

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My mother, the Cuban bolero writer
Elena Casals, she was always writing a

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song, so I would be playing
at her feet, and eventually I would

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climb up on the piano bench and
start banging on the piano. And I

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taught myself how to play, and
I wrote my first actual pop song when

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I was fourteen, and it was
a birthday gift to this girl that I

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had a crush on, and it's
called Birthday Blues, and I got to

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sing it to her at our fortieth
high school reunion. What do you think

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about that? Woo? Forty years
already? Huh? Well, no,

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actually the fiftieth has already gone.
Oh, yes, you and I are

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in the same boat here, brother
Besmond. Child is where there's living on

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a prayer, big song's big life. What comes first for you the music

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or the lyric or both. The
strongest way to write a song is to

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have a title that is killer,
and then everything the song just writes itself

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like a song like you give love
a bad name. When the day I

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met Jon bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, I had that title literally written on

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a little piece of paper in my
back pocket, and so you know,

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I had little little chit chat and
then I pulled the title out and John

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bon Jovi, like his face lit
up. I never saw that many teeth

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in my life, and I knew
he was a winner. And so that

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was the first song we wrote.
And it was so easy because he had

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a song called Shot through the Heart
on a previous record, so he threw

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that down shot through the heart and
then then your too blame and then the

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three of us into the air.
You gibbl a bad name, and you

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know history was made. So when
you write a song like that, is

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it at first do you hear it
as a ballad and then John bon Jovie

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gets ahold of it and really rocks
it out? Or do you already hear

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it as a rock song? Well
in that case, you know, I

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I love this kind of undulating you
know, doom doom, doom, doom

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doom. Do you know, like
a Billy Jean or you know, you

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know, or the earrhythmics, these
dreams, And so I was I was

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playing it on the keyboard and I
was into Richie. I said play this

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on guitar and said no, that
that's like Michael Jacks and said, no,

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no, no change these no do
do do do Do Do do doo.

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And he started playing that like crunchy, and you know, the song

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came to life. A song like
Living on a Prayer started out more like

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a ballad, and so that was
kind of more of a moody song.

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But they applied that same idea with
this motown bass underneath, and the song

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just floats on top, and so
you know, in the beginning, John

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didn't want to record the song because
he thought it was too moody. It

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wasn't rocking out, but a richie
and I literally half kidding, half for

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real, got on our hands and
knees and begged him to cut it,

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and magic happened in the studio and
the rest is history. More magic you

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hear about in his memoir Living on
a Prayer, Big Songs, Big Life.

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Whether it's Bond, Jovi, Kiss, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Ricky

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Martin, Katy Perry, and many
many more, it's Desmond Child's memoir.

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Desmond I also our paths have crossed. It was many years ago, I

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want to say, maybe eighty nine, maybe nineteen ninety. You came through

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on a promotional tour with your keyboard
and performed on my radio show, and

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I believe it was the release of
Love on a Rooftop, and you played

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it. I got in trouble with
the general manager because we were on a

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light rock station at the time and
he thought it was just a little too

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edgy, to which I just said, look, if you don't get a

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complaint every now and then, you're
doing something wrong. Hegie that song is

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like the softest yeah ever. Yeah, I remember lovone rooftop. I mean

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it's romantic. You were you were
in morning? You mean oh you mean

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that like like that implied that they
were kind of doing it on the roof

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tests that he thought, oh oh, I was thinking about smooching or whatever.

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But I guess you guys down there
have dirty mine. Yes, Desmond

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Child is with us, living on
our prayer. Big songs, Big Life,

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Love on a rooftop is one of
them. With you ever get together

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with other songwriters and just talk about
writing or is that shop talking? When

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you're with others you just want to
have a glass of wine and relax.

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No, we're always talking about,
you know, songwriting, and you know,

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it's like we were telling dirty jokes
and then we're talking about songwriting.

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I mean, you know, it's
sort of like it's the fun of collaboration.

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And so often I've been doing these
masterclasses, workshops. I did one

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for the you know, Fantasy rock
and Roll Camp, and it was called

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the Fantasy Songwriting Camp, you know, David Fishoff and I worked with fifty

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kids and each kid got twenty minutes
in the hot seat. I mean,

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I was there for three days and
just ripping the song apart and helping them

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put it back together. I just
love doing that because and everybody has to

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follow along. Everybody has the lyrics, everybody has to write, write all

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the notes, and this way you
learn. And I had mentors that taught

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me, like Bob Crue who wrote
all the big songs with Bob Gaudio for

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the four seasons he wrote and he
was my mentor, and he taught me

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the art of songwriting. We're talking
to Desmond Child living on a Prayer as

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as memoir and it is out now, Big Songs, Big Life. Uh

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do you I mean you describe how
you've taught yourself to kind of play the

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piano, so I gather you play
by ear? Do you also score the

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music when you're writing it? No? I mean I never did I hire

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the Topper Rangers. Yeah, David
Campbell and before Jeremy Lubbock, the late

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and great Jeremy Lobbick. You know, you know that's never wanted to stop

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writing the song, you know,
so to learn all the things that you

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know to be able to write music
down and all that that takes a lot

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of time. I just want to
step over the body and keep moving on

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with write another hit. I like
the way he put that. Do you

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do you read music as well?
Or have you learned to read along along

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the way? Barely? Yeah?
I mean I can. I can follow

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along with a score like oh yeah, the note goes up here, goes

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down there? Okay, Yeah,
but absolutely not. Maybe, you know,

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I maybe think about how much bigger
I would have been had I learned

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all that stuff. Well, I
know, that's what I tell my students.

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I heard I heard an interview with
Paul McCartney and he can't read or

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write a note of music. Everything
is by ear for him, whether it's

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the bass or the guitar, or
the or the piano, and he he

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was worried it would it would hold
him back because he'd be so worried about

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the technicality of of of what the
note is supposed to look like rather than

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what it sounds like. I totally
relate to that, because you know,

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the whole idea of you know,
I mean, I graduated from NYU at

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music school there, but I don't
know how I did it. Yeah,

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maybe I cheated a little bit.
Living on a prayer, big songs,

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big life, it's the big Life
of Desmond Child. He is a delight

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to talk to and I can't wait
to finish this. It's a great read

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this time of year, especially if
you love the behind the scenes stuff like

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I do. Desmond Child, thank
you for listening and joining in today.

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Oh thank you, and follow me
on Desmond dot Child on Instagram. I'm

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there day and night. Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the

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Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from

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five to seven. And iHeartMedia presentation.