Desmond Child and Creativity

Jon Bon Jovi: “We’re a real team. Richie Sambora at the guitar, me at the keyboards and Jon, running his hands through his hair. But we worked hard. We had a writing room where we wrote for three months straight, from noon to midnight. It got so we thought it was bad luck to remove anything, even a coffee cup. So all this junk just accumulated in there. It was a mess!”

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler: “We’d sit at keyboards, facing each other, with Joe Perry off to the side, coming up with guitar licks. They’d written the whole riff for ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady,’ but they were calling it ‘Cruisin’ For Ladies.’ I said it was boring that way, so they told me they’d originally titled it ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady,’ but didn’t want to use it because they thought it might insult gays. And I said, ‘Come on. Every culture is fascinated with men who dress up as women. Look at Milton Berle. You gotta use that. It’s a hit song title!”

Joan Jett: “The best songs come out of real emotions. I took Joan down to Miami to write songs and we became very close. She’s one of the most sensitive and vulnerable and trusting people I know--and she’s suffered because she’s been deceived a lot in her life. So out of that came ‘Little Liar.’ It’s tough being a woman in rock because you get no respect. But she’s a fighter--and her combination of tough exterior and sensitivity underneath makes her magical.”

Kiss’ Paul Stanley: “He really taught me what teen-age boys want to hear in a song. I call it the Headbanger Philosophy: They never want to be the victim or be portrayed as weak in any way. In fact, they always want to be seen as strong and masculine.”