Bon Jovi – Bed Of Roses

“Bed of Roses” – Single by Bon Jovi from the album Keep the Faith with B-side “Lay Your Hands on Me” (live). Released January 11, 1993.

“Bed of Roses” is a song by American rock band Bon Jovi, first appearing on their fifth studio album, Keep the Faith (1992), then released as a single on January 11, 1993 by Mercury and Jambco.

Jon Bon Jovi started writing “Bed Of Roses” in a hotel room in Los Angeles. He had the hotel bring a piano that they used for weddings to his room.

This is a personal song that Jon feels exposes a lot of the problems he was experiencing at the time as he was trying to balance his home life with the demands – and temptations – of life on the road.

The first verse reflects what Jon was feeling when he was trying to write this. He was badly hung over from the night before, but had a piano in his hotel room and was determined to write something.

In the line, “While my mistress she calls me to stand in her spotlight again,” the “mistress” is the music industry and the live stage. The “spotlight” is the media. He calls music his “mistress” to show that it’s a thrill, but something that perhaps isn’t going to do him any good.

The song’s power ballad style made it a worldwide hit, and it demonstrated the band’s new, more mature sound after their success as a glam metal band in the 1980s.

The music video for “Bed of Roses” begins with shots of Richie Sambora playing guitar high in the mountain tops, and then cuts to scenes of Jon alone in his hotel room, the band recording the song in the studio, and finally performing live on stage. Initially, the video directors wanted Jon Bon Jovi to be on the mountain tops, but Jon said: “I was on top of a mountain in ‘Blaze of Glory’, send them” (Richie Sambora and David Bryan, who is seen playing the piano at the mountain top).

The live portions were filmed at Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 1992, as part of a special 1992’s New Year’s Eve concert. In order to get the liveliest and largest crowd there for the video, the band made arrangements to have no floor seating, and to have one price, general admission tickets.

Embed

Copy and paste this HTML code into your webpage to embed.

Bon Jovi - Bed Of Roses06:41

Lyrics:

Sitting here wasted and wounded
At this old piano
Trying hard to capture
The moment this morning I don’t know
‘Cause a bottle of vodka
Is still lodged in my head
And some blonde gave me nightmares
I think that she’s still in my bed
As I dream about movies
They won’t make of me when I’m dead.

With an ironclad fist, I wake up and French kiss the morning
While some marching band keeps its own beat in my head while we’re talking
About all of the things that I long to believe
About love and the truth and what you mean to me
And the truth is baby you’re all that I need

[Chorus]
I want to lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails
Oh I wanna be just as close as
The Holy Ghost is
And lay you down
On a bed of roses

[Verse 3]
Well I’m so far away, that each step that I take is on my way home
A king’s ransom in dimes I’d given each night just to see through this payphone
Still I run out of time or it’s hard to get through
Till the bird on the wire flies me back to you
I’ll just close my eyes and whisper
Baby, blind love is true

[Verse 4]
Now as you close your eyes know I’ll be thinking about you
While my mistress she calls me
To stand in her spotlight again
Tonight, I won’t be alone
But you know that don’t mean I’m not lonely
I’ve got nothing to prove for it’s you that I’d die to defend

[Chorus]
I want to lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails
Oh I want to be just as close as
The Holy Ghost is
And lay you down

Visits: 7