“It was totally improvised. I had no idea that song would go out into the world and be his first single”: Veteran session guitarist Tim Pierce on how his off-the-cuff solo ended up on a Bon Jovi classic

Session guitarist Tim Pierce started his career side by side with Jon Bon Jovi – and at 23, Pierce scored one of his earliest successes, coinciding with 19-year-old Bon Jovi’s ascent to rock stardom.

Runaway, Bon Jovi’s debut single and a track with incredible staying power, was originally recorded in 1981 as a demo. However, it ended up being the singer’s first solo outing, backed by session musicians – namely, the tour de force of Pierce on guitar, Hugh McDonald on bass guitar, drummer Frankie LaRocka, and keyboardist Roy Bittan.

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“I am sure the band, when he got his record deal, tried to redo it,” Pierce tells MusicRadar. “It just didn’t turn out. So we got full credit on the record and they put out the version that we did.”

Referring to his guitar solo, which perfectly captures the rock zeitgeist of the era (plus a dash of spontaneity), Pierce says, “It was totally improvised. I had no idea that that song would go out into the world and be his first single.”

When it came to gear, Pierce kept it simple – a decision that tonally still paid off. “I used a Les Paul and some Marshalls, and a Schecter Stratocaster [copy]. Very simple gear.

“Some of it was just borrowed. Some of it was rented. In my mind, I was just trying to play the best solo I possibly could. It is a combination of thinking and not thinking, y’know.”

Pierce recalls that the single was the result of “pure collaboration” between the session musicians, Bon Jovi, and the team at Power Station – the recording studio co-founded by Bon Jovi’s cousin, producer Tony Bongiovi, and the site of many Grammy Award-winning recordings.

“We tracked the song, then we went upstairs into a smaller room and we overdubbed the guitars and the solo, and I made up the solo.”

He concludes, “You create with the advice and the collaboration of the others, and they weigh in on what you are going to do.”

Earlier this year, Jon Bon Jovi reunited with the first guitar he ever owned, 45 years after he sold it.