Desmond Child might not get the adulation the biggest musical acts of the past three decades are slathered with, but for those who know the industry, the prolific songwriter and producer, who spent much of his childhood in Miami and maintains a home here, is a true superstar.
Child is the man behind the curtain of some of the world's biggest hits, including Bon Jovi's Livin' On a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name, Aerosmith's Angel and Crazy, Joan Jett's I Hate Myself for Loving You, KISS' I Was Made for Loving You and Ricky Martin's Livin' La Vida Loca and The Cup of Life.
He also made a name on his own with the group Desmond Child & Rouge, which released two albums in the late-'70s and will reunite Thursday night in New York when Child is inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The 54-year-old musician -- whom Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler called ''a genius'' -- talked to The Miami Herald about his impending honor, his beginnings as a songwriter and reuniting with Rouge at Thursday's ceremony.
Q: How does it feel to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame?
A: It's hard to believe it because I've dreamed about it for so long. It was funny because I had been nominated twice before but I hadn't made it, and I spoke to the heads of it and they said, ''Well, we always thought you were too young to get it, but then we recently looked at your bio and realized you are old. You just looked young.'' So I don't know if that was a compliment.
Q: At the ceremony, you're going to reunite with Rouge?
A: Yes, by default. I couldn't get any of the big stars that I've worked with because they're all on tour this summer, so it was kind of a tough scheduling situation. For months, we thought Ricky Martin was gonna do it and then at the last minute he pulled out. Even Alice Cooper couldn't make it. So what can I say -- I can count on myself, right? Maybe we can make it again, now that it doesn't matter what you look like.
Q: What made you realize you were meant for the music industry?
A: My mother's a songwriter -- her name is Elena Casals -- and my uncle had married one of the top singers in Cuban music, named Olga Guillot, and music was always going on in my home. And so I didn't know that not everybody wrote songs. Ever since I was little, I'd sit at the piano and compose melodies. I wrote my first formal song when I was 14, for a girl in my junior high -- I went to Nautilus Junior High School [in Miami Beach], and there was a girl named Laura Stern. She had a birthday party, and I didn't have any money whatsoever to buy her a gift, so I wrote her a song instead and played it for her. My very first song was called Birthday Blues.
Q: You've worked with so many stars. Are there any you regret not having had the chance to work with?
A: I regret not having worked with Madonna, George Michael -- these are my idols -- Shakira. I would love to have one of my songs performed by Barbra Streisand. There are so many -- Aretha Franklin.
Q: Have you asked any of them to work with you?
A: I've met George Michael and I kind of hinted, but he wasn't in a space to be co-writing. And Madonna usually uses track guys, the guys who come up with the background music, and she's writing the melodies and the lyrics. So she doesn't need a person like me. I'm really not a person that they would require.
Q: What's the typical process for getting together with an artist? Who approaches whom?
A: I have very strong relationships with artists directly, like Jon Bon Jovi, who's the godfather of my kids, and we're in contact all the time. When he wants to start working on a record, he'll let me know.
But usually my managers are having meetings all the time with top executives and they're dropping names of artists that have started writing their records, and now they don't have the first single -- and that's how I've gotten onto a lot of records. At the last minute, the last song, the one that's gonna save the record -- I'm brought in for that.
Q: Did you realize when you were writing material for Bon Jovi's 1986 album Slippery When Wet just how big it would be?
A: I think when the demo was made, it was clear to me. I remember playing the demos for Livin' On a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name for [KISS guitarist] Paul Stanley. He's the person who actually gave Jon my number -- and he listened to it and said, ``That's not a hit.''
Q: How did you hook up with Stanley?
A: I met him in 1978 -- he was a fan of Desmond Child & Rouge and was hanging around a lot mainly because I think he found the girls in the group attractive. And just to try to appease me, he said, ''Oh, why don't we try to write a song together, Desmond?'' He's always been a little, you know, ''king of the mountain'' -- actually, I think I wrote a song with him called King of the Mountain -- and so we got together and wrote I Was Made For Lovin' You. . . . At the time, it sold seven million singles. I'm still getting checks for that song.
I got [KISS] to put rock guitars to a disco beat, and in that one song, we helped change the course of pop music, because there was no turning back. That led to Donna Summer and a lot of songs that had rock guitar in them with a dance-y beat. And all the music of the '80s was that.
Q: What are you most proud of in your career?
A: Well, of course that wonderful moment when Ricky sang The Cup of Life at the Grammys was a career highlight, and vindication that everything I had been working on for the past two years was right. Another incredible moment was a couple months ago in Los Angeles, when Bon Jovi was playing at the Staples Center, and it was truly one of the best shows I have ever seen them do. I never saw Jon sing better or perform better -- he had the audience in the palm of his hand. And when it came to Livin' On a Prayer, people were just screaming it out -- we couldn't even hear the band anymore, and it was so exciting. I've never heard anything with that much fervor. Those were moments when I thought, ``I did not live a life totally in vain.''
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