Bon jovi - dead or alive

Lesgrandepotato

Listening to this in the car today. Look it was a long drive and the iPod was on random. :-) 

The bit I’m trying to get my head round is why the main motif doesn’t appear to quite fit with the tonality of the following chords. I’d noticed this with a pub band recently but just assumed they were playing it slightly off... 

It’s almost like the motif has a kind of countryish sound but then the initial chords sound really major to me? 

I think I want the chords to have some more inflection of the previous motif? Does that make sense? Can anyone explain what I’m hearing?

Danny1969

The descending riff is in Dm, the main song is in D maj  ..... but even then on the verse they use the bluesier G to F before returning back to the D maj

There's not many rock songs that stick to the expected chords of the key, the chords tend to be more pent based 

Moltisanti

the solo is Dm pentatonic too over the verse changes and it works

SidNewton

Preferably dead

Lesgrandepotato

I think what I’m hearing is the Dm riff then become Dmaj. It works to my mind later in the track with Dm over Dmaj as that’s the standard ‘rock’ sound. The Dmaj on its own after Dmin sounds funny to me.