Every guitarist has, at some point, perched on a barstool, stared wistfully into the middle distance and mumbled "I've seen a million faces… and I've rocked all of them." Usually over a beer they haven't paid for. Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" is basically the official anthem for anyone who considers their open-mic slot a world tour.
This little clip is Lick #36: the instantly recognisable intro to "Wanted Dead or Alive," played slowly enough that you can steal it before your neighbours notice. It's a 12-string acoustic figure, it rings like a canyon, and it makes you sound like a very tired cowboy — in the best possible way.
How the Wanted Dead or Alive intro lick works
The whole thing lives in D minor, and Richie Sambora recorded it on a 12-string acoustic — which is the not-so-secret sauce. On a 12-string every note is doubled an octave up, so a plain descending arpeggio suddenly shimmers like a chandelier in a saloon. The intro isn't fast or technical; it's a slow, picked-out figure that outlines a Dsus2/D shape and then walks a melodic line downward while the open strings keep ringing underneath. If you want to nail it, the real trick is letting the notes ring into each other — don't mute, don't tidy up. The blur is the point.
Playing it on a normal six-string? Totally fine. You lose the octave doubling, but the shape and the technique are identical: it's an arpeggio where you pick each note cleanly and let the whole chord bloom. Same principle as the intro to Don't Cry or House of the Rising Sun — ring, don't chop.
And that's it. Four bars later you're legally a cowboy, you ride a steel horse, and you're wanted in at least two chord voicings. If you want the PDF, the Guitar Pro file, and me still pretending I paid for that beer, it's all waiting on my Patreon.