Songfacts®:

• Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora wrote this cinematic-style song, incorporating heavy guitars with an orchestral arrangement, with Desmond Child, a prolific songwriter/producer they first collaborated with on "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Livin' on a Prayer." The lyrics tell the story of two lovers who are separated by a literal and figurative distance and how the narrator vows to "never give up the fight, I'll go the distance."
• Sambora shared his interpretation of the song in an interview with Cosmopolis: "I think that in my mind when we were writing it, I almost had a picture in my head of a soldier, in a way, leaving his wife and going to do his duty in whatever armed forces were there and him in his mind seeing her. Saying, 'I'll go the distance, just wait for me till I get back.' I think that's the cinematic picture I had in my head."