Songfacts®:

• This song is featured in the movie Young Guns II, starring Emilio Estevez. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, Jon Bon Jovi wrote the song after borrowing the movie's script from Estevez. Jon showed up on the set in New Mexico with an acoustic guitar and played the song for the film's screenwriter, John Fusco, who had used the Bon Jovi song "Wanted Dead Or Alive" as "mood music" while writing the first Young Guns. Bon Jovi played "Blaze Of Glory" for Fusco, who loved it and put the song in the movie.
• In this song, the singer is determined to fight to his death, knowing he will be remembered for his bravery. If he's going out, it will be in a blaze of glory.
• Jon Bon Jovi recorded this as a solo project while he was taking a break from his band. Not only did he branch out from the group, but he also made his first foray into acting, appearing in Young Guns II as a pit inmate who is shot back into the pit. He has appeared as an actor many times since, including roles in the movies U-571 and Pay It Forward, and the TV shows Sex and the City and Ally McBeal.
• This was nominated for but did not win an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1991, losing to Madonna's "Sooner or Later" from Dick Tracy. Jon Bon Jovi got the band back together to perform this at the Academy Awards telecast.
• Bon Jovi ended up recording a whole album of songs inspired by Young Guns II, which was released a week after the film and also called Blaze of Glory. It was his first solo album, and it sold over 2 million copies. To play on the album, Jon recruited some big names, including Elton John, Little Richard and Jeff Beck, who played slide guitar on this track. Randy Jackson also appeared on the album and played bass guitar on this track. Jackson said on American Idol that it was his second best performance ever. He didn't disclose what he felt was his best performance.
• Danny Kortchmar, who co-wrote many of Don Henley's hits, produced this track, as well as the entire Blaze Of Glory album, with Jon Bon Jovi. "We were having a great time with the musicians we were playing with and we were just having a ball in the studio," Kortchmar told Songfacts.
  
  Shortly after they finished the project, Kortchmar was asked to produce the Hall & Oates song "So Close," so he brought Jon along with him. They did such a good job on the track that they were given composer credits on the song, which made #11 in America.
• Jon Bon Jovi's first attempt at a Western look came in 1986 when the band had plans to name their third album "Wanted" after the song "Wanted Dead Or Alive." Photographer Mark Weiss did a photo shoot of the band as if they were Wild West cowboys on the run. Shots from that session show they weren't even close to pulling it off, looking more Jersey Shore than Jesse James. They ended up re-titling the album "Slippery When Wet" and abandoning the cowboy motif.
  
  When Jon Bon Jovi shot the video for "Blaze Of Glory," he brought along Weiss, who got a shot that was used on back cover of the album. "Jon liked to have me at the video shoots because he was all dressed and camera ready, and there was a lot of downtime," he told Songfacts. "So, I took advantage of it, and in his case, I saw this rainbow out of nowhere, and I just said, 'Jon! Come over here!' And I put him on the edge of the cliff, and I shot him with the rainbow."
• The song won a Golden Globe award for Best Original Song.
• This was included on the 1994 Bon Jovi greatest hits album Cross Road.
• The music video, directed by Wayne Isham, was shot atop thousand-foot cliffs outside Moab, Utah. Everything needed for the Western-styled shoot was flown in by helicopter. To save the hassle of flying to and from a hotel, Jon and the crew camped out in the desert heights for three days.
• Jon Bon Jovi wrote the song on a napkin in a diner on the set of Young Guns II. Emilio Estevez has it framed on a wall at his home.
• In the lyrics, "I'm what Cain was to Abel, mister catch me if you can," Jon Bon Jovi likens himself to the eldest son of Adam and Eve who murdered his younger brother, Abel, in the book of Genesis. God sentenced Cain to wander the earth with a mark of damnation on his forehead, preventing anyone from killing him, lest they be cursed seven times over. Cain and Abel are among some of the most popular biblical figures to show up in songs.
• This was #1 in Australia for six weeks.