Watch Zac Brown Band and Richie Sambora Rip ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’
He may be currently on hiatus from Bon Jovi, but Richie Sambora can still shred “Wanted Dead or Alive.” During June’s CMA Music Festival in Nashville, the bluesy guitarist showed up during Zac Brown Band‘s set to perform the 1987 Bon Jovi road ballad from their breakthrough album Slippery When Wet.
The performance was filmed for last night’s CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock, which aired on ABC and featured performances by Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood, Eric Church with Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, and Blake Shelton. Raise your lighter in the air and check out the rock-star heroics between Brown and Sambora above.
Sambora, long Jon Bon Jovi’s right-hand man and a founding member of the New Jersey rock band, left the group in 2011 to enter rehab for alcohol issues. He rejoined Bon Jovi later that same year, but left again during the Because We Can Tour in April 2013. He recently tweeted a photo of his solo band rehearsing in Los Angeles.
Sambora’s guest shot with Zac Brown Band isn’t his first foray into country. Bon Jovi won a Grammy award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for their duet with Jennifer Nettles, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” in 2007. And this June, Sambora performed with Dolly Parton during her set at England’s Glastonbury Festival, adding guitar to the Bon Jovi New Jersey single “Lay Your Hands on Me,” which Parton covered on her new Blue Smoke album.