I'm not sure what he's doing...

[Baddum12]

In the solo for Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name", the second to last phrase is pretty much just hammering on and pulling off between two tones, but there's a strange noise going on every couple of runs. At first I thought Richie was kind of quickly pulling and releasing his whammy bar, but then I saw their Live 8 performance of "Living on a Prayer" and his little mini solo after "when he used to make it talk so tough" sounds like it's the same thing and in the video it looks as though he is scraping his pick in between.

My question is, what is it that he's doing? I'm pretty sure it's the same thing for both songs. And what is this technique called?

[Sentinel]

I haven't seen him playing it, but it sounds to me like he's sliding one of his pick-hand fingers along the string to get that sound.

[superlocrian]

It's both actually. In the beginning of the phrase he is hammering while sliding a right hand finger quickly up the string. The end of the phrase he definitely uses the whammy bar. Had to play the song once for a cover band and worked on the solo. It's important to put the slides in the right timing. I've seen a lot of guys just hammer and throw in the slides anywhere, but if you slow it down you'll hear a specific phrasing.