- Not to be confused with the Detroit band or the German
Black Metal band of the same name.
Poison is an American
glam metal band that
achieved success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. To date,
the band has sold more than 25 million records worldwide, including
14.5 million in the United States alone. The band has also charted
10 singles to the
Top 40 of the
Billboard Hot 100, including six Top 10
singles and one #1. After 25 years, the band is still recording
music and performing.
Band history
Early Years (1983-1986)
Poison was formed in 1983 under the name Paris and consisted of
lead vocalist
Bret Michaels, guitarist
Matt Smith, bassist
Bobby Dall, and drummer
Rikki Rockett.
Moving to Los Angeles
on March 6, 1984, they started playing big clubs and several other
clubs. The name Poison was picked by the band after seeing
Spinal Tap.
During
this period, Poison's manager negotiated a deal under which the
West
Hollywood
club, The
Troubador, would pay for shows. At this time, Smith
left the band to return home to Pennsylvania
, which led to an audition session that was won by
C.C. DeVille.
Michaels, Dall, Rockett and DeVille signed to independent label
Enigma Records in 1986 (see
1986 in music) for approximately $30,000.
Their debut album,
Look
What the Cat Dragged In, was released
August 2,
1986. It included one
single, "Cry Tough".
Look What the Cat Dragged In produced
three hits: "Talk Dirty to Me", "I Want Action", and "I Won't
Forget You".
In 1987 the band also recorded a cover of the
Kiss song "Rock and Roll All Nite" for the
soundtrack to
Less Than
Zero.
Career expansion (1987–1991)
Poison's second album,
Open
Up and Say...Ahh!, was released May 21, 1988. It peaked at
#2 on the American charts and would ultimately go on to sell 8
million copies worldwide. The album included the band's biggest
hit, "
Every Rose Has Its
Thorn", along with other top-ten hits: "
Nothin' but a Good Time", "
Fallen Angel", and the
Loggins and Messina cover "
Your Mama Don't Dance."
The album's first cover was controversial, as it depicted a female
demonic figure with an obscenely long tongue. A censored version of
the cover followed, focusing on the figure's eyes. By the time the
band toured with
David Lee Roth in
1988 on the
Skyscraper Tour, it was apparent that Poison
had become a major live act. As 1989, the band had become the
fifth-best-selling hard rock band of the 1980s, behind
Mötley Crüe,
Def Leppard,
Bon Jovi,
and
Guns N' Roses.
Poison's third album,
Flesh & Blood, was
released June 21, 1990. It also was highly successful, peaking at
#2. It too features an alternate cover, as the original featured
what appeared to be running ink or possibly blood from a tattoo.
(Subsequent versions of this cover removed the "extra" ink.) The
record went multi-platinum, spawning three gold singles: "
Unskinny Bop," "
Ride the Wind," and the ballad
"
Something To
Believe In". The last single released was the title cut,
"
Flesh & Blood
". The video was banned from MTV due to its explicit nature, but
did surface later in the video compilation
Flesh, Blood &
Videotape, in early 1991. The album's success prompted the
impetus for a further world tour.
One of the
band's few appearances in the UK was on August 18, 1990 at Donington's
Monsters of Rock
festival in the summer of 1990. Whitesnake headlined with
Aerosmith,
Quireboys and
Thunder supporting them. This event
was broadcast on
BBC Radio 1.
Poison recorded several performances during its 1990/1991 Flesh
& Blood tour, which were released in November 1991 as the
band's fourth album,
Swallow This
Live. The double album features live tracks from Poison's
first three studio albums and four new studio tracks, which were
the last recorded before C.C. DeVille's departure from the band
later that year.
Changing times (1992–1999)
Despite Poison's success, DeVille's
cocaine
and
alcohol addictions had begun to cause
strife in the band. Conflict between Michaels and DeVille
culminated in a fistfight backstage at the 1991
MTV Video Music
Awards, provoked by DeVille's inept live performance. After
bringing "Unskinny Bop" to a grinding halt, DeVille's guitar
disconnected and he needed to stop playing for few seconds, in
mid-performance. DeVille was fired and replaced by Pennsylvanian
guitarist
Richie Kotzen.
Poison's fifth album,
Native
Tongue, was released February 8, 1993. It was strongly
influenced by Kotzen's fresh songwriting contributions and guitar
performance. It marked a change for the band as they abandoned
their anthemic party tunes to focus on more serious subjects, and
was far more
blues-rock oriented than
glam metal. Containing the single "
Stand," the album received generally
positive reviews, but sales were comparatively sluggish, selling
only a million copies worldwide. The band toured in support of the
album, but tensions mounted between Kotzen and the rest of the
band. Kotzen's future in the band was doomed when it was discovered
that he had become romantically involved with Rockett's ex-fiancée
Deanna Eve. Kotzen was promptly fired, and replaced by
Blues Saraceno.
Poison began recording its sixth album,
Crack a Smile, in early 1994.
Recording
was brought to an abrupt halt in May 1994, when Michaels was
involved in a car accident where he lost control of his Ferrari
.
Michaels suffered a broken
nose,
ribs,
jaw, and
fingers and lost four teeth. After his recovery in
1995, the band continued recording the album. However, in the face
of 1980s-style hair metal being almost completely gone and with a
shift in staff at the label, Capitol Records offered little support
for a new Poison record. Recording the album was halted for a
second time. Instead, the label opted for a
Greatest Hits
compilation, which featured two new tracks with Saraceno on guitar,
"Sexual Thing" and "Lay Your Body Down". The record was released on
November 26, 1996, and went two times
platinum, despite the lack of an immediate tour to
support the album.
Bret Michaels made his movie acting debut in the
Charlie Sheen movie
A Letter From Death Row in
1998, which Michaels also wrote and directed. He also released his
first solo album that year, which is the soundtrack to the movie.
After seven years apart, Michaels and DeVille were able to patch up
their differences later that year. The
Greatest Hits
reunion tour finally took place in the summer of 1999. With the
original lineup intact, Poison hit the road.
The band's supporting
tour was a success, with its show at Pine Knob Amphitheater in metro
Detroit
drawing a sell-out crowd of 18,000. Tour
dates averaged crowds of 12,000. A summer appearance on VH1's
Behind the Music appeared
to solidify the reunited lineup's new-found popularity.
Original line up back and new-found popularity (2000–2005)
Hardcore fans uncovered copies of
Crack a Smile from the
numerous bootlegs that were beginning to surface, but it wasn't
long before a shortfall in supply became evident. Fans clamored for
an official release fearing that not only was the album becoming a
collectors piece but was also quite possibly "their best album to
date." On March 14, 2000,
Crack a
Smile...and More! was finally released with extra tracks
to combat the bootleg industry. That being Poison's seventh album
after the
Greatest
Hits: 1986-1996 album took its place as the sixth, fans
were calling it "The Lost Album".
Crack a Smile...and
More! was a bright and raunchy series of party anthems,
containing few traces of the seriousness of
Native Tongue.
However it did host one outtake from the
Open Up And
Say...Ahh! session as well as two outtakes from the
Crack
a Smile session. "One More For The Bone" and "Set You Free",
both outtakes, were originally planned for use as B-sides though no
single selection was ever made. In addition to the outtakes, live
recordings from the 1990 installment of the
MTV Unplugged series were included.
Later in 2000, C.C. DeVille released his solo album
Samantha 7 and Poison also released
Power to the
People, their first album with DeVille in eight years. The
record contained five new studio songs: "
Power to the People,"
"Can't Bring Me Down," "
The
Last Song," "Strange," and "I Hate Every Bone In Your Body But
Mine," the latter with DeVille on lead vocals for the first time.
The remainder of the album featured live performances from tours
during 1999 and 2000.
Poison's sixth full studio album,
Hollyweird, was released on May 21, 2002. It
was Poison's first full album of new material with C.C. DeVille
back in the band. The album was heavily criticized by both critics
and fans, feeling it had poor production quality and an
unimpressive new sound. One popular site said "It's muddy,
under-produced, badly mixed and features crappy drum and guitar
sounds". Other reviewers were more impressed, such as
Allmusic, who declared it "one of their best
records, if not their best."
Bobby Dall on
The
Who cover “Squeeze Box” stated,
Poison released their second compilation album,
Best of Ballads &
Blues, in 2003. It contains a new acoustic version with
new lyrics of "Something to Believe In" and acoustic version of
"Stand."
Bret Michaels also released
his 2nd solo album
Songs Of
Life. On January 7 that year, after almost 20 years with
Poison, Rikki Rockett released his first solo album
Glitter 4 Your Soul which was
distributed online. The album was a tribute to 1970s
glam rock.
During the summer of 2004, Poison were invited to serve as the
opening band on
Kiss's “Rock the Nation”
tour. Apart from the release of Bret Michael's third solo album,
the country-rock-influenced
Freedom
Of Sound, the band were largely inactive for 2005.
"Nothing But a Good Time" is featured in the 2003 film
Grind. The song comes about when
Joey Kern's character put in a Poison CD, which
made everyone in the van start to sing the song and air guitar the
solo."Nothing But a Good Time" also appears in the 2005 film
Mr. and Mrs.
Smith."Nothing But a Good Time" also in the film "The Rocker"
(2009).
Recent events: Rocking On (2006–present)
After a year off, Poison returned to the music scene. They
celebrated their 20th anniversary with a "20 Years Of Rock" tour in
the summer of 2006, with fellow rockers
Cinderella and
Endeverafter opening. The tour swiftly became
one of the most successful tours of 2006 in the U.S., averaging
about 10,000 people per night. To complement it, the band had
released an anniversary compilation album
The Best Of Poison: 20
Years Of Rock, in April that year. The album also features
a new track, a cover of
Grand Funk
Railroad's "
We're An
American Band", produced by
Don Was. The
compilation debuted at #17 with a first week sales total of 39,721,
which marked Poison's return to the top 20 charts for the first
time since 1993.
On August 1, 2006, Capitol Records released remastered versions of
the first three Poison albums:
Look What the Cat Dragged
In,
Open Up and
Say...Ahh! and
Flesh and Blood, in
honor of Poison's 20th anniversary. All three include bonus tracks.
Look What the Cat Dragged In features the extra track
"
You Don't Mess
Around With Jim,"
Open Up and Say...Ahh! (which uses
the previously banned album cover instead of the censored one) has
the extra track "Livin' For The Minute" and an interview with the
band, and
Flesh and Blood features two extra tracks: an
alternate version of "Something to Believe In" and an instrumental
cover of the
Sex Pistols' "
God Save the
Queen".
DeVille appeared on VH1's reality television show
The Surreal Life in March that year, the
same day he got out of rehab. "Your Mama Don't Dance" was played in
the movie "RV" in 2006.
During the show in Atlanta on August 25 that year, Bret Michaels
and
Bobby Dall had to be separated by
members of the road crew and the rest of the band after the two
came to blows right before the encore, with Michaels throwing his
mic at Dall, and Dall retaliating by slamming his bass into
Michaels, injuring his knee. Michaels apologized later and stated,
"You may have just seen the last concert by Poison in its current
formation". The altercation happened before the band's set ended
with "Talk Dirty To Me". After some tense moments and Michaels'
apology to the crowd including his explanation that "like brothers,
sometimes you have to air things out", the band did finish the set.
Dall left the stage immediately. There have been many physical
conflicts within the band over the years, but this is the first
onstage since the fistfight between Michaels and Deville at the MTV
Video Music Awards in 1991, but that took place after the
performance, not during. The band took time out while Michaels
continued with his solo tour.
On January 3, 2007, Poison announced on their official
MySpace page that they would like their fans to help
pick favourite classic rock songs for the new studio album that
they are to record. The fans replied with suggestions like
Lynyrd Skynyrd's "
Freebird",
Sweet's
"
The Ballroom Blitz", and
AC/DC's "
You Shook Me All Night Long",
along with what might be an obvious choice -
Alice Cooper's "
Poison". On January 28, Rikki
Rockett explained,
On February 14, 2007, it was announced by
VH1
that Bret Michaels is going to have his own reality show called
Rock of Love with
Bret Michaels, where women will have to compete for his
love and prove they can keep up with his rock star life. Rock of
Love premiered on July 15, 2007.
During 2007, Poison went on a summer tour with
Ratt. They released their covers album, now named
Poison'd!, on June 5, 2007
through Capitol Records.
White Lion was
removed from the tour due to legal issues, and
Vains of Jenna took their place.
The August 2nd
sold-out show in at the Verizon
Wireless Amphitheatre St. Louis
, Missouri was taped for a live concert DVD and for a HDNet Concert special called: POISON:
LIVE, RAW & UNCUT that aired on October 26, 2007 as part of
Heavy Metal Halloween. The band also appeared that night on
the channel's Sound Off with
Matt
Pinfield.
The band
played at the Rock2Wgtn rock festival in
Wellington
, New
Zealand
, on the weekend of March 22-23, 2008. The
festival also included fellow legendary rockers KISS,
Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper,
Whitesnake, and Finnish hard rock act
Lordi.
Poison live at the Sweden Rock Festival in 2008
Poison played at the Sweden rock festival 2008.
Sebastian Bach is slated to be the opening
act on this Summer's 2008 Poison tour, also featuring
Dokken.
On March 28 that year Rikki Rockett was arrested on suspicion of
rape in Los Angeles after getting off a flight from New Zealand.
According to police reports, a woman in Neshoba County, MS, filed a
report stating that on September 23, 2007, Rockett sexually
assaulted her in his room at the Silver Star Hotel & Casino
located on a
Choctaw Indian reservation.
Rocket was exonerated of all charges on May 22, as it was
discovered that he was not in Mississippi during the time of the
alleged rape, and that a man by the name of John Minskoff used
Rockett's name when he met the woman before raping her.
Bret Michaels also starred in
Rock of Love with
Bret Michaels . Both seasons were successful and led to a solo
compilation album which featured a few new tracks heard on the
series. The album was titled
Rock My World and was
released in June 2008.
Poison live DVD, "Live Raw Uncut", released on Tuesday, July 15,
2008, was filmed in St. Louis, Missouri during the Poison'd tour in
2007. This DVD/CD set will be initially exclusive to Best Buy
stores and will include behind-the-scenes footage as a bonus
feature as well as a live audio CD with selections from the
concert. It sold around 2,400 copies in its first week of release
to debut at position No. 8 on Billboard's Top Music Videos
chart.
Also in 2008 a live CD version of the Poison DVD "Seven Days Live"
was released.
In 2009, Bret Michaels starred in the third installment of Rock of
Love called "
Rock of Love Bus", and
a Poison box set was released, consisting of 3 Cd's of music from
1986 - 2000.On January 14, 2009, Bret Michaels unveiled plans to
team up with fellow rockers
Def Leppard
for a summer 2009 tour - ending a bitter feud between the two
groups, plus
Cheap Trick.
On June 7, 2009, Poison made a special appearance at the
63rd Tony Awards, performing "Nothin' But a
Good Time" with the cast of
Rock
of Ages, which features "Nothin' But a Good Time" as a song in
the show. As Bret Michaels was exiting the stage, he was struck in
the head by a descending set piece and knocked to the ground. He
suffered a fractured nose and a split lip requiring three
stitches.
On June
23, 2009, Poison kicked off their 42-city Summer 2009 tour in
Camden
, NJ with Def Leppard and Cheap Trick.
Band members
Current members
- Bret Michaels – lead vocals,
rhythm guitar (since 1983)
- C.C. DeVille – lead guitar, backing vocals,
occasional lead vocals (1985–1991,
1999–present)
- Bobby Dall – bass, keyboards, piano,
backing vocals (since 1984)
- Rikki Rockett – drums, percussion,
backing vocals (since 1983)
Former members
- Blues Saraceno – lead guitar,
backing vocals (1993–2000)
- Richie Kotzen – lead guitar,
mandolin, Dobro, keyboards, backing vocals
(1991–1993)
- Matt Smith – lead guitar,
backing vocals (1984–1985)
- Jonathan Combs – synthesizer, gong, backing vocals
(1984)
- Patrick Bircher – bass, backing vocals
(1984)
- Brian Bircher – bass, backing vocals (1984)
- James "Weezy" Peters – lead guitar, backing vocals
(1983–1984)
- Timothy "Tim" Grace – bass, backing vocals
(1983–1984)
Discography
Tours
- Look What the Cat Dragged In Tour '86-'87 (w/Ratt)
- Open Up And Say Ahh! Tour (w/ David
Lee Roth)
- Flesh & Blood World Tour '90-'91
- Native Tongue World Tour
- Greatest Hits Tour 1999 (w/ Ratt, Great White, LA
Guns)
- Power To The People Tour 2000 (w/ Cinderella, Dokken,
Slaughter)
- Glam, Slam, Metal Jam Tour 2001 (w/ Warrant, Quiet
Riot, Enuff Z Nuff)
- Hollywierd World Tour 2002 (w/Cinderella, Winger, Faster
Pussycat)
- Harder, Louder, Faster Tour 2003 (w/Vince Neil, Skid Row)
- Rock The Nation Tour 2004 (w/ KISS, ZO2)
- 20 Years Of Rock Tour 2006 (w/ Cinderella, Endeverafter)
- POISON'D Summer Tour 2007 (w/ Ratt, Vains Of Jenna)
- Live, Raw & Uncut Summer Tour 2008 (w/ Dokken, Sebastian
Bach)
- 2009 Summer Tour (w/ Def Leppard/ Cheap Trick)
References
- ibid. p.268.
- KNAC.com - Rikki Rockett Exonerated of Rape Charge
- Bret Michaels Injured at the Tony Awards
External links
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