Crossroads: Poison's Rikki Rockett
Pivotal moments propelling musicians from obscurity to infamy
by Mark E. Waterbury
Everyone remembers the “glam rock” era of the mid to late 80’s. Sure,
there are some folks who would just as soon forget that era, but let’s face
it; there were some extremely popular bands during that time frame. Some of
them have even helped to rekindle a serious interest in glam rock, an even
quicker rebirth of musical popularity than the 70's music garnered. It seems
natural that Poison is one of those bands to lead the resurgence because they
were one of the main innovators of glam to begin with. The foursome roared
out of the L.A. music scene to produce several multi-platinum albums,
spawning top-ten hits of hooky and often risque music, and playing to
sold-out arenas with their wild onstage antics and explosive show. They also
survived forces that could have buried them forever, and are now once again
becoming a viable force in rock and roll with a new studio album and an even
bigger and badder stage show on tour.
Drummer Rikki Rockett knew that his central PA home stomping ground
would not cut it for a band that wanted to be successful. Mired in the cover
band muck, Rikki and his bandmates which included vocalist Bret Michaels
decided it was time to make a move. “We wanted more. We didn’t want to be a
live juke box,” Rikki muses. “It was OK to make money and we were doing what
we loved, which was playing music; but we were doing other peoples' music.
There’s only so long you can do that. And the other two guys in the band were
more content to work day jobs and play on the weekends, and we wanted more.
So we wanted to put together the ultimate band, and put everything into it we
ever wanted to put in a band, and write our own music.” The first step the
band took was adding Bobby Dall, a guitarist who was so into the ideas that
Rikki and Bret had that he switched to playing bass to join up and told them
he would do whatever they wanted him to do to help make the band successful.
They then brought in guitarist Matt Smith and the band headed to L.A. to try
to see how the formula worked. But unfortunately, one of the ingredients
wasn’t quite there. “It didn’t work out with (Matt Smith),” Rikki
remembers. “He couldn’t take living in the poverty we were living in at the
time. I mean, we lived with the cockroaches until we went on our first major
tour.” The band held auditions, and guitarist number fifty-six was C.C.
DeVille, who finally fit the mold that the band wanted
Now that the Poison lineup was complete, the band began to develop their
stage presence and played out as much as possible. They were having a rough
go of it because at that time, the L.A. scene was more into bands that were
emulating the British heavy metal types such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
But Poison kept slugging it out, developing their frenetic live show as they
went on. Other similar bands followed in Poison’s wake, and soon people also
started to coin a new sub-genre phrase to describe Poison’s general musical
aura. “Poison literally created the glam scene in L.A. at that time. We sort
of meshed a lot of our influences and took so many of the acts that were
happening in L.A. along with some that were not, and we’d do shows together.
We’d get some of the weirdest combinations of bands to play together, and
that became a scene and that scene became glam. During that time, they were
selling and signing more metal bands, but after we were there, that started
to change. They realized that type of metal was not really viable on the
radio, so they began to turn their attention to bands like us, who were
drawing big crowds.”
Poison eventually caught the attention of the indie label Enigma who put
up twenty-eight thousand dollars so the band could record their debut album.
“These days that kind of money won’t even pay for the producer. We did
everything for that amount. And then we went out and toured as an indie band.
We actually stayed an indie band for several years, and we never did get that
big paycheck that said, OK, you guys can go make that big record and go buy
cars and get an apartment. It never happened that way.” Poison continued to
perform at a torrid pace, and finally Capitol Records decided to distribute
Poison’s album along with the recordings of two other Enigma acts. They put
Poison on tour opening for Ratt, and that’s when people nationwide began to
realize what an incredible show Poison put on. Capitol decided it was worth
it to fund another video. Poison had already done a video of the song “Cry
Tough,” which was somewhat successful, but had not really received widespread
notice. “When they told us they wanted to do another video, we thought “Talk
Dirty To Me” would be a great song. And it was going to be a real cheap video
so we wanted to do a fun one. There wasn’t going to be a common thread in the
whole video. We were going to wear different outfits every scene. No
continuity whatsoever; let’s turn the cameras on and have a good time. And
that’s what we did, and for some reason, the damn thing worked!” The “damn
thing” worked well enough that Poison’s debut “Look What the Cat Dragged
In” went on to sell over four million copies and would top-out at number
three on the charts. The two following albums - 1988’s “Open Up and
Say...Ahh!” and 1990’s “Flesh and Blood” - would also go multi-platinum,
both peaking at number two. With a number of singles also placing high on the
charts, it seemed Poison was on top of the world.
Things started to slip some in the early 90’s. Bret and C.C. had a
well-publicized rift that ended in fisticuffs with the guitarist walking out
on the band. Subsequent replacements Richie Kotzen and Blues Saraceno just
didn’t quite fit in, and in spite of the “Greatest Hits” album's hot sales,
the only studio effort after C.C.’s departure didn’t sell nearly as well as
the first three albums did. Then Bret Michaels was involved in a serious car
accident and a sex-tape scandal, and C.C. was fighting with drug abuse
problems. It appeared that Poison’s run was about to peter out. “I
considered us to be America’s number one dysfunctional rock and roll
family,” Rikki muses. “There were times when every other day I didn't know
what punch was going to come from around what corner. We realized that until
C.C. was healthy and ready to come back, we did not need to go out and give
the world more half-assed Poison, which is what it was for a while. We gave
it a try for a while, but it wasn’t working. So we just tucked our heads away
for a while and felt when it’s time, we’ll do it again.”
The time came in late 1998, when Bret and C.C. finally put aside their
differences. The band reunited and returned to the stage, and once they were
there it seemed that the magic had returned. “This feeling came across
everybody and we all just started laughing. We stopped playing and kind of
thought to ourselves, "Wow, we have that feeling again". Kind of like having
an argument with a girlfriend and then hooking back up, and thinking, "Oh
thank God, I’m home", in a way. The fit was definitely right.” Poison
continued touring and began a summer tour called the Glam Slam Jam Tour which
included other bands from their era. May of 2002 would see the release of a
new full length studio album “Hollyweird” and with this year’s Glam Slam Jam
in full swing featuring another flamboyant show involving massive production,
Poison may be recapturing even more of that old magic they had in their
mid-80's heyday. “As long as it’s working and it makes sense and we’re doing
something positive, we’re going to keep it together. We have the money, so we
don’t need to do it for the money at this point. It’s gotta be a positive
thing or we’re just ripping ourselves and the audience off. We’re not going
to whore the name to make money. We could have done that in many ways, but we
have not done that. What we have to say as a rock band is valid. Just because
we don’t write about it the same way as U2 does, doesn’t mean it’s less
valid. But right now, the feeling is there, and it just goes to show that
this little dysfunctional family has some magic about it. It could go away
any day. We had a blowout the other day and then patched things up. But I
think us walking on eggshells is the spark that lights a fire that has a
little bit of magic to it.” Poison is currently on tour with Faster
Pussycat, Winger, and Cinderella. http://www.poisonweb.com :->
Industry Profile: Greg Loescher - Goldmine Magazine's Editor
by Mark E. Waterbury
Greg Loescher didn’t know how his first foray into the publishing
business actually brought him close to where his career would lie. Born in
Appleton, Wisconsin, Greg developed an early love for music, collecting
records while he grew up. “I had my own 78(RPM) record player,” Greg
recalls. “I used to get 78 children's' records through the mail, and then I
got into my grandmother’s classical 78’s and my mom’s albums of show music.
As a kid, I was really into 45’s, sticking up cutouts and the like. I was
loving the B-sides more than the A-sides. But I had always been into
collecting music.” His first actual job with publications was on the far end
of the peripheries; as a paper boy delivering a local shopper guide when he
was fourteen. He found out later that the owner of that shopper printed a
record collectors magazine called Goldmine right there in Greg's hometown of
Appleton.
Greg entered college at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with the
intent of going into business and marketing. But Greg instead felt the urge
to enter into publishing so he went to New York City, where he managed to get
his foot in the door at a small daily by driving delivery trucks. Learning as
he went along, he worked his way up to being the head of the business
department. “A lot of people go to school for journalism and get a job in it
after graduation. But I took the back door route. It’s just the way that it
happened.” Greg worked at various publications in several cities before he
decided to return to his home state, where he joined up with Krause
Publications in the town of Iola, Wisconsin in 1982. Krause’s main focus was
publishing magazines catering to various collectors. There, Greg became the
promotions manager for several of the magazines. It was after being employed
there for a year and a half that Greg had his first real exposure to Goldmine
Magazine. “I saw a copy of the magazine when one of our employees, a big
record collector, brought it to the attention of our founder and said it
would be a really cool magazine since it’s about collecting records. I
thought it was really cool myself, and a year later, we bought the magazine.
I was one of the first people in the world to know about that deal.” At
first, Goldmine became another magazine Greg was managing promotions for. It
was also the last magazine he had to cut managing promotions for when he
became more involved with management at Krause. But when the publisher of
Goldmine left the company in 1990, Greg jumped at the opportunity to take
that position. “I never really thought of being a publisher, but when the
opportunity arose, it just seemed to make sense at the time. It was a good
transition for the magazine since I was involved in it with certain aspects
before.” Greg remained the publisher of Goldmine until 1997 when he decided
he would preferred to be the magazine’s editor so he could become more
involved in the creative aspects. “I was so far away from the production side
of a magazine that I felt I wasn’t really part of it anymore. Besides that, I
wanted to get back into writing as well.”
Along with its content about record collecting, Goldmine also does
articles, interviews and reviews on musicians from several genres, from early
recording right up to the modern ones. They also like to do reviews and
features on indie artists because their music can often end up being more
collectable. “Our readers want to know everything about collecting and how
much a particular record may be worth, but they are also into the history of
the music itself. But we also run reviews of indies, and today many
singer/songwriter types are on their own labels or on indies. Most of the
indie submissions we receive include personal notes from someone in the band
saying they’ve been reading Goldmine for years, so I want to help those folks
out. But I also read what their press kits say and try to get a sense of what
they are all about. We get about five hundred CDs a month and first we
determine if the style would be something our readers are interested in. It
can be a mixed bag, but if it’s too out there, it probably won’t go over
well. Our readers are a little older, but we still do cover some modern alt
bands.”
At the moment, the only thing Greg wants to do other than continue
working with Goldmine is to get up on stage with Corky Lange from the band
Mountain who he recently had contact with, and play the cowbell part on
“Mississippi Queen.” Beyond that he is quite happy with his editing
position. “I’ve always had that publishing, deadline pressure in my blood.
It’s a fast-paced job, and it allows me not to become musically stagnant. I
listen to everything from old 30’s blues and jazz right on up to the new
music coming out and everything in between. I have fairly eclectic tastes for
this, but even more so now since I get so much music. I’ve always loved
music, and every time I’ve moved to another residence, the first thing I
unpack is my stereo. Forget everything else, that’s the most important
item!” For more info, visit www.krause.com :->
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