Poison, Las Vegas Sun, May 31, 2002

Poison: This metal band is hair to stay Lisa Ferguson Friday, May 31, 2002 | 8:52 a.m. What: Poison. When: 7 p.m. Tuesday. Where: The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel. Tickets: $50.50. Information: 693-5000. Bret Michaels is without shame. There's no reason to hang his head in embarrassment, he contends, about earning the top spot on any list. "We wore our sashes with honor," Michaels, frontman for '80s-rock poster children Poison, joked recently from Greenville, S.C., about the group having been named the Greatest Hair Band of All Time by cable music channel VH1. At least the foursome, who take the stage Tuesday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, was in good company on the list. "I was up there with bands I grew up with," Michaels says. "It was Kiss, and Motley Crue and Ratt and The Scorpions and all these different groups, and I just thought it was awesome." Also making the list were three other bands on Tuesday's bill: Cinderella (which landed the No. 5 spot), Winger (No. 12) and Faster Pussycat (No. 35). Michaels recalls his reaction to the designation by the cable channel: "I'm like, 'Hey, call us whatever you want, but to have the top video and the top song and to be Number One, regardless of what they call the genre, that's a good feeling.' " Besides, he says, he thinks the "hair band" label is a misnomer, leading some to believe the music that dominated the era was all style and no substance. Arguably, no band better depicted the genre than Poison. Its spandex-clad players -- Michaels, guitarist C.C. DeVille, bassist Bobby Dall and drummer Rikki Rockett -- wore as much eye makeup and teased their hair as high as their throngs of female fans. "We've been called a million things, from glam (to) punk to hair metal -- you name it," Michaels, 39, says. "We've had every title that's given, from heavy metal to hair metal." And then there were Poison's party-til-you-drop anthems -- all hits for the group -- including "Talk Dirty To Me," "Nothin' But a Good Time" and "Unskinny Bop." Poison earlier this month released its ninth disc, "Hollyweird," which it is touring to support -- thus thwarting any notions that the group is merely out on a lucrative nostalgia trip. "We've never had a show where we stripped down our show and just went out and played," Michaels says. "We've always played, with every tour and every record, as if this is to us the most exciting thing we can be doing right now." The key to Poison's success, Michaels theorizes, has been its ability to ignore musical trends -- especially the Seattle-based grunge movement of the early '90s that all but killed mainstream metal music, and the current fusion of rap and rock -- and trudge ahead playing "straight-up American rock and roll." "The truth is we're a hard-rock band and that's the kind of music we play, regardless of what the trend or the (music) scene is," he says. "In other words, I love Kid Rock ... and Lit, and all these bands ... come up onstage and they'll jam with us, but I think they respect us for sticking to our guns and not trying to move with the trends every two seconds." Same goes for Michaels' forthcoming solo disc, "Songs of Life," due in late October. Following Poison's European tour, Michaels will hit the road on his own to promote the effort. He was largely inspired by the events of Sept. 11 to write the tunes on "Songs," which he says features "some of the best songwriting I've done" since Poison's power ballads of yore, "Something to Believe In" and "Every Rose Has it's Thorn." He also used his writing abilities in recent years for another medium: movie making. He founded a production company with actor Charlie Sheen, which the two use to produce "one-off films." In fact Michaels has donned several filmmaking hats: He wrote directed, executive produced, scored and starred in the 1998 low-budget flick "A Letter From Death Row." The same year he directed and wrote another movie, "No Code of Conduct," and co-starred in "In God's Hands." He also stepped in front of the camera for small acting parts on HBO's "The Chris Isaak Show" and the CBS sitcom "Yes Dear." "I love creating from the ground up," he says, "Most of the scripts that we've shot with Sheen-Michaels (Entertainment) have been stuff that I've written, like 'No Code of Conduct' or 'A Letter from Death Row.' "When I make a full movie that I'm in, I like knowing that I wrote it, that I understand the character, because then I feel like I'm involved with the whole process." One star turn he wasn't particularly pleased about was in a sex tape with former girlfriend Pamela Anderson. The scandalous tape -- similar to a tape made by Anderson and her former husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee -- was allegedly stolen from the couple and went on to sell a slew of copies over the Internet. In 1999 Michaels and Anderson each filed multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the Internet Entertainment Group to prevent the company from peddling the tape. The two settled their suits last year, and have not spoken to each other since. "Obviously the tape we did was for us, nobody else, and we stopped it," explains Michaels, who says he has no regrets about making the tape, only that it landed in the wrong hands. "Believe me, I think pornography and all that stuff is great if that's what people want to do with their life," Michaels says. "That's not the reason she and I made the tape. We were a couple at that time that was in love and having a great time together." The publicity, he says, did nothing to help or hurt his career. "I think for the porno world and the gossip world, it's great," he says. "As far as selling records ... those kinds of scandals, they don't make people rush out and buy (a) record." Nevertheless, fans are still buying Poison's discs -- a fact not lost on Michaels, who says it speaks volumes about the staying power of hair bands. "Somewhere along the line, our bands must have really been about the music, because we've been playing it through thick and thin. We didn't give up when somebody said, 'Hey, you're not hip anymore.' "