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An Interview With BRET MICHAELS - Poison's Main Man Talks About His New Solo CD, His Love of Country Music, and Emptying DTE of It's Beer Supply By Scott Baker
Recently, Michaels had a few days off in Vancouver to celebrate his daughter Raine's upcoming birthday and called to chat about Songs of Life and the summer Poison stint. Michigan always is a landmark in Michaels touring history and he has no shortage of stories to share. Review: You've got quite a full load with this new record and the tour. Bret Michaels: I think it's actually kind of good this way, because it gives me a chance to go out and obviously let people know that I have a solo record out there. The video so far and the single have been doing real well. This is the first week we're kind of going out for ads and stuff on the single (Raine). I've kind of been letting people know it's there, but it'll go up on VH-1's Headline Act. People have also been seeing it at BrettMichaels.com. We've had a sneak preview of it up there. Review: Will you be doing solo material with Poison? BM: No. When we're out on the road with Poison, we're just doing all Poison stuff at the shows. And this year, for the first time ever, we're doing stuff off of all nine Poison albums, including obviously all the greatest hits, but stuff off the two new albums as well as stuff off Crack A Smile and Native Tongue, which we've never done before. Review: I'm up in Saginaw, close to DTE where you'll be playing. BM: We're hopefully coming up there near the end of our swing. We come back through Detroit again at the end of the tour and we also come back through and do the Allegan Fair. It's like a big summer music fest or something they're doing this year. Review: That's up North. BM: Yeah. And we're also doing Sault Ste. Marie. It's right on the border. Remember the Castle used to be up there? Review: Yeah, Charlevoix. BM: Oh man, I have some nights I remember and don't remember from that place. Those were some good summer parties up there when we would play. You'd go up there and literally, I'm not lying to you, the concert would start during the day you know. At that point we were just headlining. This was like Open Up And Say Ahh! the first year we headlined and man I think we even started our concert a little early and ended up at the end of the night just playing and playing and playing, because everyone - it was like a big college summer fest. People were just partyin'. Review: That hasn't been around in so long. BM: It's such a bummer, because we tried to go back there and do it and they're like, 'No. They kind of took that whole place down. The whole Castle's done everything's kind of knocked down, you know. Review: I didn't know it was knocked down. BM: Yeah, remember they had all the chairs and stuff out there, but it was kind of like if you were outside, literally you were outside. Like at DTE they have the roof that goes over like 8,000 of the chairs. Out there I don't think they had any of that. Review: How many shows are you playing on this tour here in Michigan? BM: I think by the time we're done it will probably be four or five all together. Review: Are you hitting any casinos at all? BM: The only one I know they have in there is Sault Ste. Marie, because like I said, we tried to do the Castle and the promoter said the only place they got as a venue up here right now is the casino indoors. And that was originally going to be a day off for us and we just decided to take it, because we haven't been up there in so long. We wanted to play it. Review: That's cool. Take what you can. BM: Yeah because it was actually going to be a day off--just a day to rest the voice, because we do about five or six shows a week and I said, 'Man I wanted to book a show up there, ' and I've been pushing the promoters for a couple of years and they said this is the place up here to play if you want to do it, so Review: The Casinos up north all have a lot of gigs. And we have one in Mt. Pleasant that is close to the Tri-cities here called Soaring Eagle that's booking a ton of gigs too. BM: Maybe we'll get a chance to do that. I know with playing DTE, they kind of have a thing where you have to have like a week or a couple of days in between the two shows. It's like we head to DTE and then we come back either to DTE or a new outdoor place outside of Detroit. It's like 10,000 seats or something. I think DTE is like 15 (000). We're going to play both this tour. Review: That's wild because you would think that, knowing how you guys pack DTE BM: Yeah, I think it will be great. Obviously we love playing Detroit, because not only (are) the fans great, but we're the only band - we go down on record - as the only band in the place (DTE) where they sold out of beer. That's never happened at their venue before or after us. I think that's a good sign (laughs). Review: That's great (laughing). Was that the VH-1 gigging for Behind the Music? BM: Yes. That was the VH-1 night and they said, 'You're not going to believe this. We have sold out of beer, and people were like losing their minds. They had to go out and get more beer from like local bars. Review: I was there, because I interviewed you a few weeks prior to that. That was the last time we talked. BM: '99 I believe it was. Review: '99, yes, because I remember you guys backstage with nothing for you back there, because everything was gone in the building! (laughing) BM: We gave ours up, because I was like, 'Hell, take our beer out to the fans, we don't care, but then all of a sudden we're like, 'Wait! We had a huge party afterward and we literally had to send the promoter out to a local bar to get beer. Review: I remember laughing thinking I had never seen anything like that there. That was a night to remember. So are you going to promote the new solo record around this Poison summer tour then? BM: Oh yeah, that's what I'm doing now. I mean, realistically what I'm doing (there's) a couple ways of doing it. One, obviously, we shot a real awesome video and we shot it all in Hi-Def which is the same thing they shot the Star Wars Trilogy on. It's sort of becoming the new technology of Hollywood. I went over to the Panavision stage and we shot it in the new Hi-Def and it just looks insane. And we were able to do some interesting camera moves with it. We shot it in about ten different cities just to give it a different look. We shot Chicago and Pittsburgh, New York, L.A., some of it we even shot it in Hawaii which was great. Just for like a day. It was a fairly expensive endeavor, but the video's been doing real well and so I keep my fingers crossed. I really believe in this song and I feel that with Songs Of Life that it's some of the strongest material I've written in a while. And on a personal note, I write music first and foremost for myself. It's a way of expressing yourself. And I think all the songs stand on their own. And that was the purpose of doing it. By no means am I trying to separate myself from Poison and I will never leave the band. That's not my intention. But I really wanted to do a solo record and just experiment with some little different sounds and obviously do some things that I wouldn't be able to do in the confines of Poison. Review: Is any of this material old or is it all newly written? BM: It spans pretty much my lifetime. I'm talking four/five decades now, which I think is a good thing (laughs). I'm 40, but I'm acting like I'm 20, so that's a good thing. Review: You're in the realm now where you can pretty much do what you want. BM: All the music was written recently, but it's all some of the lyrics that I grabbed from songs that I had written back long ago. Some of them were even back when I was 17 years old, like Menace To Society, the one that kicks off the record. Review: I thought that song might have been written in the earliest days of Poison. BM: That was even before Poison. That was before I even knew Rikki. That was in my first band I had back when we had Spectors. Review: And the other one I thought was older was Party Rock Band. I thought to myself, you must have written that after your first or second tour. BM: Actually you're going to laugh. I wrote that in '95. I wrote that just as a fun tune, kind of making fun of the critics and myself. I was just being self-deprecating and I was saying sort of what the critics thought of my life. You know what I am getting at? It's just sort of a fun party song. Review: And it totally is. I cracked up at the lyrics. I thought you must have had a blast with that one. BM: I totally had a blast. I kind of (like that) tongue in cheek (that) sort of self deprecating humor. (At that point in our conversation, Michaels' daughter Raine helps her dad with the interview and waves HI to me over the phone.) Review: Will you be taking her out on the road? BM: We do about a week on and a couple weeks off. It gets a little brutal (for her) out there just traveling so much. Review: That's understandable. You've done this for so long you can pretty much pick and choose what will work then. BM: I'll tell you one thing. I like being on the road. Review: Hollyweird to me seemed like a welcome back record, whereas Songs Of Life has the feel of Flesh & Blood per se. BM: It was a good welcome back record, but I think that Poison is going to hit its stride again. Remember C.C and me haven't really done a record together really since Flesh & Blood. I mean, even though this is our ninth record, Hollyweird, as Poison, I always openly said I think Hollyweird was a good record, but I don't think it was a great record. And on the next one I really feel we're going to hit our writing stride. Review: I think you hit it on the nose. Like you said, since you guys are writing again, it takes a little time to get the wheels back turning. BM: Yeah, absolutely. And C.C., like I said, we both have very strong opinions on how a song should be. And it was just one of those records where I feel that I think in our next situation, and I truly mean this, I feel that Poison should produce it itself, because I think we know now what we sound like. And sometimes you get an outside producer, and I'm truly saying this, the guy that produced it was a great producer that did not connect with our style. He had just finished like doing Motorhead. So I'm not sure that he ever connected with what our band was about. Review: I need to give Cliff Calabro kudos, who worked with you on Songs Of Life. He's on every track and he co-produced it with you and I think that you found yourself a guy right there that really knows your stuff well. BM: Absolutely and you know what I loved about it too, is with Cliff, Cliff is one of my best friends and I've known him on the L.A. scene forever. He's one of those absolutely great musicians you just sit down and write with, but he's also a friend of mine that I ride go-carts with, I dirt bike with, I go out and we play football. When I write music, music is very emotional to me and I have to connect with the people I'm writing with. I can't just hire someone to come in, because I don't feel connected. And this guy's a buddy of mine and the fact that he writes great and he's a good producer, I mean he would sit there for hours with me and we would do a song and I'm like, "Man Cliff, this acoustic just doesn't sound right. We've got to do it again." And he would never give up, man. When I get into the studio, I'm kind of a studioaholic. I get in there and I'm playing stuff and I'm jammin' and it feels good and then it'd be cool. We did a lot of this stuff we wouldn't even start until 8 at night and finish at like 8 in the morning. But that is what made it awesome. (At) 3 in the morning we'd get a second wind and all of a sudden ideas start coming and it was great. Review: Are you considering after the summer swing, going around on a Bret Michaels tour or possibly a solo acoustic tour? BM: Here's what we're going to do. Poisons' going to be on the road from mid-May, till the middle of September. Then I have a two-week break, which I'm going to rehearse and then I go out solo October, November, (and) December. I'm going to come through. It will be a great show. I think when we come to Detroit it will be at the State Theater. I'll bring a band (with) all the guys that played on the solo record. Review: How would you compare the Bret Michaels of today with the Bret Michaels of the '80s? BM: I love the music I made in the '80s and the sound. And I liked and loved the music we made in the '90s. And I think in 2003 with this record, I've taken what I feel is the great songwriting that came from the '80s and early '90s. Meaning, back then people wrote songs and had melody. I think I've taken that and given it a modern production is what I've done. In other words, I feel back then there were a lot of real good rock songs, but I look at those days and I appreciate what I've done, but I think technology has come a long way. And I think that going in there and being able to add some of the new technology to really good songs is what this album has on it. I think a good song is a good song, no matter when it was written, but obviously you're up against some really good bands out there. Godsmack, Nickelback, who you got to go up against, they're using real good modern day technology and we're using the same stuff, but just use what I consider good songwriting from the '80s and '90s. Review: Vocally your sound has become more personable and that could be as well because of the new technology. BM: Absolutely. Back when people recorded, I'm saying some of those early records, two things. One, on this record I tried not to over-stack vocals. It's just my vocal and then when we got to the chorus, we have a couple harmonies. (Two) I think back then, the technology was you put everything in reverb (laughs). Everything was a little more distant, if that makes any sense, whereas now, we've just washed away the reverb and it's just got my voice and the microphone and maybe add just a little touch of chorus or maybe a little teeny touch of what I call room reverb and the vocals sound more personal that way. Review: I noticed that you were singing in a lower octave than previous albums on certain tracks, which stood out really well. BM: One of the things too and you hear this a lot in my writing, I was raised--and I've always said this to people so they understood me--my father was a country fanatic. I'm talking Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams Sr. That was my Dad. My Mom was Rolling Stones and Beatles. That's why sometimes you hear some of that country. I've always said, I've never lied, and I'm a country fan and a rock fan both. Review: Every Rose Has It's Thorn has a country tinge. BM: You know that Every Rose was actually in the top 20 as a country single as well as a #1 as a rock single? Review: No, I didn't. BM: Yeah. I don't know if you listen to Kenny Chesney at all? Kenny Chesney is one of my buddies and I went up onstage with him at Pepsi Arena in Albany. We had played there the night before and we had a night off and he's a friend of mine and he asked me to come on stage and do Every Rose, right? And we walk on stage and the place is sold out all the way around and I'm nervous, because I'm thinkin', "I love country music, but I'm not sure if they're going to really know/remember this song. It was a big country hit in '88--not '98 if you know what I mean. And I'm tellin' you they sang every note. First, of the entire place went nuts. And I never got to sing the song. The arena sang it for me. It was like almost a Poison concert. It was really awesome. It was a great feeling. Review: Not all guys would say that they were influenced by country. BM: No. One of the things that's been really strange--rock music has gone way more towards hip-hop. It's become more rap and hip-hop. It was really strange, because we did a big Metal Edge interview, they asked me what was in my CD player and I said, 'Well the truth is I've got Kid Rock, I've got Puddle of Mudd, and I got Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. Plus I always got AC/DC and Aerosmith, that's a given. I always have classics in there. They said, 'Wow, that's pretty ballsy, most rock artists don't admit that. And I said, 'No, I like country too. That's just the way I was brought up and I like country music. Review: And it's always cool to pick up on your buddy's music BM: Without a doubt and it's just the kind of music that--like I said, when you grow up and your Dad, every time you turn around, is playing Johnny Cash or Hank Williams Sr. or Patsy Cline. I was a mixture of Hee Haw and FM radio (laughs). I've got classic rock and Hee Haw influences!
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