Poison drummer Rikki Rockett appeared on the Decibal Geek podcast where he unleashed a number of hairy tales from Poison’s early days, including his transition from country boy to Hollywood hustler.
“I was really scared. I lived in the same house [in Pennsylvania] until I was 22 years old. All of a sudden, BAM, I’m in a fuckin’ one bedroom in the hardcore part of Hollywood. The first week we’re seeing people get their asses kicked out front. I remember this pimp was literally smacking the hell out of his ho across the street. We went down the steps. I had a Pearl drum cymbal stand. I’m like ‘Let’s just fuck this motherfucker up’, you know what I mean? We went down and the guy comes around with a knife this fuckin’ big and we’re like, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t get involved’ [laughs]”
Elsewhere he discussed writing about the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, despite living in dirt poor conditions.
“We didn’t have any money”, Rockett recalled. “We didn’t have beautiful cars. We didn’t have anything. So, we wrote about it like we did. A lot of times when people have it in their life, they write about how downtrodden they are. But when you really don’t have anything, you write about how wonderful it could be.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t go out and party every night. Later, that happened because we were, like, fulfilling our dreams. But when we were writing those songs, they were wish lists.”
