Poison's Rikki Rockett Looks Back At Band's Early Days

Poison drummer Rikki Rockett took a look back at the early days of the band and their debut album "Look What the Cat Dragged In" on the latest episode of the Decibel Geek podcast. The show sent over these details:

Rockett reflected on the early days of Poison as they made a leap the transition from their home in Mechanicsburg, PA to Hollywood in the early 1980's. "I was really scared. I lived in the same house until I was 22 years old. All of a sudden, BAM, I'm in a f***in' 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 f*** this motherf***er up", you know what I mean? We went down and the guy comes around with a knife this f***in' big and we're like "Maybe we shouldn't get involved (laughs)"

Poison quickly built a reputation as a top live act on the Sunset Strip; boasting a glam look and songs that described a life of excess. When asked about how accurate the lyrical content was at the time, Rockett said: "We didn't have any money. 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." Check out the full episode here.

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