Poison is one of the first, if not the first, truly independent bands to sell 3 million copies of our first record. It was before we were with a big company.
I tell my daughters, 'If something doesn't feel right, whether that's going to a party, doing a video, shooting something, you're around someone that's creeping you out, use your gut. If you're in a car with a driver and something don't feel right, use your gut.'
All my life, I've been a type 1 diabetic. I've always taken life day by day.
The video for 'Ride the Wind,' we shot that in Detroit. We shot it at Joe Louis Arena two nights in a row.
The philosophy of my life is the harder I worked, the luckier I got.
I want to tell the story. Mostly, when you see rock movies, it has to be this over-the-top thing. I want to give people a Bret Michaels movie where they see that my life is a comedy of errors. I also want to show my fans how to get through the kind of troubles that would leave most people flat on the floor.
I don't want to be a reality retro star.
I'm on the phone 24/7 with my kids talking to them about the ups and down of life, schoolwork, bullying, the great times.
You can't have self-pity. At some point, you have to say, 'These are the cards I've been dealt, and I'm going to play them.'
For me as a solo artist, I never want to be a nostalgia act.
My life is part humor, part roses, part thorns.
With 'I Want Action,' I think people take it in the context of the Sunset Strip and the party scene; it was tongue-in-cheek.
Most bands have a two-year success rate. By the third year, it's sort of over. Here we are in Poison still together 26 years later.
