Every Rose Has It's Thorn :)

Before I begin, I must say that I’m a little impartial to this band. I’ve seen them twice and absolutely love them. Granted, they’re also a band that my mom listened to when she was a little older than I was makes it awkward at times, but it also makes a cool bonding moment.
Imagine that it’s 1983, you’re jamming with your buddies in the garage, but you want to make this jamming real. You want to be famous. Playing in the garage was fine for a while, but you’re getting too old for that. You want to break out. You want to be famous. Imagine less than just a year later, you’re packing up your belongings and moving away from home. You’re moving to L.A. You're moving far away to the city of glitter, glitz, and rock n' roll. That’s exactly what Poison did. They kicked it to L.A. promoting and playing on the sunset strip. At this time Poison consisted of Bret Michaels, Matt Smith, Bobby Dall, and Rikki Rockett.

By the time the band had made it to the strip, their guitarist Matt Smith had become a father and thought that band wasn’t going anywhere. He left the band and returned home to Pennsylvania. The band auditioned replacement guitarists and eventually came down to three people who seemed to fit: Slash, who went on to become famous with Guns N’ Roses, Steve Silva from The Joe Perry Project, and a guitarist born in New York named C.C. DeVille. The band eventually agreed that C.C. made the best fit.

In 1986, the band was signed to Enigma Records. Their debut album: Look What the Cat Dragged In, was released on August 2of 1986.

From this album Poison released four singles, “Cry Tough”, “Talk Dirty to Me”, “I Want Action”, and “I Won’t Forget You”. Their debut earned the band with the fellow glam rockers Ratt, Cinderella, and Quiet Riot.

By 1988, the band was releasing yet another album called Open Up and Say…Ahh! The album spawned one of Poison’s biggest hits “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, which was written about one of Bret Michaels’ ex-girlfriends. The album’s first cover caused a bit of trouble for the band, it showed a female demonic figure with a crazy long tongue. A censored version of the cover just focused on the girl’s eyes. As of 1989, the band had become the seventh-best-selling hard rock band in the United States in the ‘80s, behind Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, and Van Halen. In 1990, the band released the album Flesh & Blood, which contained the singles “Unskinny Bop”, “Ride The Wind”, and a the ballad “Something To Believe In”. Life Goes On was the fourth single and the last was the title cut.
After two years of being on the road and with the band, the members were at each other’s throat due to person differences, drug addictions, and other this. Poison recorded several live performances during its 1990/1991 Flesh & Blood tour and released a live album, Swallow This Live. The album included a new studio track including the single “So Tell Me Why”, which was one of the last songs recorded before C.C. DeVille departed from the band later that year.
After several years, Bret Michaels and C.C. DeVille patched up their differences, and C.C. returned to Poison in 1996. Bret Michaels co-founded a production company with Charlie Sheen and in 1998; he made his acting debut in A Letter from Death Row.
In 2010, Bret Michaels started his solo tour to promote the upcoming release of his autobiography. On April 12, he was rushed to the hospital after suffering stomach pains and an emergency appendectomy was performed. A little over 10 days later, Bret was returned to the hospital where they found that he had suffered a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage.
On March 1, Poison announced a 2011 summer tour with Motley Crue and New York Dolls to celebrate Poison’s 25^th anniversary and the Crue’s 30^th Anniversary named the Glam-A-Gaddeon tour. To go along with Poison’s 25^th anniversary, 35 of the bands top hits and fan favorites were put on “Poison – Double Dose: Ultimate Hits”, a new CD that ranges through their entire career and was released on May 3, 2011.