When did this happen? I used to love Poison, in junior high that is. The only thing I distinctly remember him doing that was totally wack was at the 92 (?) Mtv Music Awards he started playing the solo to Unskinny Bop after the first verse.
It was mayhem. He just kept on playing the solo like he knew what the hell he was doing and Brett was looking at him like he wanted to tear his ass off and shove it down his throat. It must rank as one of the very worst live performances ever aired on TV. But did he do anything other than this screw up?
(For those who have never seen this rendition of Unskinny Bop your really missing out on some VERY funny television)
Don’t know about him being a joke now, but I did see him live with Poison way back in…I guess it was '87 or '88. Pretty damn good show as I recall, but it could have just been the booze.
All I know is when I watch VH1 and they have “Behind The Music” or some sort of program, he’s always being interviewed (as if he’s the only guy they could get at the time) and it just screams “has been” to me.
Personally, I don’t think he’s a joke, but his ubitiquousness (is that a real word?) just puts that image in my mind.
Part of the deal is, he played pretty simple music, and his band was seen as a bunch of pretty boy teenie boopers. And Poison pretty much did nothing to fight that image, and why should they, they were selling millions of albums a year.
The funny thing is, he’ll be the first to admit his guitar playing for Poison isn’t all that technical. He’s classically trained, and says his teacher would roll over in his grave for the stuff he plays w/ Poison.
During Poison’s heyday, I was too into being “Mr. Hardcore Metalhead” to really get into them, but I saw them the last two summers, and plan to again this year. Great live band, lots of fun, good party rock and roll music. Oh, and they still get tons of hot women at the concerts.
And during the MTV Awards, CC went into Talk Dirty to Me all on his own, and the band just was forced to go along.
I sat next to the band on a commercial flight from Calgary to LA in 1990 or 1991. They came across as your average morons with too much money. Not to say that they were rude assholes, but they did have ‘issues’. The guy right next to me, I don’t know who it was, gave me the impression that he had just quit drugs and flying was really causing him to panic.
I saw Poison at Rupp Arena on my fifteenth birthday, in 1990. (Warrant opened up for them.)
I remember thinking of C.C. as one of the better guitarists in that genre of rock. Then again, I was fifteen–I may have to dig out those CDs and see if my opinion still holds.
My guess is that his “joke” status these days among guitarists comes more from him being representative of the regrettable genre than anything else.
Ha, I saw Poison last summer. It was a complete nostalgia thing and kicked ass. Especially since I was a wee bit too young for concert-going when I was a fan. They managed to sell a lot of tickets too, mostly to twenty- and thirty-year-olds. They play the role of aging rockers fairly well – they stick to the old stuff and only torment the crowd with one or two new songs.
One thing I will say about CeCe-the man has one hell of a sense of humor. He was pretty damn funny, and unlike Bret, he wasn’t whining so much as he just sounded matter of fact about the whole thing.
Bret Michaels, on the other hand, is the whiniest heavy metal musician I have ever seen. Ricky Rockett is very girlish-NOT that there is anything wrong with that-but for all the talk about how “manly” these rockers were supposed to be, Ricky just has that feminine air about him, so it’s somewhat ironic.
The long answer is that he “wrote” material that had already been written, played inane solos and basically made no impact on the world of guitar. The first hit they had was a direct rip off of a Cheap Trick tune. He just doesn’t matter.
Players like Eric Clapton, Hendrix, Tony Iomi, EVH, Randy Rhoads, James Hetfield, Steve Morse and a bunch of others actually created new and interesting music. CC played three chord Pop songs that made him a lot of money and then the whole style died the death that it deserved.
Interesting. At the Bay Area Doper New Year’s Eve bash up at Demo’s, we watched the Poison “Behind The Music” and pretty much agreed that Bobby was by far the most well-adjusted of all of them. He was definitely the least self-important. And, unlike the others, he had managed to leave the '80s haircut behind.
