Rikki Rockett says he delayed his memoir “Ghost Notes” to avoid embarrassing his parents, and until his children were older.
Rikki Rockett has explained why a book he has been asked about for years is only arriving now. The Poison drummer told Erin Greatrix of “This Day In Metal” that the timing came down to family rather than career, and that he held the stories back while his parents were alive. “Ghost Notes: My Life In Poison” is published on 15 September through Rare Bird Books.
Asked why this was the right moment, Rockett gave an answer he acknowledged sounded like a joke.
“I was asked that earlier, and I think this is the funny answer, but it’s kind of the truth. I didn’t wanna embarrass my parents when they were alive by telling, by saying some of these stories. And then I was, like, ‘Oh, now I’ve got kids, so…’ But I’m always gonna have kids, and in a normal life they’re gonna outlive me. So at some point I gotta do this. And they’re old enough now that I can say, ‘Well, let me explain this.’ You know what I mean? So I feel like that’s okay now,” he revealed (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Rockett said certain episodes were never in doubt, because they were the ones people always ask about.
“Well, everybody wanted to know about the bad things,” Rockett continued. “It’s weird how people just have to know. They wanna know about the MTV Awards. They wanna know about the r*pe accusation. They wanna know about the cancer battle, that kind of stuff. And so I knew I had to go in and talk about those things, and they’re part of the ride. So I did. So I think I went pretty deeply into most of those, I think, enough to give a lot of understanding.”
Each of those refers to a documented episode. The MTV reference is the backstage confrontation between frontman Bret Michaels and guitarist C.C. DeVille at the 1991 Video Music Awards, after which DeVille left the band for more than a decade.
The accusation Rockett mentions was resolved in his favour. A woman reported that she had been r*ped on 23 September 2007 at the Silver Star Casino in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and a warrant naming him was issued that December. He was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in March 2008 and released. The Neshoba County District Attorney declined to prosecute after establishing that Rockett had not been in Mississippi at the time and was not the man involved, and the charge was dropped later that year. Investigators subsequently said they were seeking a man who had been presenting himself as a rock musician.
The cancer reference is to his oral cancer diagnosis in 2015. He was declared free of the disease in 2016 after taking part in an experimental immunotherapy programme.
Asked whether there was a moment when he thought something shouldn’t go in the book, Rockett said there were several passages that did.
“Oh, there was a lot of things that I later went to the ghostwriters, and I called them up and I said, ‘You know what? I don’t feel good about that. Let’s reel that back in.’ I don’t feel like I ever threw anybody under the bus — at least I don’t think so. If somebody feels that way, it’ll be interesting to find out why they feel that way. But, honestly, I didn’t set out to do that. What I set out to do was, and it’s why it’s called ‘Ghost Notes‘, which are kind of the notes between the notes in drumming; they’re kind of like light taps. And so there were these little things that I feel like thread the bigger stories together, and so I thought that was important. And plus, the title ‘Best Seat In The House‘ was taken, so I couldn’t use that. But it’s still the best seat in the house,” he said.
The title carries a second meaning for him. Rockett has said elsewhere that producers in the early 1980s wanted rigid, machine-like drum tracks, and that it was not until Flesh & Blood and particularly 1993’s Native Tongue that he could play with the looseness he wanted.
Rockett said he wanted readers to see the person rather than the character, and stopped himself mid-sentence to get the wording right: “I want people to see me as a person, not just a fixture, and realize that there’s somebody behind — not just me; anybody, any musician or actor, entertainer — that there’s real feelings back there, and there’s all this stuff that everybody thinks you should const[antly]…”
He continued: “Let me say this exactly how I wanna say it. I am eternally grateful to be where I am and and the band I’m in and what the fans have given us, and all those things. I just want people to know that not all of it is what it’s cracked up to be. I mean, honestly — it’s just the truth. Just because you’ve had this wonderful gift doesn’t mean… And really, the wonderful gift is this. The wonderful gift is doing what you love for a living. So that could be anything. You may be a paleontologist and you’re studying dinosaurs for a living, and that makes you… That does not make me better than you or you better… It’s fulfilling what you want. Bret [Michaels] said it a long time ago. He said — and I always loved that he said this — he said, ‘Fame is what other people give you, and success is what you give yourself.’ You set a goal and, you know, you achieve it, and then that’s your success. Fame, I can’t control it that much. Sure, you can try to manipulate the media. When you do that, oftentimes it bites back and catches you in the butt. So that is a little bit out of your control. All’s you can do is put your best face to the world, do what you do, and show everybody that you love what you do and let them pick you, you know what I mean? I think trying to find an audience is a bad idea. As Poison, I feel like we’ve always just did what we did and let the audience find us.”
“Ghost Notes: My Life In Poison” was co-written with journalist Leif Eriksson and Swedish author Martin Svensson, and runs 312 pages. Rare Bird Books publishes it through Simon & Schuster distribution on 15 September, having moved the date back from an earlier July slot. Alongside standard and signed hardcovers, the publisher is issuing the audiobook on black vinyl and in a limited ghost-green pressing.
The book traces Rockett‘s route from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, and covers family breakdown, addiction, betrayal, illness and what he describes as a search for meaning away from the stage.
Rockett co-founded Poison and the band built its reputation on the Sunset Strip during the 1980s. They have sold more than 45 million albums, released eight studio records, and placed ten singles in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 40, six of them in the top ten, with “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” reaching number one. The original lineup of Rockett, Michaels, bassist Bobby Dall and DeVille completed The Stadium Tour with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts in 2022, three years later than planned after pandemic postponements.
He married TC Smith at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara in April 2022, and was previously married to singer and songwriter Melanie Martel, with whom he shares custody of their two children. In October 2024 he launched The Rockett Mafia, who have since played Poison‘s debut album in full at the Whisky A Go Go.
