Metal Sludge The Power and the Glory
Bobby Dall on Sebastian Bach: "He’s had to eat a little bit of crow"
Sebastian Bach 1999 Quote: "Skid Row fans are not Poison fans."
Bobby Dall 2008 Quote: "He said that. Now he’s opening for my band. So be it."
A good little story with an interview with Bobby Dall of Poison. The meat and potatoes of this interview gives Sebastian Bach a little bit of a slap to the face. But of course in good taste, well done Mr. Dall. 
For a nostalgia act, Poison’s press clippings come shredded straight from today’s headlines.
Pop metal’s premier party quartet rolls through Florida this week preceded by a run of mass-media exposure that would make an aspiring teenage diva fluorescent green with envy.
Frontman Bret Michaels flipped the script on the mating scene again last season with his hit cable TV show "Rock of Love II," alternately accepting and fending off the clumsy, sometimes gross, advances of star-struck young women.
Drummer Rikki Rockett was charged with and subsequently cleared of rape charges when it was determined he hadn’t been in the same state as his accuser on the night of the crime.
And, most recently, the band sued its label, Capitol Records, for unpaid royalties dating back to the original contract.
Eat your heart out, Amy Winehouse.
"You know," Poison bassist Bobby Dall said, "I can’t seem to keep these guys out of trouble. My children behave better."
Poison brings its "Live, Raw & Uncut" tour to Tampa’s Ford Amphitheatre on Tuesday, six years removed from its most recent original studio recording and almost 22 years clear of its debut release, "Look What the Cat Dragged In." The band is promoting its "Live, Raw & Uncut" CD/DVD release, a live recording from a 2007 show in St. Louis.
The classic lineup of Michaels, Rockett, Dall and guitarist C.C. DeVille makes no apologies for the late 1980s-early 1990s good-time vibe it dresses up with bandanas and a high-energy stage show.
The set list is almost identical to those of Poison’s summer shed tours for the past decade, featuring the band’s hits "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," "Nothin’ But a Good Time," "Talk Dirty to Me," "Unskinny Bop" and "Something to Believe In." The only notable addition this time out is "Cry Tough," the first single the band ever released.
Hardly breaking news.
But Dall knows what his fans really want. He likes to tell a story about attending an Elton John show in the late 1990s and leaving disappointed after John played songs from a new release and none of his traditional hits.
"People will ask you to play something new, something different," Dall said during a recent off-day telephone interview from Minneapolis. "I have to say to people, ‘OK, you want me to play ‘Flesh and Blood,’ but does that mean I do not play ‘Talk Dirty to Me’? They want something new, but they don’t want to give up something old."
The 44-year-old Dall, a father of two who lives near Melbourne and is the band’s lone Florida resident, speaks with the confidence of a rock veteran long recovered from the sting of critics knocking his band for its lack of musicianship and simplistic songs.
He considers Poison one of the five seminal pop-metal acts to emerge from the 1980s, along with Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses. He points to his band’s time-tested ability to fill large venues as evidence.
"Out of that genre, we were one of the leaders," Dall said. "We’ve had enough hits and songs and established ourselves as a headliner long enough that we are one of the success stories that have come out of that era.
"This is a cyclical business. How many disco bands were there? The Bee Gees really were the great one, and that’s why they still exist. It doesn’t matter what genre you come from. In grunge, which followed us, there were 100 bands, but only three or four were great. Those three or four are the ones you remember. . . . I think our songs have stood the test of time. That’s why we’re the band we are. I won’t apologize for it."
One of Poison’s critics has joined up for this tour. Sebastian Bach, the outspoken ex-Skid Row singer, is opening the show with his solo act, along with Dokken.
In a 1999 interview, Bach went out of his way to distance himself from so-called hair bands, of which Poison is considered the standard bearer. Bach sneered, "Skid Row fans are not Poison fans."
Nine years later, here he is on a Poison bill. Dall said his band bears no ill will. After all, a Poison party is for everybody.
"I’m not the one eating my words," Dall said. "I have no animosity myself; I never did. Sebastian obviously did at one point. He’s had to eat a little bit of crow. That’s his issue to deal with, not mine. I wish him well.
"When it was convenient for him to say the things he wanted to say, he said that. Now he’s opening for my band. So be it."
While Dall and his bandmates are secure with their past, Poison’s future is cloudy, owing to Michaels’ budding television career.
Dall said the other band members are generally supportive of Michaels’ work outside Poison. But he said Michaels’ individual agenda likely will keep the band out of the studio – where it could ride a retro wave that recently pushed Motley Crue’s new release to No. 4 on the Billboard chart – and even off the road in the near future.
"Bret does what Bret does," said Dall, who achieved YouTube infamy two years ago when he swung his bass into Michaels’ knee during an onstage dispute. "I don’t have to necessarily always agree with it personally.
"I think some of the things that he does benefit Poison; some of them don’t. But no press is bad press. It’s that type of business."
The story is found HERE.
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