From the “flier wars” to the fashion, from the Rainbow Bar & Grill parking lot to the music that emerged from the “boulevard of broken dreams,” we cry tough, show no mercy, talk dirty, rip and tear, and have nothin’ but a good time.

Congratulations to Rikki and Tracii on their much-deserved awards!

Look what the cat dragged in! I am threatening you with (nothin’ but) a good time! See me talk (dirty or otherwise) about the greatest television show of all time, Rock of Love, and other Bret Michaels-related topics on A&E’s “Biography” special about the Poison frontman and rock ‘n’ roll survivor.

Sunday, June 16, 9 p.m.!

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Ten years ago, April 19, 2009, was a very dark day in television. That was the day that Poison frontman Bret Michaels’s outrageous VH1 dating show, Rock of Love, went off the air. Basic cable has been just a little more basic ever since.

The show, which ran for three seasons, was nothing but a good time, and it was TV ratings gold. At one point, Rock of Love was so huge that it was parodied on Saturday Night Live (“You know you’ve done something right when you’re on SNL,” notes Michaels), and it spawned several other hit “Celebreality” series, including Charm School, Daisy of Love, I Love Money, the ill-fated Megan Wants a Millionaire. While some detractors blasted Rock of Love and its spinoffs for supposedly being misogynist, many fans argued that it was actually third-wave feminist show for its casting of free-spirited, sex-positive women who clearly didn’t give a damn about societal norms. (Watch Michaels’s extended interview below for the dirt on the series’ most infamous bachelorettes, including Brittaney, Daisy, Destiney, Frenchie, Heather, Lacey, Rodeo and Tiffany.)

Rock of Love still has a rabid audience online (where it has also found a new, younger following), but given the current political climate, cable will probably never return to the sort of girls-gone-wild television on which ex-stripper Heather tattooed Bret’s name in old English font across the nape of her neck, rejected bachelorette Tiffany crashed in a bathtub, Brittaney hoarded socks on a tour bus, redheaded villainess Lacey instigated claws-out catfights, and various silicone-enhanced, hair-extension’d rock ‘n’ roll sexpots played dirty in the Mud Bowl. It’s difficult to imagine a show like Rock of Love ever getting the greenlight today.

“I can’t speak what people would think today,” Michaels tells Yahoo Entertainment, looking back with a chuckle. “I can only say this: It was a party. No one, nobody, was forced to be there. It was meant to be fun and a party. That’s what made it great — you’re there by your own choosing. With Rock of Love, you knew you were going to go in there and it was going to be fun and crazy. And that’s what it was. I went in, threw my helmet off, and I said, ‘Girls, we don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t promise there’s going to be any love, but we’re going to have a whole lot of great time and alcohol.’ And the party started. And that was it.”

Michaels says he had a feeling early on that the show was going to be a smash. “That first night [of filming] went on for, literally — I’m not making this up — almost three nights. The first night became the second night; it rolled into the next day. I’m not saying we knew, because you can never curse it by saying, ‘We knew something good was happening.’ But something good was happening.”

During its three seasons — particularly the final road-warrior installment, Rock of Love Bus — Michaels says a lot of footage had to be jettisoned because it was too wild even for late-night cable. He jokes that these deleted scenes would have put the show in “a whole other rating category” and “would take [Mötley Crüe’s] The Dirt to a whole new level.” Michaels seems to have mellowed in the decade since — after Rock of Love ended, his next VH1 series was a more family-friendly look at the reformed rocker’s domestic life, Bret Michaels: Life as I Know It . So, even if Rock of Love ever came back, it’s unlikely that he’d sign on, especially since he hints that he never seriously thought he’d find his real-life, offscreen soulmate via the series. (“I went into every one of those shows very openly saying, “Listen, this is Rock of Party. We’re going to have a great time and from that let the chemistry, the real chemistry happen.”)

However, when asked to recommend another rock star that could stay in that house and rock VH1’s world, if a reboot ever did happen, Michaels makes an amusing suggestion.

“I’ll go with [Poison] guitarist C.C. [DeVille],” he says. “You want to talk about having a sense of craziness and a sense of humor? I would throw C.C. in there immediately. Immediately! And let me tell you something: Everyone always like to play up the few fistfights that me and C.C. had, which were pretty public. However, me and him get along unbelievably great. No one makes me laugh harder than he does. He is a truly real, genuinely fun, crazy guy. … He would be my pick. If Rock of Love had to continue with insanity, C.C. would be the right guy, just sayin’ — with me getting my cut, of course.”

Bret Michaels and the ‘Rock of Love’ Season 1 cast. (Photo: VH1)

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Poison frontman Bret Michaels could not be prouder of his older daughter, Raine, who was just named a top six finalist in Sports Illustrated’s 2019 swimsuit model search competition. But as a man with racy memories of attending the bikini dance contests at the Sunset Strip’s notorious metal club Gazzarri’s, or partying with bikini babes in Headbangers Ball music videos like “I Want Action,” he admits with a chuckle that seeing his daughter all grown up and showing some skin is his “comeuppance coming full circle.”

“As a dad I’m proud, but there’s bittersweetness involved, because it’s your daughter doing bikini [modeling],” Michaels laughingly tells Yahoo Entertainment. “You know, it’s Sports Illustrated! It’s a bittersweet thing. I just look at it like this: I think she will be classy, it’ll be awesome, and I’m proud.”

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Miami Glow @si_swimsuit X @fae

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In a separate frank 2018 interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Michaels stressed that everything that transpired at Poison’s wild backstage parties was fun and 100 percent consensual. “Poison, not once, not ever, forced anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do. I want be on record about that. Backstage parties were a party. No one was at gunpoint who came back there, “ he said. “Let me make very clear: No means no. I want be on the record with that. We’ve never done that stuff, meaning with our band at parties; there’s no spiked drinks, none of that. I’ve got to be pretty strong about this, as a father of two daughters: No matter what goes on in an evening, how much teasing, when the answer is no, the answer means no. That’s it. There’s no more to it. And I’m saying [women] absolutely should stand up if something is done to them.” Still, looking back on his own wild past sometimes makes Michaels worry about both his daughters, 18-year-old Raine and 13-year-old Jorja Bleu, as they navigate what can be a dangerous world.

“When I was living in it, you don’t think of it as dangerous. You’re thinking, ‘This is fun! This is awesome! It’s great!’” Michaels, who respectively released the fatherhood-inspired songs “Raine” and “Jorja Bleu” in 2003 and 2017, now tells Yahoo Entertainment. “But when you look back as a dad, and this is your comeuppance coming full circle, right?” However, he believes he has raised his kids right and has prepared them to “make great decisions.”

“As a dad, you’ve got to let them also go out there and do what they’re gonna do,” Michaels elaborates. “You look back as a dad … you hope that you were fun, that you taught them the right thing, and I always say, ‘Always go with your gut.’ 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.’ And I’ve showed them, throughout all this, also how to protect themselves, I think, pretty good.

“So hopefully all those play in and I’ll pray that they have a lot of amazingly good luck and don’t hit too many of those bad situations. These are [Raine’s] decisions. She’s a smart kid. She’ll know. I said, ‘Go with your gut. Something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.’”

Michaels gushes about Raine’s ambition when pursuing her SI dream, describing her as “humble” and “hardworking,” and he’s equally proud of his musician daughter Jorja, with whom he just recorded a new duet. “She’s very driven, very motivated, has a lot of talent musically,” he says. “She sat down at the piano and she wrote this song, and then we ended up co-writing it together. It’s called ‘Unbroken,’ and I cannot wait for people to hear the song.”

The father-daughter duet has also inspired Michaels’s Unbroken Hot Rocks Challenge, via which fans can submit their homemade dance videos (no need to wear a bikini, of course!) for a chance to win $10,000 from Michaels’s Life Rocks Foundation that will go to the 501(c)(3) charity of their choice and a “VIP rock star trip” for two. For full contest details, go to bretmichaels.com/Unbroken.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.

Bret Michaels (Photo: Mark Mazzanti)

According to long-accepted rock ’n’ roll mythology, in the 1990s a band called Nirvana broke out with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” MTV quickly replaced every Hollywood hair-metal act on its playlist with Seattle grunge acts, and the careers of bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison instantly evaporated like Aqua Net fumes. But Poison frontman Bret Michaels, whose post-’80s career has notably gone from strength to strength, scoffs at that concept, pointing out that Poison always peacefully coexisted with bands of different eras and genres.

“[Poison's early-’90s single] ‘Something to Believe In’ won the MTV Battle of the Bands going against Faith No More. We got the trophy. I keep it proudly in my house,” Michaels laughs. He also notes that the first Los Angeles radio play for Poison’s breakthrough hit “Talk Dirty to Me” came not from metal station KNAC but from alt-rock station KROQ, and that Poison, one of the first independent bands to cross the 3 million sales mark, once toured with the likes of Faith No More, Aerosmith, and even Alice in Chains. (Poison are currently on tour with Cheap Trick and Pop Evil, continuing to bridge audiences of various interests and ages.)

“I didn’t hate Nirvana. That was more of a media-constructed this-versus-that thing,” Michaels says. “Like, we didn’t know we [and grunge bands] were ‘supposed’ to dislike each other! That never actually happened. That was just a few disgruntled critics saying that.

“But me, as a musician, I never once thought about the critics,” Michaels stresses. “[Criticism] didn’t make me go, ‘Oh my God, if that person didn’t like my song, I better stop playing!’ That’s a mistake some artists make. Never let the pen embitter you; if you have, then you have failed. And if I could be quoted on one thing, it’s that I never fell for the hype, and I never fell for the criticism.”

Poison, the peroxided princes of the spandex-swaddled Sunset Strip, were obviously never critics’ darlings; despite writing some incredibly earwormy party anthems and Olympian power ballads, they were often unfairly dismissed as pretty-boyz-making-noise who embodied everything tacky and excessive about the ’80s L.A. metal scene. But Poison’s music has endured, and they’ve picked up some unexpected admirers along the way.

“I think the fan you’d be most surprised about was a good friend of mine, God rest his soul, Dave [Williams] from [nu-metal band] Drowning Pool,” Michaels reveals. “They were physically told by their label, ‘Be careful [what influences] you mention,’ and Dave told them, ‘F*** you! I did not grow up on early Black Sabbath. I grew up on Poison! I grew up on Mötley Crüe! I grew up on Guns N’ Roses!’”

Bret Michaels with the Eels. (Photo: Michaels Entertainment Group)

Another passionate Poison fan is Miley Cyrus (“one of the most talented voices ever,” Michaels gushes), whose first-ever concert was Poison in Nashville; she memorably covered Poison’s biggest smash, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” in 2010, and she also sang on Michaels’s solo song “Nothing to Lose.” And she’s just one of many celebrities with whom Michael has jammed. “Here I am one day, up onstage with Jimmy Buffett or with Dave Matthews,” he chuckles. “Then the next day I jump onstage with the Eels and play my harmonica.” (Yes, that actually happened. Photo evidence above!)

While the passing decades have generated new appreciation for Poison, admittedly some of the lyrics and imagery from their original decade — such as Poison’s unsettling lines from “I Want Action” like “Check out the schoolgirls” and “If I can’t have her, I’ll take her and make her,” their peers Mötley’s tendency to put in cages and objectify women in “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and particularly misogynist GNR lyrics like the ones in “It’s So Easy” and “Used to Love Her” — have not aged so well in the #MeToo era. Michaels does acknowledge this, thoughtfully.

“I’m being very honest. I’ve never had where someone came up and was offended. 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,” Michaels says. “And I’m not speaking for any other band [of the ’80s], but I can’t go back and change it. I can’t go back there and say I’d ‘fix’ it. If I wrote that stuff now, would things be maybe slightly different in that kind of party song? I don’t know, maybe. But you gotta go with the real phases of your life. You can’t be 23 and write [the same] song when you’re 43 or 53. You write it in the phase you’re living in. Would I write those lyrics now, in this age? I don’t think so. … But I want to say this, very carefully: If we’re going to compare apples to apples and you’re going up against some of this current hardcore rap that is extremely popular right now, has it really changed? Is it any different? I mean, the language used now is pretty straight-up hardcore.”

Michaels continues, “It was a great era of fun on the Strip [in the metal ’80s]. We were livin’ it. We were havin’ the time of our lives. Everything was a party.” He then adds more seriously, “But Poison, not once, not ever, forced anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do. I want be on record about that. Backstage parties were a party. No one was at gunpoint who came back there. … And let me make very clear: No means no. I want be on the record with that. We’ve never done that stuff, meaning with our band at parties; there’s no spiked drinks, none of that. I’ve got to be pretty strong about this, as a father of two daughters: No matter what goes on in an evening, how much teasing, when the answer is no, the answer means no. That’s it. There’s no more to it. And I’m saying [women] absolutely should stand up if something is done to them.”

Interestingly, Michaels says it’s those seemingly lightweight Poison party tunes that were the most challenging for him to pen during his crazy, carefree youth. “For me, music is therapeutic, so the songs that came to me the easiest came from the most devastating moments of my life,” he explains. (He wrote “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” on the road, in the middle of a laundromat, while going through a breakup with his girlfriend back home; “Something to Believe In” was inspired by the death of his best friend.) “The toughest songs to write were actually the party songs, like ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time,’ ‘Unskinny Bop,’ and ‘Talk Dirty to Me,’ because when you’re in the middle of a party, having a great time, you don’t really feel like sitting down and writing music. You’re just living in the moment.”

And now Michaels, the man credited 32 years ago with “vocalizin’ and socializin’” in the neon-font credits for Poison’s colorful and sometimes cartoonish debut album, Look What the Cat Dragged In, is still living in the moment, having endured much worse than a bit of post-grunge criticism (“being a diabetic, surviving a brain hemorrhage, an emergency appendectomy, heart surgery, all of it, and going right back out on the road”). And he’s still bringing nothin’ but a good time to the unskinny-boppin’ masses. “The music withstands the test of time. You’re never gonna make everyone love what you do,” he shrugs. “You just embrace the fans that do.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.