Put away your spandex, hairspray, and red bandanna. The Poison 40th anniversary — which Bret Michaels and others in the band spent years teasing — is no longer happening. Poison drummer Rikki Rockett has been strongly suggesting this was the case for several months, but he recently gave Page Six a very frank assessment of the situation.
“We had a great offer, I thought,” Rockett said. “But we left the table. It didn’t work…Really, what it came to was [guitarist] C.C. [DeVille] and [bass player] Bobby [Dall], and I were all in, and I thought Bret was, but he wanted the lion’s share of the money, to the point where it makes it not possible to even do it. It’s like $6 to every one of our dollars. You just can’t work that way…I don’t do this just for the money. I do have a love for this, absolutely. But at the same time, you don’t want to go out and work really hard just to make somebody else a bunch of money.”
Poison last toured in 2022 when they went out with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts on a massive stadium tour. When it wrapped, Michaels went back to his solo band. They play a show consisting almost entirely of Poison hits. But in September 2024, Michaels wrote a letter to fans explaining his future plans with Poison.
“In 2026, I’m excited to say it will be Poison’s 40th anniversary since the release of Look What The Cat Dragged In in 1986…so it would make perfect sense to have the possibility of a reunion in 2026,” he wrote. “In my opinion, it would be the perfect 40th Anniversary Tour, with 40 awesome limited dates to go out, play real live hit songs, and rock the world…Again, although none of this is confirmed and it takes much coordination & planning to have a successful tour…good things happen in 4’s for Poison – 4 original band members, 40th anniversary, 40 limited dates, Parti-Gras 4.0 and May The 4’s be with you!”
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This seemed relatively definitive, but he was hedging his bets with phrases like “it would make perfect sense,” “in my opinion,” “none of this is confirmed,” and “it takes much coordination.” In other words, he was willing to do it under the right conditions and with the right deal in place. It’s not uncommon for bands to split proceeds in an uneven fashion. But Poison are in the extraordinarily rare position of having a band where every single original member is still in the lineup. That’s great for the fans, but it makes the financial negotiations rather fraught.
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Rockett has been unafraid to talk about the impasse with the press, but the others have been noticeably silent, clearly preferring to keep their business negotiations a private matter. It’s also impossible to know the exact money split that Michaels offered the others. Rockett told Page Six, “it’s like $6 to every one of our dollars,” but that “like” could be doing a lot of work, and he might be greatly exaggerating. We simply don’t know.
We do know that the 2026 summer concert calendar is rapidly filling up, and there’s not a single Poison date on it. Michaels, meanwhile, has a string of solo dates on the books. And Rockett doesn’t plan on sitting at home. He’s planning a tour with his band, the Rockett Mafia, that’ll feature a complete performance of Poison’s Look What The Cat Dragged In every night. Judging by all this, a Poison 40th anniversary tour looks extremely unlikely. There’s always the big 50th in 2036. Maybe by that time, they’ll figure out an equitable way to share the money.