Poison (band)
American rock band
Poison was an American rock band formed in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania in 1983. The most successful incarnation of the band consists of lead singer and rhythm guitarist Bret Michaels, drummer Rikki Rockett, bassist Bobby Dall and lead guitarist C.C. DeVille. The band achieved huge commercial success in the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s and sold over 65 million records and DVDs worldwide. In 2012, VH1 ranked them at No. 1 on their list of the "Top 5 Hair Bands of the '80s".
The band had a Billboard Hot 100 number one hit single with "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and other top 40 hit singles in the 1980s and 1990s, including "Talk Dirty to Me", "I Won't Forget You", "Nothin' But a Good Time", "Fallen Angel", "Your Mama Don't Dance", "Unskinny Bop", "Something to Believe In", "Ride the Wind", and "Life Goes On". The band's breakthrough debut album, the multi-platinum Look What the Cat Dragged In, was released in 1986, followed by Open Up and Say... Ahh!, which was certified 5× platinum in the US. Their third consecutive multi-platinum album was Flesh & Blood, which became their best-selling release. In the 1990s, following the release of the band's first live album, Swallow This Live, the band experienced some lineup changes and the fall of glam metal with the grunge movement, but the band's fourth studio album, Native Tongue, still achieved Gold status and the band's first compilation album, Poison's Greatest Hits: 1986–1996, went double platinum.
The original lineup reformed for a greatest hits reunion tour in 1999.
“Poison (band)” enters the record as american rock band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Poison, band and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q550602. VIAF identifies the subject as 128693721. The Library of Congress control number is n91070592. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2012, 1986 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Poison (band)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.