Poison’s Rikki Rockett to Release ‘Ghost Notes’ Memoir in 2025

Poison drummer Rikki Rockett will release a memoir on July 15, 2025. Ghost Notes will be a collaboration with writers Leif Eriksson and Martin Svensson.

He confirmed the book during a Thursday appearance on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk. “I was working on it all year last year,” Rockett said. “I was gonna launch it at the same time as the [Poison 2025] tour, but the tour is not gonna happen [next year]. So we’re gonna launch [the book] anyway.”

Rockett also explained the meaning of the title Ghost Notes. “The first chunk of our career, like Look What The Cat Dragged In, Open Up And Say … Ahh!, all those records, even most of Flesh & Blood, the way they were producing records at that time, they did not want drummers playing ghost notes,” he said. “If you know what ghost notes are … it’s kind of like a lighter tap on the snare drum, for example, the kind of the notes in between the notes that are not fully pronounced, I guess would be the best way to explain it in layman’s terms. And so a lot of times it gives it that little bit of swing groove to it.”

READ MORE: How Poison’s ‘Look What the Cat Dragged In’ Helped Define Hair Metal

He continued: “Producers did not want that in the early ’80s — they just wanted straight drums, almost machine-like and heavy and loud and detuned snare drums and all that kind of stuff. And it wasn’t really until Flesh & Blood, but even more Native Tongue, where I was able to really play the way I wanted to play. I think a lot of other drummers dealt with that. I know I talked to various drummers about their frustration back then. So I decided to name it. I finally was able to play however I wanted. And all those little notes between the notes are kind of what I’m talking about in my life. Instead of just the highlights that you always hear about, you know, ‘Poison did this’ or ‘Rikki Rockett did this’ or ‘Rikki got arrested for this’ or whatever, these are like all the stuff in between.”

Rockett said Ghost Notes will dig deeper into the popular Poison stories as well as the band’s early years in Pennsylvania and the surrounding area. “That stuff, to me, is more cinematic, if you will, than, ‘Oh, yeah, they played the Troubadour and the Strip and they hung up flyers,'” he said. “I mean, we’ve all heard those stories. But it’s the other stuff, like trying to hold jobs down and renting VFW halls and renting vans and trying to scrape enough money to get to the next gig and all that stuff. That was really the meat of our struggle, I think.”

Will Poison Tour in 2026?

Rockett raised eyebrows in September when he attributed Poison’s lack of immediate tour plans to frontman Bret Michaels. “I keep getting asked multiple times a day, ‘Why isn’t Poison touring in 2025 now?’ Super simple answer: Bret doesn’t want to,” he wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post.

In a follow-up message, Rockett wrote: “People, I never said that Bret is canceling the 2025 tour. It didn’t get booked. I said the reason Poison isn’t touring in 2025 is because Bret doesn’t want to. Doesn’t matter what the reason for him is as far as what I said. I’m simply telling you why so that CC [DeVille], Bobby [Dall] or myself doesn’t get blamed. It isn’t dirt. It isn’t a fight. Just the facts, ma’am. Surmise what you want from it. You will anyway!”

Michaels separately explained on Facebook that he was taking 2025 to “focus primarily on health, starting with my diabetes, which needs a tune-up.” He added, however, that he had his sights set on a 2026 Poison tour to mark the 40th anniversary of Look What the Cat Dragged In. “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,” he said.

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