Nothin’ but a Good Time

There’s a particularly tragic passage in Life on Planet Rock, the new memoir by Lonn M. Friend, one that crystallizes the sweetly hopeful moment just before grunge and alt-rock swept away the moussed-and-made-up metal bands that had dominated the late 1980s. In summer 1991, Friend, then the editor of hard-rock magazine Rip, played Skid Row lead singer Sebastian Bach an advance copy of Nevermind, the not-yet-released second album by Nirvana. “Holy mother of Jesus!” Bach exclaimed when confronted with the vital, urgent noise created by the unknown Seattle trio. “This shit rocks! We’re gonna take this band out with us!” Needless to say, Nirvana never opened for Skid Row. Within a few short months, Nirvana would make Skid Row—whose own sophomore album, Slave to the Grind, had just debuted at No. 1—hopelessly irrelevant. Poison, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Warrant, Ratt, Winger, Extreme, Great White, Slaughter and any other band with spandex in the closet and Aqua Net on the nightstand couldn’t get arrested anymore (except literally). “The pendulum swung,” recalls Poison guitarist C.C. DeVille. “The backlash was strong, instant and venomous. But time changes things.” That it does. Nirvana is long gone, along with most of the bands that followed in their flannel-flying wake. But a few of the so-called “hair bands” that were made so suddenly extinct, including acts that could barely fill clubs while Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins and Alice in Chains roamed the earth, now find themselves selling out arenas and amphitheaters once again. Two of the best examples are Poison and Cinderella, both celebrating their 20th anniversaries this year and sharing the bill Tuesday, July 11, at Starwood Amphitheatre. The previous decade was cruel to both acts. DeVille parted ways rancorously with Poison after falling out with lead singer (and former Nashvillian) Bret Michaels. He then watched as his former bandmates tanked with 1993’s Native Tongue, which attempted unsuccessfully to adapt to the changing times by toning down the freewheeling fun of ’80s hits like “Talk Dirty to Me” and “I Want Action.” The follow-up, Crack a Smile, went unreleased for several years. After the glammy moves (and teased-hair album cover) of their 1986 debut, Night Songs, Cinderella took a bluesier, rootsier path—which didn’t keep them from getting lumped in with the “hair band” competition. “A lot of the time, people listen to music with their eyes instead of their ears,” says frontman Tom Keifer, a Nashville resident since 1997. “I don’t remember the ’70s bands being labeled the ‘bell bottom bands’ or something.” The labeling didn’t slow Cinderella’s success, including hits like “Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Till It’s Gone),” “Coming Home” and “Shelter Me”—but Keifer’s voice problems, beginning after 1990’s Heartbreak Station, did. By the time the band released a follow-up four years later, grunge was in and the game was up. The quartet were dropped from their label and the members amicably went their separate ways. It didn’t take long before reunion seeds were being sown for both acts. Michaels and DeVille buried the hatchet. “We started talking and said, ‘You know, this is really stupid. We’re having this goofy little hissy fit about both of us being divas. Why don’t we see if we can put a tour together?’ ” DeVille recalls. “I think we secretly missed playing with each other.” The original Poison lineup—Michaels, DeVille, bass player Bobby Dall and drummer Rikki Rockett—hit the summer tour circuit in 1999 and began playing to ever-increasing crowds. Cinderella had regrouped two years earlier after being offered a major-label deal—which promptly fell apart and dragged through the courts for the next few years. Nonetheless, the band found new life on the road, hooking up with Poison in 2000 for the two groups’ first tour together in 14 years. The fans who thronged to see the double bill included more than aging hair farmers out to bang their balding heads. “There’s a lot younger kids than I would have thought there would be,” admits DeVille. “I don’t know if it’s from parents who saw us in the day telling their kids and their kids telling their friends, or if it’s just that with the Internet, kids are more aware of things that went on before them. Thank God we still bring some sort of exuberance that’s translating to the younger audience.” That exuberance is key. The ’80s hard-rock bands still filling sheds over the past couple of years—also including Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and package tours like Rock Never Stops, which Cinderella headlined last year—bring with them the idea that rock ’n’ roll is essentially about, as the title of one of Poison’s biggest hits would have it, “Nothin’ but a Good Time.” Of course, you also need hits—at least enough to keep the crowd screaming, throwing devil horns and flicking their Bics for a couple of hours. “That, I think, is why we get to still play,” DeVille says. “Because no matter what we look like, songs like ‘Fallen Angel’ or ‘Something to Believe In’ or ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ stand up.” Proof came three months ago, when The Best of Poison: 20 Years of Rock debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200, the quartet’s highest chart ranking in 13 years. (Cinderella has its own new greatest hits, the double-disc Gold.) For the moment, those hits are the only songs audiences are going to hear. Keifer is mixing a solo album, and says a new Cinderella effort “is not out of the realm of possibility, but it’s not something we’re thinking about right now.” DeVille is optimistic that Poison will soon go to work on its first studio set since 2002’s Hollyweird. “Ultimately, that’s what floats my boat: getting into the studio and doing something new,” he says. “I think that would be very positive.” Whether they ever have more new hits to play, neither band wants to stop rockin’ now. The members of both acts, all in their 40s, have come to terms with one another and with their respective pasts. “Without a doubt, the first line of my obituary will read ‘guitarist from Poison,’ ” DeVille figures. “We have to embrace that. With 20 years comes a lot more acceptance, a lot more humility and a lot more pride.”