DETROIT — At 60, Bret Michaels says he's like a classic muscle car.
"I'm still fast, still fun to drive, I just need a little more maintenance," says Michaels, who kicked off his 2023 Parti-Gras Tour at Pine Knob on Thursday.
The tour sees the Poison frontman performing with fellow hit-makers Night Ranger and Jefferson Starship, as well as Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath — with whom he shares a March 15 birthday — and ex-Journey singer Steve Augeri.
"It's just an absolute, nothing-but-hits party," says Michaels, on the phone last month as he prepped for the tour's launch.
Michaels has been performing in Detroit for nearly 40 years, and he shared the secrets of his success, philosophies on life and why, after all these years, he's still looking for nothin' but a good time.
Here's what we learned from the flesh and blood rocker.
His attitude is gratitude
When Poison played Comerica Park last summer with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Michaels hit the stage with the boundless energy of a sports team mascot, gesturing toward individual crowd members in the sea of 37,000 fans, pointing to them and tapping his heart, and making connections with everyone from the fans up close to the stage to those seated in the back of the ballpark's 300 level.
It was pure showmanship, but it was more than that, as the beaming smile on Michaels' face felt genuine, as did his gratitude for being onstage — on that day, at that time, in front of tens of thousands of fans, it seemed like there was nowhere else he would rather be.
"What you saw on that stage is who I am," says Michaels, who was coming off several days of being "sick as a dog" leading up to that Comerica Park show. "That energy on stage is real. It's a sincere feeling. It's a hard working, blue collar gratitude. Through the good, the bad and the ugly, that gratitude is always going to be there."
He credits the work ethic that was instilled in him by his family and his Pittsburgh-area upbringing. He's a lifelong Steelers fan — his middle Pennsylvania accent renders them the "Stillers" — and says he accentuates the positive in his life, turning whatever adversity he faces into fuel for himself.
But he also understands the value and importance of a good time.
"Don't get me wrong, I like to work hard and play way harder," says Michaels, born Bret Michael Sychak. "But when I hit that stage, I'm just on fire. I call it my Circus of Awesomeness. And when I came out at Comerica, I had never felt that kind of energy. I think I spent the first four minutes of that set just shaking people's hands. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh s---, we have to start 'Look What the Cat Dragged In!'"
He bet on himself, and won
Michaels was 19 when he and his bandmates packed up their car and headed for Los Angeles, with dreams of making it big dancing in their heads.
"I took a leap of faith," says Michaels, looking back at the band's early days. "No one was knocking down the door to sign Poison or Bret Michaels. If I thought about it too much, I would have never got in that car."
But get in the car he did. Along with his bandmates Bobby Dall, Rikki Rockett and Matt Smith — Smith would later be replaced by C.C. DeVille — they packed up and hit the road, making the trek from Pennsylvania to California.
It was March 1983. Michaels sold his Kawasaki KX125 dirt bike for gas money and a deposit on an apartment, and with a foldable map in hand, the four friends hit the road and traveled all the way across the country. (He shared driving duties with Dall, he says.)
When they arrived in L.A., they found an apartment but were kicked out three months later after not paying the rent. They found another apartment and the cycle repeated. They worked odd jobs and played music at night, at one point crashing in sleeping bags behind a dry cleaner in downtown L.A., Michaels says.
Eventually they created a buzz around their band, signed a record deal, and went on to sell some 55 million records worldwide, scoring massive radio and MTV hits with glam-era staples such as "Talk Dirty to Me," "Nothin' But a Good Time," "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and "Something to Believe In."
It was never easy, the father of two says, but he wasn't scared to go for it and give it his all.
"I never fear failure. My biggest fear is not trying," he says. "I always tell people, have a 30,000 foot view, but put your boots in the f—ing dirt and be willing to get dirty and work hard. Know your vision, dream big, but be a realist, and don't fear failure. It will stop you in your tracks."
He says self-belief is the key to his multi-decade, multi-platinum success.
"If you don't believe in you, no one else will," Michaels says. "That's as true as it gets."
Cold beer makes good friends
Poison's first Detroit concert was at Blondie's, the now defunct rock club that once stood in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, in January 1986.
It was four months before the release of the band's debut album, "Look What the Cat Dragged In," and as Michaels remembers, it was a matinee show, with around 25-50 people in attendance.
Patrons — they weren't yet fans, at least not officially — were standing at the back of the club as the band came through the crowd and took the stage. (Blondie's didn't have a dressing room, Michaels says.) In order to close the gap between the band and the audience, he made a good will gesture toward them, in the form of a peace offering.
"I bought a case of beer out of my little-to-no money, and I set it at the front of the stage and I said, 'in order to drink these cold beers, you've gotta come up here and jam with us,'" Michaels says. "They all come up, and we have had a bond with Detroit ever since."
The buy-a-case-of-beer move was a strategy Michaels employed more than once in those days. "I'm an entrepreneur in my DNA," he says. "One thing I'm good at is adapting quickly, adjusting, then reacting."
The lesson, Michaels says: "Cold beer makes good friends."
That has proven true throughout his career, and a favorite story of Michaels' involves a plaque at Pine Knob commemorating the band's record-breaking beer sales. (The plaque does not exist, alas.) Michaels scoffs at recent reports that alcohol sales are down across the board at concerts. "It does not seem to have affected me or Poison," he says with a laugh.
Suffering is his superpower
Michaels has been a Type 1 diabetic since childhood, which he calls "the biggest blessing and the biggest curse of my life." He has a glucose monitor on his person at all times and administers himself five insulin injections per day.
He's had multiple health scares throughout this life, including a subarachnoid hemorrhage he suffered to his brain in 2010, which caused him to be in a coma for three days and spend nine days in the ICU. (When he woke up, he says, nurses were massaging his legs and he asked himself, "am I in heaven?") He also went through heart surgery and an emergency appendectomy.
The scares have taught him to be grateful for what he has, and to be able to adjust and adapt to whatever is thrown his way, he says.
"I have an ability to suffer just a bit more than other people," says the former "Rock of Love with Bret Michaels" star. "Sometimes people say, 'that's enough, I'm tapping out.' But I'm gonna give 'em 1,000% of whatever I've got in me. Whatever's in the tank, it's going to be left on the stage."
