How Bret Michaels of Poison was nearly killed at the 2009 Tony Awards
The video for ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ tells you everything you need to know about Guns N’ Roses. Axl Rose, a flannel-clad yokel so unreconstructed he has a straw of wheat lodged in every orifice, steps off the bus in big, bad Los Angeles. He’s so taken by the seductive decadence of LA that by the end of the video, he’s transformed into a hardened metal-head. Poison were the complete opposite.
Hailing from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Poison came to Los Angeles seeking their fame and fortune and hated what they saw in the City of Angels so much they spent all their time their desperate to get out. Of the big four of Glam Metal, they were the pop showmen to Bon Jovi’s heartland rocker, Motley Crue’s unreconstructed rockisms and Def Leppard’s Steel City graft. I mean, they had one of the prettiest people in the world up front in the form of Bret Michaels, of course, they’d be pinups.
It’s part of the reason that Michaels had the post-Poison fame that he had. Their front man wasn’t just magnetically charismatic, the glam metal scene of the early 1980s wasn’t short of a few dudes that looked like ladies, but Michaels was a step above all of them. Not for his musical ability or golden voice, Poison itself was (musically speaking) a home for a set of mercurially talented guitarists to carry on their backs. No, Michaels was the star power, and he was, for better or worse, a star.
I say for better or worse because it’s not exactly a respectable career he’s had away from his band, but it is a career. Those have been hard to come by for hair metal frontmen who got kneecapped by twink death. Some of his peers may have sneered at Michaels’ 21st-century notoriety coming mainly from a set of cringeworthy reality shows, but at least he had a hit TV series to his name. Most of his peers from the Strip are headed back to the office after their second set at the county fair.
However, even Michaels must have been rueing the nature of his 21st-century fame after his appearance at the 63rd Tony Awards in June 2009.
…Wait, what were Poison doing at the Tony Awards?!
By 2005, nostalgia for the glam metal scene of the 1980s had gotten so all-encompassing that it was capitalised on by a jukebox musical called Rock of Ages – all the hits of the era were present and correct, ‘Don’t Stop Believin”, ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’, ‘The Final Countdown’, the title tra-wait, ‘Rock of Ages’ wasn’t in the show?! Weird. Anyway, the show was a sizeable hit when it finally debuted on Broadway, so much so that it got a special slot at that year’s Tony Awards, where the cast performed ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ alongside Poison.
Rock ‘n’ roll never goes down spectacularly well at the Tonys, but they made a decent fist of it. The real story came at the end. The band were meant to end the setup stage while a piece of scenery descended from the rafters. Michaels, tart that he is, spent a little too long soaking up the applause before turning to head upstage long after his cue. He misjudges his run and clocks himself on the descending stage set, right in the mush.
Yes, it is extremely funny. Yes, we should feel very bad about that because Michaels was hurt. He was Nine Inch Nails hurt. He was Johnny Cash hurt. He fractured his nose and split his lip open, which required three stitches. A year afterwards, Michaels had a brain haemorrhage that he blamed on the Tony Awards accident, taking the event’s organisers to court over it, which was settled out of court in 2012. Fortunately, Michaels made a full recovery and is still fronting Poison to this day.
Just goes to show, you can’t keep a good pinup down!