With over 40 million records sold worldwide, twelve Top 10 hits, seven studio albums, five compilation albums, four live albums, and 28 radio singles, Poison has been rocking the stage for over 30 years. 1988 marked a moment in rock history when Poison released two of their greatest hits of all time—“Nothin’ But A Good Time” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”—a rock anthem and a power ballad that gave lonely hearts everywhere ‘something to believe in.’

This summer, Poison hit the road with their “Nothin’ But A Good Time Tour,” and nothin’ but a good time is what they’re having. Simultaneously, Bret is also doing a solo tour, “Party Starts Now,” which keeps Bret singing to sold-out crowds nationwide. He’s also hard at work with his organization, The Bret Michael’s Life Rocks Foundation, helping people in every city along the way.

I talked with Bret about his current tours, his rock star career that has spanned three decades and counting, and his philanthropic work that he’s personally invested in.

KG: Many bands don’t last the test of time, yet Poison is still touring together after 30 plus years. What keeps you guys going strong all these years later?

BM: A couple things, I think. First of all, we all grew up as friends on the east coast. Bobby and Ricky, and myself, all grew up in the same area together, started this band when we were in junior high school and high school. Then we moved out to L.A., and when I say “pay your dues,” we lived for at least three years on the floor of the back half of a dry cleaner; so there is a permanent bond there for life. C.C. was from Brooklyn, New York. We met him when he was in Los Angeles—he moved out there with his parents—and we sort of formed that same bond. You fight hard together, and then the true blessing came from this: besides working hard on the music and going out and letting people know it exists, it's that ability to be able to have fun, but get it done. That's what worked. When we were criticized, or put down—and it happened a lot—we would take that criticism, and it was just fuel to the fire.

There's a natural, true bond there, of all we've been through together, and yet, we still have fun. The guys still make me laugh hard, and like I said, Poison—95% of the time, if not more—is nothin’ but a good time, and when we go bad, it's like two brothers getting in a fistfight. You knock each other around, and then the next day you're back to being bonded again.

KG: It’s the 30th anniversary of Poison’s greatest hits “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and “Nothin’ But a Good Time,” two songs that are still relevant today; what makes these songs timeless?

BM: Well, first of all, thank you. You write these songs living in the moment, so “Nothin’ But A Good Time,” oddly enough, if you really listen to the lyrics, is about when I was working as a busboy and a cook. I wrote a lot of those lyrics when I was trying to struggle to make it in the band. So I'm looking at the ultimate payoff, the icing on the cake, is having nothin’ but a good time, that ultimate end of the show party song. Then “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” I wrote that going through a true break up in my life. Me and my girlfriend at the time, when I wrote that, I was out on the road, trying to make ends meet, driving around in a van, city-to-city, and it just, our relationship ended; and it was heartbreaking. I think what makes a song stand the test of time—and I truly mean this—is writing a song that people relate to then, or now, so in other words, it was a point in their life then, but people go through heartbreak today. People want a good time. They work hard all week. They want a good time. So you hope they relate to it then, and now, three generations of fans later, they're still relating to that song.

KG: “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” was a departure from the type of songs that Poison was singing at the time. The name of the song is quite poetic; how did the rose analogy come about?

BM: On the road, I was trying to think of a way, when writing it… how do you let people know that you're getting to do what you set out to do—which was to go out on the road to make music, but you're also losing someone that's an important part of your life—that at the time, you know you love—so your heart is torn completely in two; it’s a rose and a thorn. It has truly become a part of my life.

When you write a song like “Roses And Thorns” or “Something To Believe In,” the most painful moments in your life, are the songs that are the ones that come easiest to write because you have an exact emotion. When you write a good time song, I tell people, it's tough to write it, because when you're partying and having a good time, you don't want to just plop down and start writing something—you're going, “I'm living in this, I'm having a great time,” but when your heart is ripped out, or when my best friend passed away on “Something To Believe In,” you have an exact emotion, and it’s the most painful thing, yet the lyrics flow.

KG: Yeah, I always say that if you feel something deeply enough, you can always get other people to feel it too.

BM: Absolutely. And when you're writing it, you know, you're not thinking, “Is this going to be a hit?” I was writing it because—truly, I mean this—music is therapeutic to me; it has been there in the good times and it's been there in some of my worst and darkest times, and got me through both. That's why when people ask you, “Do you really believe in what you're doing?” the answer is, “it is 1,000% sincere.”

KG: Well, “Every Rose” is one of my favorite songs, so I thank you for the song.

BM: You're welcome. And hopefully it sounded good out there that night [at Jones Beach]. Everyone lit that place up and was singing along, and I'm looking out at Jones Beach at three generations of fans, hands in the air, like it was a summer party/barbecue/karaoke. It was awesome.

KG: Yeah, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful thing.

“Nothin’ But A Good Time” has become an 80s rock anthem. Did you have any idea that it would get so big?

BM: You don't. Music has to ebb and flow seamlessly, but when writing that song, that was just one of those ones that you go in and it just worked musically. Don't let any musician lie to you. When they write something, whether it's fun, painful, bittersweet—of course they hope people relate to it and it’s successful, but you can never bet on it. It just happened to hit at the right place at the right time. It’s a lot of hard work and a lot of luck.

KG: You’re doing a summer tour with Poison, but you are also doing a solo tour at the same time. How do you do it?

BM: I just gave up sleep. It was simple. I just stopped sleeping, or any form of rest. (laughs) I've done it for a really long time, and I treat every show with the exact same respect. I go in there. I want the show to be successful. I want the fans to have a great time, and I want to have a great time. I put in the work so when I go on the stage, it's a party. The only difference is I get to add some of my solo music, I get to play a few more instruments, and do some stuff on stage I don't normally do with Poison, and so it just gives me the best of both worlds. As I told everybody—and they think I'm completely crazy—this is what I dreamed about doing. So, going out on the road, I don't look at it as work; I look at it as going out there, and having a great time getting to live out my dream. I'm grateful for the fans; I'm grateful they’ve been there through this journey.

KG: On stage, it shows that you are having a great time. It really does.

BM: Thank you, and I was. You work really hard wanting to make something great, and people just think you roll into town for a tour, but all that stuff that you see comes from months of preparing, like the videos you're going to see, and what's going to be up on that stage. Myself solo, or Poison, are 100,000% a live band, so you also want to go up there and make sure your sound check is good, your instruments are great. We are a true, just down and dirty, rock and roll band with live music, but you also want to get people an audio/visual experience; the same one I want if I went to see somebody play.

KG: Back in the 80s touring was a wild time for Poison. How does tour life compare now?

BM: I think it's the same thing. The party backstage—we’re still meeting people, we do a meet and greet before the show; in Jersey, it was crazy back there. Jones Beach, everyone was coming back, having a beer, a great time, catching up on life. Life is in phases, and I love the stuff I got to do in the early 80s, at the beginning, but I just brought that party forward.

I take pictures with a lot of our veterans, our officers, and first responders, paramedics; I always thank them because I come from a family of all veterans and first responders. I say this apolitically—no politics, as I say on stage—I’m thankful for the freedoms of opinion we actually get and the sacrifices they make, and their families make.

KG: I was going to ask you about that actually. You are a son of a veteran. During your live shows you bring veterans, first responders, and local heroes up on stage, you give them their turn in the spotlight, and you call them the real rock stars. What does sharing the stage with them mean to you?

BM: It means everything. They are the reason I get to go out there and have a great time. You know, they're the reason we get the freedom to have opinion. That's what I tell everybody; whether you like something, or don't like something, I'm just grateful we get the opinion. We have a freedom of opinion, the freedom to voice ourselves, we have the freedom to love something, we have the freedom to protest, but that comes from the sacrifices that they and their family make, and it feels awesome to me to give them that moment. That night at Jones Beach, I said, “I've got chill bumps up and down my arm, and I've been doing this song for a long time.” That's a good feeling.

KG: You have written a song for both of your daughters, Raine and Jorja Bleu; how special is it to share your success with them?

BM: It is an amazing feeling. The fact that they're my kids, there's this unconditional love—that goes without saying—and then to be able to write music about it, and both of the songs did well, people liked them, they responded; that's a great feeling. You try to let your kids know—I'm trying to let Raine and Jorja know—look, I love you, and I realize that it's bittersweet sometimes because I spend quite a bit of time on the road, and the truth is, a lot of times they're with me. There's other times you're going to miss moments in their life, and you want them to know that no matter what, you love them.

KG: You do a “Live From The Living Room” acoustic series on your website; any plans on doing an acoustic album?

BM: Absolutely, and it's just songs and stories. And these are about pivotal moments in life. How did you arrive at this moment in your life? What did you do when you went through this? How did this song come about? Not so much about just performing it, but what drove you? How did you get over the hurdles in your life? When you were partying, do you remember funny moments? That's what “Songs and Stories” will be about. It's really going to be a well done series. And then the book is literally called “Pictures and Stories.” They say a picture is worth 1000 words, right? Give people a photo and give them little short stories about what was going on in your life—and I'm talking about not just music, just life in general—what things you were going through, moments you remember. It will be a series of books, and instead of songs and stories, it will just be pictures and stories.

KG: I love when musicians add stories, personal stories, about how the song was written, because it really—for the fans—brings the songs to life.

BM: Absolutely. A song means different things to different people. “Every Rose” might mean something different to you than it meant to someone else in the audience, but it was a moment in time in that song they're still relating to, and so I say, look—this is what I was going through when I wrote it. You hope that they relate to that, because as much as I want to rock on stage (and as I said before, music is therapeutic to me); I'm a songwriter. We could sit down in a room, and I could pick up the guitar, and start playing the guitar and writing stuff—and I've got hundreds and hundreds of those songs, and they might never see the light of day, but I needed to record them.

KG: Well, hopefully we'll get to hear those songs.

BM: (laughs) Yeah, oh, you’ll be like, there’s a lot of them, man—there’s bunches and bunches of them; especially on my phone. I love modern technology. You know, you're not carrying an entire studio on your bus—you can carry a small studio in your phone; you can capture everything now.

KG: Tell me about the Bret Michael’s Life Rocks Foundation.

BM: I’m a life-long type 1 diabetic. When the foundation started, we just used to be able to originally, take care of kids with diabetes and veterans. Then we spread into muscular dystrophy, burn victims, childhood cancer, and Make-A-Wish. What it does is, Life Rocks is able to fund every single city I’m in. The Life Rocks foundation is dollar-in-dollar-out, with no administration fee.

KG: And people can donate on your website; is that correct?

BM: 1,000%, and have. I gotta say this, if you ever hear me say that we did this together—if they come back and buy a meet and greet—they're part of what I do. I take that money and put it in the Life Rocks Foundation, and then we match the money that goes in. Right now, just this week, we're sending 15 kids to a camp called Camp Ho Mita Koda with the Carly Rocks Foundation. She's a young diabetic girl that now works with me, and we raise money together—her, and her dad, and myself—and instead of 5 kids going, we now made it 15.

KG: That’s amazing. You talk about your struggles with diabetes, and you help kids who are going through the same thing. You’ve become a role model to these kids who have never met anyone else with type 1 diabetes. How does it feel to take what you've been through and use it to change a kid's life?

BM: Let me just say this. It's an amazing feeling. If you can pay it forward and leave something awesome behind and inspire somebody, especially in this day and age, that for me, that's an amazing feeling. You know, when you go in there, you're just being yourself, but you hope that gives them the strength, and inspires them to want to take care of themselves, to learn that this disease is not—if they manage it—is not going to debilitate them. I've traveled the world. I still—at this crazy age—I'm still out there racing dirt bikes, playing football, playing baseball, soccer; I go out and just live my life, and you hope that by doing that, you lead by example.

KG: You recently sent a kid named Kyle to diabetes camp who's six years old—the same age you were when you were diagnosed. How is Kyle doing in camp?

BM: I think that Kyle is doing amazing; that is the word, and he's coming out of camp this week. In fact, tonight, he's gonna be back at Nashville. I met him in Chattanooga, him, and his mom and dad. They were great. He had just been recently diagnosed, and I just want him to know that you can do anything. When he saw that show that night, he was like, wait a minute, this guy is running around like crazy, singing and having a great time. I just want him to know that you can do all these things. You’re just going to have to go a little further. You're gonna have to go 100 yards to get 50 yards, meaning you've got to manage it, and be prepared, and keep a positive attitude.

KG: That's a great example to show.

The rock star life has its highs and lows—you’ve had your share through the years—but overall, would you say it’s been, and still is, ‘nothin’ but a good time?’

BM: 1,000%. I am a very driven person, but I love having fun. My motto at my company is “Have fun, but get it done.” So in life, it's the same thing. Nothing has come easy, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I would not know what to do if it fell in my lap. I don't complain; it gets me nowhere.

I'm working on a show that I feel is going to be a game changer, and you will be the first person to hear it. I worked on it for a while, and it's simply called “Topical Solution;” that's the working title. It's about finding real answers to real situations. People bring me real problems, and I say, look, we've all discussed the problem, now what are we going to do about it? You'll see what unfolds. Any show I've done, whether it's “Rock Of Love,” this, that, no matter what, you got to put your time in, and people still got to want to watch it, but I want to start it as a very underground thing and let it build up, because I don't want to base the show on somebody telling me what to do; I want to base it on actually resolving problems as they come across our table. Like Carly, she's my first example. You know, here's a girl with diabetes, and now she's a camp counselor. She's sending kids to camp, she swims laps to raise money; it’s resolving a problem rather than adding to it.

KG: Bret, you are a humble rock star with a big heart. Keep doing what you are doing.

BM: I love you for saying that; I thank you for saying that. That truly means a lot to me.

I just want to tell everybody that I could not be more grateful for three generations of awesome friends and fans, and I will see them on the road. Just go to BretMichaels.com, and check out all the stuff that we're doing on there.