- Victoria Mack
Last August I went to Jones Beach to see Poison. Go ahead, scoff. A friend of mine knew the guy who drives the drummer’s bus (that’s right, they each have their own bus; and you know what they say about guys with big carbon footprints), and he got us free tickets and backstage passes. Who’s gonna say no to that shit? Not this jersey girl.
The whole ridiculous thing was oversexed, underthought, and relentlessly fun. Bret and C.C. (the lead guitarist) were particularly anxious to keep the cliche alive. (They know it’s the cliche we all come to see.) Between every number–and sometimes during–C.C. pulled out a giant hand mirror and fluffed his hair. He played the star-spangled banner, Jimi style. Bret punctuated the music by rhythmically thrusting his rock of love.
Heavy metal has always been in the vanguard of the fight for gender equality, and Poison at Jones Beach was no exception. Before Bret and the gang graced us with their presence, 6 tiny blonde clones were plucked out of the audience. These girls were just like the chicks I used to see at Menlo Park Mall when I was a pre-teen, and they inspired a little of the same sick, hopeless feeling in my gut. Stick thin with beautifully sculpted abs, incredibly dark tans, ironed-straight blonde hair, caked-on make-up, and the same uniform: tight black cropped tank with skin-tight jeans and black stilettos. All 6 stood on the house left side of the stage, staring at the audience and occasionally glancing at the band. They looked about 16. They all swayed side to side like the girls in the video for “Addicted to Love,” looking decadently and utterly bored out of their minds.
There was a giant screen behind the stage playing footage of rail-thin women inexplicably moving their breasts up and down with their hands, first one, then the other. The women had those flat pancake asses that were so popular in the 80s. I didn’t realize there was anything good about the current age, but seeing those flat booties made me grateful to live in a post-”Baby Got Back” time, when Kim Kardashian’s sex tape can be every bit as popular as Paris Hilton’s. (I have a dream that one day, every woman in the world can be objectified at rock concerts.)
I felt constantly annoyed by the swaying blonde girls and the pancakes on the screen, but I managed to shove that to a corner of my brain to deal with later (something I’m unfortunately quite adept at doing. As in, hmm, my boyfriend seems to be a shithead. Whoah, can’t deal with that now! I’ll think about it in a few years). Here’s the honest truth: about 90 seconds into the first song I was through being ironic. And with a few exceptions–including C.C.’s baffling 20-minute performance of musical scales–I was totally friggin’ into it.
Here’s why: I don’t remember what the 1st song was, but the 2nd song was “Ride the Wind,” about how great it is to drive around on your motorcycle. The footage on the screen changed to a pov shot of driving really fast down some deserted country road, and the lyrics had something to do with feeling free. Now, I don’t know shit about motorcycles. Public transportation’s good enough for me. But goddamn it, that song made me feel free. That’s the amazing thing about pop music (and so much heavy metal is just extremely loud pop music): it makes you believe what you’re being told without question.
Poison’s music, like so much rock ‘n roll, is about creating the illusion of freedom. I’m not saying this as a judgment; it’s what makes rock so friggin’ exciting, not to mention what’s kept most of us from killing our damn selves. From Elvis on–no, from before Elvis, from Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88″ in 1951, often hailed as the first rock n’ roll song–rock music has made the listener feel freer than she (or he) is. That’s why driving songs are so popular. I went crazy for that Poison song, and I don’t even have a license.
(To hear “Rocket 88″, along with a strange little collection of photos, as well as some footage–again inexplicable–of a Bettie Page look-a-like putting on stockings, check it out on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0)
Everything about Poison–and they represent rock music in general in this respect–is about the illusion of freedom. The man is dressed as a cowboy, for god’s sake. (He’s from the wild west watering hole known to fellow outlaws as “Pennsylvania.”) Nothing says rugged individualism like a cowboy hat.
And why are they named “Poison?” And why is the band’s logo–now pasted to the top of my laptop–2 skulls in the shape of a heart with some kind of blood or goo spilling out of their mouths? None of the songs are concerned with death or destruction. And on stage, Bret presents the foursome as utterly wholesome, just four good ole boys who love to play. When the band performs “Something to Believe In”, Big John (of “Rock of Love” fame) films the audience from the stage. Bret told us they do this at every concert and then send the footage to “our men and women in Iraq,” who are “over there protecting our freedom.”
The point is, the name “Poison,” the logo, all that death shit, isn’t meant to be taken literally, or read into too much at all. When you see the logo, when you hear the name, you just have a vague sense of being in the presence of bad-asses. That’s all that matters. Songs like “Talk Dirty to Me,” “Number 1 Bad Boy,” “Look What the Cat Dragged In”–they’re all about some fantasy of anti-social behavior.
The name “Poison” doesn’t mean that Bret and the boys are fans of arsenic. It just means they’re rebels, they’re outside the status quo. And that means–and this is the most important part–that if you like their music, you too are a rebel, you too are outside the status quo.
The fact that they then turn out to be so very status quo doesn’t get in the way at all, because you’re too busy congratulating yourself on being such a bad-ass. It’s an emperor’s new clothes kind of thing: no one can say, “you’re not free!” because then they aren’t free either.
And also, of course, because why would you choose to admit you’re in prison when you can choose to believe you’re free? Believing–despite your own experience of a world in which everything is controlled by big institutions, by money, by prejudice, by everything that the anxiety of civilized life has produced over thousands of years–is fun! It feels so good! When they tell you you’re being free in that moment, because you’re singing along with “Talk Dirty to Me,” and the music is so loud you can’t think, and you’re slightly drunk, and you’re dancing like a teenager, and Bret is thrusting rhythmically and wearing a cowboy hat, and the movie screen is showing footage of a big open road, man, man, you feel fucking free! And young, and sexy, and empowered! And once again, anything could happen, and probably will, because you’re 14 and know in your heart you’re too big for this small town, and one day you’ll be beautiful and you and Bret Michaels will ride off into the sunset (okay, for me it was Bruce Springsteen, but the difference is not as big as you’d think) and everyone who failed to take you seriously will see you on TV and cry and cry and cry.
They tell you you’re free, and you decide to believe it. And you never think about which companies are funding the tour and what shady business those companies have their hands in, or what it means that the band publicly supports a war that is all about the status quo, because you’re free, and Poison is free, and once again the world is a sexy exciting place. Where anything could happen and probably will.
Of course, I’m not actually 14 anymore, lord knows, so there was a sad little part of my brain that noticed what was happening, that thought, oh, he’s showing me a picture of an open road, and the music’s really loud and catchy, so I feel free, it’s a trick. So I guess I wasn’t completely taken in by it. Or rather, I was taken in, but I saw that I was being taken in, and I allowed it to happen. Because it was harmless, and I needed to feel free. Because I’m not. Very few people are, I think. I think the ones who seem to be free are really just lucky–lucky to have been born and raised to desire the things that have actually been assigned to their lot in life. Rich people who just want to be rich people, like Paris Hilton. Hot young women who just want to be hot young women, like those girls on “The Girls Next Door.” I was obsessed with that show for about a year. I watched it like a hawk, looking for signs that the girls were unhappy, that they were somehow more complicated than they seemed. But I never found it. They seemed like three of the few people in the world who just want to be what other people want them to be. The world is most comfortable with uncomplicated, not particularly intelligent women who just want to be attractive to men. And that’s what those girls seemed to be.
Well, I don’t feel particularly comfortable in my role. And because of that, I decided, for an hour and a half, to feel free. Thank you, Bret Michaels. Thank you for giving me something to believe in.

