BRET MICHAELS Responds To NIKKI SIXX's Latest 'Trash-Talking'

Bret Michaels has responded to Nikki Sixx's recent "trash-talking," insisting that the MTLEY CRE bassist did, in fact, apologize to the POISON singer for saying "a lot of bad crap" about Bret's band.

In a recent interview with The Arizona Republic, Michaels claimed that Sixx said he was "really sorry" about some negative comments his MTLEY CRE bandmates made about POISON. A few days later, Sixx took to his personal Twitter page in order to "clarify" that he never apologized to Bret for derogatory statements that MTLEY made about POISON, explaining that what he did say was "I personally never had anything against you guys as a people but MTLEY just sorta thought you sucked as band but let's give the fans what they want and go out and have a good time."

During an exclusive interview with Michaels yesterday (Wednesday, May 18),AOL's Noisecreep asked the rocker if he felt comfortable commenting on the recent Sixx mudslinging.

"No, I love it and I hope you can help me put this to rest," Michaels said. "I'm going to be very blunt and honest. When my career started, Nikki and I hung out and I remember telling him there were some CRE songs that I absolutely liked I took a positive approach to things. You can look back at old photos me and Nikki with our Harley's. We used to ride together because we had a house down the street from each other. At the time, both of our careers had just started and our records had hit. We would go out and party together, I would even join the CRE on stage and sing. Everything was great.

"Now at one point I think it was in the mid-'90s POISON and BON JOVI were playing the arenas. Our 'Native Tongue' album [1993] had sold a million copies and BON JOVI's album, 'Keep The Faith' [1992], was at about 1.5 million or something and at one point in the middle there, MTLEY CRE changed singers all this stuff."

"That's around the period when Nikki decided to brand his band differently," Michaels continued. "What confused me about that time period was when Nikki said that Vince [Neil, CRE singer] and I were kind of ridiculous. Now these are his words, 'You and Vince are kind of the same you don't really pick and choose your fans, you just kind of go out and play music.' Well, I thought that's what music was about. I didn't know I was supposed to decide which fan can like or not like my music.

"I did Nikki's radio show about two months ago and it was an absolutely great day. We talked about the tour and everything was cool. Now on the show he says to me, 'Bret, man, what's going on? Let's take a picture together,' and so on. We also did all of this television press for the tour in Los Angeles together and everything was great.

"He even apologized to me and said, 'I sort of said a lot of bad crap about you guys, but you're actually a relevant band,' and he went in and said some other good stuff about a month ago. I got a text from Nikki two weeks ago saying, 'Hey bro, excited to see you on the road!' But then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I hear about him talking trash about us again. I can't keep up [laughts]!"

Read more of Noisecreep's interview with Michaels at this location.

Sixx previously said about CRE's decision to embark on a tour with POISON and "special guest" NEW YORK DOLLS, "One of the things MTLEY CRE said was that we would never tour with POISON because we were sort of punk / heavy metal / glam, we came out of the very, very early '80s and took what we did very... it was very important to us. And then bands came after us and we wanted to kind of separate from them. And we had never planned on touring with any of the bands from that era. There was no animosity it was just that we put a very clear line. But when the [NEW YORK] DOLLS signed on, it made it seem like it was the right time to do that this tour."

In a February 2004 online posting, Sixx shot down reports that his then-band BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION would be touring later that year with POISON and KISS. "No way in fucking hell would we (BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION or MTLEY CRE) ever, ever tour with a fucking band like POISON," he wrote. "We have had talks with KISS and I told them very clearly that we would not do the tour if they used POISON. That would be the death of us... I will not be attached to that kind of fake bullshit..." When questioned about his comments in a May 2004 interview with the Stamford Advocate, Sixx explained, "I was in negotiations and said it depends who else is on the tour. If you're going to do a nostalgia thing, we're not interested. If you go get JET or THE DARKNESS, it sounds like fun. All of a sudden they come back with KISS, the BRIDES and POISON! There ain't no way in hell I'm doing that tour. I will not play with fucking POISON. There are followers and leaders. I'm not into followers."

During a July 2005 interview with the Fox 2 TV network, Sixx famously closed out the four-minute chat by calling the interviewer "an asshole" after he was asked the question, "Who rocked harder in the '80s: MTLEY CRE or POISON?"

When POISON drummer Rikki Rockett was questioned in an August 2006 interview with DelcoTimes.com about Sixx being abrasively vocal in his displeasure about being categorized alongside POISON, Rikki replied, "Nikki really needs to get over it. I don't think a forty-something-year-old man should be acting like that; you'd think with all that Nikki has been through, he wouldn't care about these dumb little rivalries."