POISON's RIKKI ROCKETT On Why Now Is Right Time For Him To Release His Memoir: 'I Didn't Wanna Embarrass My Parents When They Were Alive'

POISON drummer Rikki Rockett's long-awaited memoir, "Ghost Notes: My Life In Poison", which was written with writer duo Leif Eriksson and Martin Svensson, will finally arrive September 15, 2026 via Rare Bird Books. Asked in a new interview with Erin Greatrix of This Day In Metal why now was the right time for him to release his memoir, Rikki said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "I was asked that earlier, and I think this is the funny answer, but it's kind of the truth. I didn't wanna embarrass my parents when they were alive [laughs] by telling, by saying some of these stories. And then I was, like, 'Oh, now I've got kids, so...' But I'm always gonna have kids, and in a normal life they're gonna outlive me. So at some point I gotta do this. And they're old enough now that I can say, 'Well, let me explain this.' You know what I mean? So I feel like that's okay now."

Rikki went on to say that there were a few stories that he immediately knew had to go in the book when he first decided to go ahead with "Ghost Notes".

"Well, everybody wanted to know about the bad things," he said. "It's weird how people just have to know. They wanna know about the MTV Awards. They wanna know about the rape accusation. They wanna know about the cancer battle, that kind of stuff. And so I knew I had to go in and talk about those things, and they're part of the ride. So I did. So I think I went pretty deeply into most of those, I think, enough to give a lot of understanding."

Asked if there was ever a moment that he thought, "Oh, maybe this shouldn't go in the book", Rockett said: "Oh, there was a lot of things that I later went to the ghostwriters, and I called them up and I said, 'You know what? I don't feel good about that. Let's reel that back in.' I don't feel like I ever threw anybody under the bus — at least I don't think so. If somebody feels that way, it'll be interesting to find out why they feel that way. But, honestly, I didn't set out to do that. What I set out to do was, and it's why it's called 'Ghost Notes', which are kind of the notes between the notes in drumming; they're kind of like light taps. And so there were these little things that I feel like thread the bigger stories together, and so I thought that was important. And plus, the title 'Best Seat In The House' was taken, so I couldn't use that. [Laughs] But it's still the best seat in the house."

As for why he wanted to tell his story way beyond the stereotypical "sex, drugs and rock and roll" and touch on family struggles, addiction, cancer, betrayal finding meaning and other really deep subjects, Rikki said: "I want people to see me as a person, not just a fixture, and realize that there's somebody behind — not just me; anybody, any musician or actor, entertainer — that there's real feelings back there, and there's all this stuff that everybody thinks you should const[antly]…

"Let me say this exactly how I wanna say it," he clarified. "I am eternally grateful to be where I am and and the band I'm in and what the fans have given us, and all those things. I just want people to know that not all of it is what it's cracked up to be. I mean, honestly — it's just the truth. Just because you've had this wonderful gift doesn't mean... And really, the wonderful gift is this. The wonderful gift is doing what you love for a living. So that could be anything. You may be a paleontologist and you're studying dinosaurs for a living, and that makes you... That does not make me better than you or you better... It's fulfilling what you want. Bret [Michaels, POISON frontman] said it a long time ago. He said — and I always loved that he said this — he said, 'Fame is what other people give you, and success is what you give yourself.' You set a goal and, you know, you achieve it, and then that's your success. Fame, I can't control it that much. Sure, you can try to manipulate the media. When you do that, oftentimes it bites back and catches you in the butt. So that is a little bit out of your control. All's you can do is put your best face to the world, do what you do, and show everybody that you love what you do and let them pick you, you know what I mean? I think trying to find an audience is a bad idea. As POISON, I feel like we've always just did what we did and let the audience find us."

In July 2025, Rikki was asked by Mike Palm of TribLive how it felt to take a look back at his life for a book. Rikki responded: "Scary. And a lot of people go, 'Do you have any regrets?' Of course I do. There's lots of things I regret. But not regret to the point where, yeah, did I learn from them. Yeah, sure. You can say all those things, but there's certain things I look back on, like, eh, why'd I do it that way? But I did and here I am, and I adjusted and moved on. It's kind of interesting to see that. The painful stuff isn't fun to look at, obviously the cancer battle and all that sort of stuff isn't fun. [Being] falsely accused of rape, that sucked. There were certain things that are not fun to live through again, but it's my story and people need to know about it. Sometimes people just brush the headlines or there's a lot of news and a lot of things that are out there all at once, and sometimes we're not paying attention. I read the Joey Kramer book, for example, from AEROSMITH, and I'm a huge, huge AEROSMITH fan, but there's been times in my life where there's other things going on and I'm not paying attention to what Joey Kramer was doing right then. Now it's nice to look back and go, wow, I missed all these things or I heard a little something about it, and now I'm seeing it and reading it and kind of digesting it again and understanding more from his perspective what really happened, that kind of stuff."

During an October 2024 appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", the now-65-year-old Rikki, whose real name is Richard Allan Ream, said about why he decided to name his book "Ghost Notes": "The first chunk of our career, like [early POISON albums] 'Look What The Cat Dragged In' [1986], 'Open Up And Say... Ahh!' [1988], all those records, even most of 'Flesh & Blood' [1990], the way they were producing records at that time, they did not want drummers playing ghost notes, if you know what ghost notes are… It's kind of like a lighter tap on the snare drum, for example, the kind of the notes in between the notes that are not fully pronounced, I guess would be the best way to explain it in layman's terms. And so a lot of times it gives it that little bit of swing groove to it. And producers did not want that in the early 80s — they just wanted straight drums, almost machine-like and heavy and loud and detuned snare drums and all that kind of stuff. And it wasn't really until 'Flesh & Blood', but even more 'Native Tongue' [1993] where I was able to really play the way I wanted to play. I think a lot of other drummers dealt with that. I know I talked to various drummers about their frustration back then. So I decided to name it. I finally was able to play however I wanted. And all those little notes between the notes are my kind of what I'm talking about in my life. Instead of just the highlights that you always hear about, you know, 'POISON did this' or 'Rikki Rockett did this' or 'Rikki got arrested for this' or whatever, these are like all the stuff in between. So those are the ghost notes between all the big things that you've heard about. So I kind of made a little connection there, and that's why I named it that."

Asked if "Ghost Notes" is "kind of like a semi-autobiography, but more focused on things that people wouldn't know" about him, Rikki said: "Yes. Or more in depth. A lot of the things are more in depth. You've heard some of these stories about POISON, but you never really dig that much deeper or maybe they just haven't been reported much more than what you've heard on the surface, for example. And so I talk about a lot of those kinds of things."

He continued: "Everything [that you hear about the 1980s glam rock scene is] always focused on the Sunset Strip. And that was only a couple years of our life, honestly. What's more interesting is our years in the tri-state area and Pennsylvania and all the crap we went through trying to play gigs and trying to find our space, and that stuff, to me, is more cinematic, if you will, than, 'Oh, yeah, they played the Troubadour and the Strip and they hung up flyers. I mean, we've all heard those stories. But it's the other stuff, like trying to hold jobs down and renting VFW halls and renting vans and trying to scrape enough money to get to the next gig and all that stuff. That was really the meat of our struggle, I think. Not that being on the Strip wasn't interesting, but I feel like when you talk about the Strip, you're just lumping every band together that was our contemporaries. But, really, we kind of came, fought, got our deal and got out even sort of before that. I mean, the Strip continued to explode after we were off the Strip."

Rikki is the co-founder and drummer for the band POISON, which exploded into the highly competitive Los Angeles music scene in the 1980s, making a name for themselves in the clubs on the Sunset Strip.

POISON has sold over 50 million records worldwide, releasing eight studio albums, four live albums, and four compilations. The band has charted 10 singles on the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, including six Top 10 singles and one Hot 100 number-one smash hit, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".

Relentless from the ground up and forged in the hellfires of the Pennsylvania and Los Angeles club scenes, POISON smashed its way up as an independent band who bet on itself. Selling over three million copies of an independent album which included the big hits "Talk Dirty To Me", "I Won't Forget You", "Cry Tough", "I Want Action" and the underground smash "Look What The Cat Dragged In", they were soon picked up by Capitol Records and beat the sophomore jinx by releasing the aforementioned No. 1 smash "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". Written out of emotion by singer/songwriter and frontman Bret Michaels, the song blasted into the charts remaining a top the pop, rock and country genres for threee months consecutively. The album "Open Up And Say...Ahh!" sold eight million copies out of the gate and spawned other hit singles "Fallen Angel", "Nothin' But A Good Time" and "Your Mama Don't Dance". Followed up by the multi-platinum album "Flesh & Blood", POISON again lit up the charts with several more smash hit singles, including "Unskinny Bop" and "Something To Believe In".

POISON's reunited original lineup — Rockett, Michaels, bassist Bobby Dall and guitarist C.C. DeVille — completed "The Stadium Tour" with MÖTLEY CRÜE, DEF LEPPARD and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS in 2022. The trek was originally scheduled to take place in the summer of 2020 but ended up being pushed back to 2021, and then to 2022, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Rockett was declared cancer free more in 2016 after undergoing an experimental treatment. He was diagnosed with oral cancer back in 2015.

In April 2022, Rockett married his longtime girlfriend TC Smith at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara, California.

Rikki was previously married to singer/songwriter Melanie Martel. They share joint custody of their two kids — son Jude Aaron Rockett and daughter Lucy Sky Rockett.

In October 2024, Rikki announced the launch of a new band called THE ROCKETT MAFIA.