RIKKI ROCKETT: 'I've Stopped Telling Anybody That POISON Is Going To Tour'

During a brand new interview with Classic Rock Revisited, POISON drummer Rikki Rockett was asked about his return to playing music now that he has been declared cancer free after undergoing an experimental treatment. He said: "I want to play and I would love to tour. Hopefully that will happen. I've stopped telling anybody that POISON is going to tour, because every time we say we will, something comes along and screws it up. I would like to do that. I'm good enough to do it. I'm fine. I am absolutely fine. I train jiu-jitsu two hours a day. I am good to go. I have strength. Am I as strong as I was? Is my timing as good as it was? Not yet, but I am getting there, and I will get there soon. Playing a show would be a walk in the park compared to what I do on the mats."

Rockett was diagnosed with oral cancer more than a year ago. Several months ago, he came to Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego, where he underwent experimental cancer immunotherapy, which has now eradicated the tumor.

"Immunotherapy, in my case, is two things," Rikki said. "It is an intravenous drip for thirty minutes every three weeks. It is kind of like getting chemo, but I have virtually no side effects. The side effects are so minimal… I've had diarrhea a couple of times and that is it. It makes me tired, but my body was fighting cancer anyway, so I was already tired. I also take two pills a day. That's it. I don't have to do anything else. What it does is it gets the body's immune systems to drop its defenses. The cells in your body look the same as the cancer cells, so your body does not see it as an invader. This drug turns the body's defenses on against that, so it understands to go after the cancer. That is what it does."

He continued: "It doesn't work for everybody. They are figuring it out more and more every day. What I'm on is what Jimmy Carter was on. The difference is that I'm on a second agent that we think helps turn it on even faster and makes it recognize it faster. This drug was initially for blood type cancers. This particular one… mine is for solid tumors. They were having trouble to get it to recognize tumors at first but they are starting to get it to do it now. I had a one-hundred-percent recognition. I don't know how many people with head and neck cancer that get on this have a complete remission. I will hear about those numbers soon. At this point, I'm just happy that I'm one of them, you know."

POISON singer Bret Michaels hinted in a recent interview that the band will re-team with DEF LEPPARD for a U.S. tour in 2017. The two groups first hit the road together back in 2009, and then again three years later.