Marking the 30th anniversary of Poison’s staple tune “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” frontman Bret Michaels discussed the hit ballad with Billboard.
Did you really sit down at the laundromat and write all the lyrics to ‘Every Rose’ in one sitting?
“No, it wasn’t just one sitting. It was a period of a couple days. You go through a gamut of emotion, because – and I want to say a very strong statement – when you’re going through that, you’re not thinking of it being a hit.”I wrote it because the music was therapeutic to me. In other words, it helped me to get out my broken heart.
It helped me to deal with what I was going through.”And so, what happens over a period of a couple days, I remember sitting out in the mini Winnebago, just sitting out there for hours and hours on the guitar, and I wrote a ton of lyrics.”And then I narrowed it down to what I felt kind of encapsulated, what I felt within a three-to-four-minute song was gonna capture the feeling.”It’s like [Poison’s 1990 Flesh & Blood hit] ‘Something to Believe In.’ I’ve probably got 10 pages of lyrics, but I tried to then go back and capture the story so that it didn’t become a 28-minute song.”
“The toughest songs to write are good-time party songs. And let me explain that. People are always like, ‘Oh man, ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time,’ that must have been an easy song to write.’
“It’s not an easy song, because when you’re partying and having a good time, there’s no emotion in you that says, ‘Let’s sit down right now and write a song.’
“But you have something break your heart, you have a best friend like ‘Something to Believe In,’ one of your best friends that you saw their face every day for years and years and years, die instantly over Christmas…
“What I’m saying to you is those moments are the toughest moments in your life, but oddly enough, the most defined songs and easier songs to write because you have an exact emotion.”