Poison drummer Rikki Rockett revamps classic rock songs with The Rockett Mafia

When Poison drummer Rikki Rockett brings his new group The Rockett Mafia to town, even he isn’t 100% sure about what’s going to be played.

“We change our mind every other day, I swear to God. That’s what’s cool is, whatever you see this time, you probably will not see again, because we’re trying to get it right,” Rockett said with a laugh. “We’ll play some stuff and we’ll go, oh yeah, this is the perfect set. And then we’ll go, ah, it wasn’t quite the (right) energy at that part, so let’s do something else. So we keep changing stuff.”

Formed last year, The Rockett Mafia features Rockett, Brandon Gibbs on vocals and guitar and Mick Sweda (BulletBoys, King Kobra) on guitars and backing vocals. Bryan Kimes started off on bass, but that slot is currently in flux as the band tours, including a July 9 stop at Jergel’s Rhythm Grille in Warrendale.

The group is reimagining classic rock songs, as well as tackling some Poison tunes.

“The criteria is we like to challenge ourselves a little bit with using songs that are classic sort of rock, but yet at the same time, they are more commercial sounding, more stuff that you heard on pop radio, and try to turn that into something that works in a hard rock format,” Rockett said. “Some of it’s hard rock from the beginning. We do a Faces song and we do stuff like that. So there’s some stuff that’s just right out of the gate, but we’re not doing Black Sabbath and things like that.

“Some of it might sound like Black Sabbath by the time we’re done with it,” he added with a laugh. “But we’re not out to try to just actually do that. There’s a lot of bands doing those kinds of things, and I think they should and it’s great and I’ll go see them. But we’re just trying to do something a little bit different.”

In a recent call from Southern California, Rockett discussed the group’s origin, the band’s material, Poison’s future, his autobiography and more:

What is the origin story of The Rockett Mafia?

Well, last year I did a fundraiser. So I just wanted to put a band together and do a bunch of covers and provide entertainment for the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride because they had never had entertainment before, at least at the Los Angeles one. I had done a show with Chevy Metal, with those guys, and I just asked them if there’s any way they would do this. And Brent Woods said, I will, but then you have to do my puppy (benefit). And I’m like, OK, fair enough. So, I asked Brandon if he’d jump in and do vocals and a little guitar. And I just named it The Rockett Mafia, kind of off the cuff. And so we went and when it was over, it was like so many people said, ‘Why aren’t you just doing this? Go do it. This is fun. We really enjoyed it.’ So I started to put something together and that was the thing that triggered it for me quite frankly.

It seems like it’s been going pretty well since it started.

It has, and my buddy Bryan, he’s a bass player, but I just knew him from the place where I went to get my hair cut. He came out to the show, and he goes, you know, I do play bass, so we got together and called up Mick — he was friends with Mick. He played in The Hot Summers with Mick Sweda, and Mick and I just hit it off real well. So that became The Rockett Mafia along with Brandon, but Bryan is since spending a lot more time on the East Coast now. He’s been playing, doing some other gigs and stuff, so we’re kind of in limbo right now. We have a couple fill-ins right now for this month coming up. It’s a little bit in flux right now. It’s a little fluid. We have somebody in mind, and we’re gonna work with him, and if that works out, then he’ll be our guy, but for right now, we’re just kind of keeping it a little fluid.

What’s it like starting a band at this age compared to whenever you’re a teenager? How different is that?

It’s hard. It’s very difficult, and let me explain why. I did this with the Devil City Angels, but that was around 11 years ago, and Tracii Guns and I, we put that together. We just decided it was something we wanted to do. We had the summer off, and we’re like, yeah, let’s do this, wound up making a record and doing all kinds of stuff. Now, all that got sidelined when I got cancer.

But now, it’s like so many of the available players that are out there are doing so many things that you can’t rely on it, and it makes it really tricky. Some of them are everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time. It’s just really hard to find somebody that is willing to dedicate themselves just to one thing and follow it through. It’s not like when you were 21, and you had a lot of opportunities, if you went wrong with your decisions. At this age, we try to get it right. Most people just need to make the money, so there’s that. And I’m just not used to that dynamic because I’ve always been somebody that just — how can I say it? — I like a band to almost be like a gang. Like all for one, one for all, all that stuff. And so it’s just a little different at this age. People have to make a living. They have kids, they have things, and it’s just trickier.

It seems like you’re (aiming for different) with the first single, “I Think I Love You.” How did you settle on that one?

The (stuff’s) risky, man, I’m telling you. (laughs) People are like, whoa, what are you trying to do? Yeah, it was just one of those songs. Mick and I ran down a bunch of different ideas and we’re like, oh, that would be very weird to try to make sound right. I think Jellyfish got some of their ideas from it. So making that into a hard rock song was tricky because if you rock it out too much, it loses all the essence of the song that it is. And if you don’t rock it out enough, then it’s like, why bother? So hitting that place where it just worked was really tough to get to. It’s like, should we plow through this part? Should we bring it back? How heavy should this part be? It was a lot of trial and error, and then we finally figured it out and we’ll probably use that same formula on a few other things.

You would think a Partridge Family song is not an obvious choice for a rock band.

No, but that song is like, the writers, obviously, it’s not truly the Partridge Family. It was Tony Romeo, and The Hit Squad played on it. Hal Blaine played drums on it. These were all really good players. It’s not like we’re doing “makeshift model TA” (“Keep On”) by Brady Bunch or something. This is a little more serious. It was actually a big hit on commercial hit radio back in the day.

You mentioned about some songs that just haven’t worked out. Are there any that you’d like to share, that you’ve tried and were like, yeah, this didn’t work out?

Yeah, there were a couple. I’m trying to think off the top of my head, that just weren’t working for us. We tried “Ah! Leah!” (by Donnie Iris), a couple different things like that. It just didn’t feel good, for whatever reason. If we can’t bring something new to the party, we just say the hell with it. If we try it and it’s just like, eh, that didn’t really (click), I don’t know what we’re doing better. It’s like Rolling Stones. A lot of times it’s tricky to do a Rolling Stones song. It’s really tricky to do a Beatles song. Are you going to do it better? And what’s better? What makes it better? Some songs just have a magic to them that is just very difficult, you just don’t want to touch it. I can’t see remaking Pink Floyd, for example. There’s just something about those records, the recordings, everything. The way they did it, everything. Not that we were considering Pink Floyd, but I’m just trying to give an example.

It sounds like you’re not doing like note-for-note covers. You’re trying to add something to them, right?

Yeah, exactly. Even (Faces’) “Stay With Me,” we do, that song’s been reinterpreted so many ways. I’ve heard it done kind of funky. I’ve heard it done kind of hard rock. I’ve heard it done fast, slow, bluesy. So we found our own little groove for it.

Are you going to be working some Poison songs in as well?

Yes, for sure. And over time, I’m gonna do more because I’ve had a lot of requests from people that want to hear the songs that Poison won’t do, stuff that Poison will not do live for whatever reason. Even songs that weren’t so much B-sides. They weren’t necessarily hits, but they were big hits with the fans like “Flesh & Blood.” People love that song, for example. So maybe we’ll do that one. “Let Me Go To the Show,” Poison used to open with that, but we don’t anymore. Now we open with “(Look What the) Cat Dragged In” so maybe we’ll do that one. We’ll try a few and see how it feels. I don’t want to be a Poison cover band of myself. But I do want to give fans something because it is me from Poison, and I think people want some of that. We’re already doing “Nothin but a Good Time.” We’re doing a BulletBoys song. We’re definitely going to throw some things in there.

So fans should not have any idea what to expect, but it won’t be chaos but a good mix of things that they might not know.

We got a new song that we’re trying. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but none of us has played it live, and we’re going to get to do it at soundcheck, and that’s it. We’re not going to get to rehearse. (laughs) So it’s like everybody knows. So it’s going to come together right in that moment. So that’s kind of scary and kind of fun at the same time. How bad can it be if I know it, and he knows it, and he knows it, and he knows it? It should work somewhat. (laughs)

That sounds like that’s the fun part of playing live: you don’t know how it’s going to go.

Right. I can guarantee you we don’t have anything sampled or any tracks or any of that stuff. This is the real deal.

Did you receive advice from (the late Foo Fighters drummer) Taylor Hawkins about starting your own band?

I did. That was a number of years ago. I was at a fundraiser, and he called me up on stage, told this amazing story about when he was in my studio and I lent him a set of cymbals and I wound up giving them to him because he didn’t have the money to buy them at the time. This was before he was in Alanis Morissette(‘s band). And I had forgot about that, quite frankly. I just never really gave it a whole lot of thought after that. But he did. He remembered it. And it meant a lot to him, and it meant a lot to me that he remembered it. And so I went up and played. And after a while, we were talking.

He’s like, man, you really got to do this. And I’m like, well, I had Devil City Angels. He’s like, no, no, no, you got to. So it was pretty interesting when I got called to fill in for a couple of things with Chevy Metal after he passed away. Kenny Aronoff got called in. I got called in. And his son, which at the time, his son was trying to learn everything. And he was a little bit younger and still trying to make sense of all of it. So we kind of came in as pinch hitters, really. But now I think Shane can handle all of it, and he is. So it was just kind of like this weird little thing where it’s almost like, I was destined to do this. (laughs)

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You have an autobiography (“Ghost Notes”) coming out this year?

I do. It was supposed to come out in July. Now they pushed it back to October, mainly because we couldn’t get the cover done on time, and they have to have a cover to go to all the outlets and sell it through and all that kind of stuff. So I’m shooting a cover in the next couple of weeks. And it’ll be out sometime in October.

How did it feel to take a look back at your life for a book?

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.

So your book will be a resource for people who want to do that for you then.

Yeah, right, exactly. And some people may not give a (crap). (laughs) And they probably won’t buy the book.

It looks like Poison last played together in 2022 on the Stadium Tour, so what’s the future hold for Poison?

Well, my understanding from everybody is that we’re gonna – I haven’t signed anything yet – but my understanding is that we’re going to be doing a 2026 tour. I don’t think Bret has signed off on anything yet, so we shall see. But that’s the plan as far as I know.

It seems like next year would be an appropriate year for the 40th anniversary of the album “Look What the Cat Dragged In.”

I absolutely think it should be. And I’m ready. I’m having a lot of fun with this band, don’t get me wrong, but Poison’s always been my first priority. And as long as we’re a band, it always will be.