They played small clubs and after a while Enigma Records signed them and they recorded Look What The Cat Dragged In, in a short amount of time and for very little money. This album had three kickin' top ten hits. They toured and sold over two million copies of "Cat".
Shortly after touring they returned to California to record
Open Up And Say...Ahh!. This album had better sales then the previous. There were several hits off this album and a world wide tour to follow.
After the "Open Up" tour, they headed back home to record their third album called Flesh & Blood, in 1990. After numerous hits including "Something To Belive In" (Poison's most well known tune). they embarked on another worldwide tour. After the tour, they released
Swallow This Live, a live album with four unreleased studio tracks.
After the release of the live album, C.C. announced he had a drug and alcohol problem and soon departed from the band. It is not known whether he quit or was kicked out.
The band replaced C.C. with Richie Kotzen and soon released their forth studio album called Native Tongue. Due to the change in the bands music style (Tongue is a very blusey, but good album), Tongue wasn't very successful in sales but the band toured anyway. After the tour, Kotzen was "kicked to the curb" so to speak due to personal conflicts.
Guitar virtuoso Blues Saraceno was brought in to replace Kotzen. They recorded probably some of their best work to date in an album called
Crack A Smile. CAS was FINALLY released in April of 2000... Crack A Smile is just unbelieveable.
In order to keep the fans happy, or quiet as we think, Capitol released a greatest hits package in 1996 called Poison's Greatest Hits 1986-1996 to bring back the memories of ten great years of some of the greatest songs Poison has ever written. On this hits package they released two songs off C.A.S., Just to give us a little tease.
Shortly before the release of Greatest Hits, C.C. rejoined the band, clean and sober. Bret has written and starred in films with an album from one of the films called A Letter from Death Row(the movie is also available on video). Crack a Smile was finally released from Capitol and a new live CD with 5 brand new studio tracks called "Power To The People" in 2000. In June 2001 a DVD containing Poisons greatest hits videos, backstage footage and more was realeased as well!!!! The boys are back, ready to kick some major ass on their 4th consecutive tour for the newly released CD "HOLLYWEIRD" (2002)and hopefully they'll be here to stay!!!
By Jeff and Erics Poison Page
