Poison’s Rikki Rockett Says Taylor Swift is Braver Than “Most Rock Bands These Days”
You may think your favorite band is hard and pushing the envelope, but 62-year-old Poison drummer Rikki Rockett thinks that’s just not the case at all. In fact, he thinks most of today’s rock (and by extension metal) bands aren’t pulling their weight or challenging society enough.
During a recent interview on the Totally ’80s podcast, hosted by Yahoo! Entertainment, Rockett was asked the rather tired question of whether rock was dead or not. And while you’d expect an older rock star to bitch and moan about how kids these days… well that’s kinda what you got. Albeit a little on the lighter side and he at least thinks Taylor Swift is taking the rock and roll lifestyle to heart.
“I think every great musical movement has been sort of a cultural social movement. Like punk rock was extremely social. And what we were doing was a social cultural movement. I mean, you really had to commit to be into what we were doing. People would get thrown out of school and getting fights with their parents and ‘we’re not gonna take it’ — all that stuff. It really set America and the world on fire in a lot of ways. And then I think that grunge had a social cultural movement.
“I think Marilyn Manson had a social cultural movement. Now, I don’t think rock has any social cultural movement and that’s the problem. Nobody stands for anything right now. Actually, Taylor Swift has more bravery than most rock bands these days, not afraid to open her mouth and go against the man. Rock bands play the game now, man. So I think that for rock to really come back on top, it has to have something behind it, just like any great art. You can’t just do art just to do art. If there’s something behind it, that’s what really makes it great.
“I always say in all my videos, ‘Take care of each other. Keep rock alive.’ I’m trying desperately to keep rock alive. I wanna see it more than anything in the world. It’s so important. But sometimes, in retrospect, somebody will say… I remember the headline, I think it was in The New York Post or whatever, ‘from the rock era,’ like it’s gone in journalists’ mind. It’s very frustrating.”
Swift is undeniably the biggest music star on the planet right now. And while she’s been criticized for not using her platform for more important matters, she recently got tens of thousands of fans to register to vote, which is a big step. I bet Dave Mustaine wasn’t as successful as her in the 90s.
As for taking risks, she’s definitely not taking the kind of risks Rockett and his like did back in the day. Unless she’s been snorting fire ants or something.
