SHANE’S MUSIC CHALLENGE: POISON – 1993 – Native Tongue

Shane | 7 March 2014 | Reply

SHANE’S MUSIC CHALLENGE: POISON – 1993 – Native Tongue
6.5/10

Poison’s fourth album features the far-superior guitar work of Ritchie Kotzen, who replaced founding member CC Deville when the latter went off the rails one too many times. Whilst Kotzen’s blusier playing has infinitely more passion and soul than CC’s, there was an undeniably simplistic charm to the peroxide troublemaker’s contributions to the band’s earlier albums.

Coupled with Bret Michaels’ steering the ship more towards blues and – of all things – gospel, and we have an album which was never fully accepted by Poison fans.

To some, it was either a bold new direction towards more authentic musical roots to attempt to save them from the fast-approaching crash n’ burn of big haired rock, or the apex of pretention from a band who should just stick to singing Talk Dirty To Me to aquanetted dreamers as the ship went down with them on it.

Listening now – for the first time in many years – and I find it’s really quite good! In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if a new band released this today, they’d be lauded as the great white hope by many.

Gospel belter Stand and blues groover Bastard Son Of A Thousand Blues pretty much bookend the whole affair – a 15 songer, reminding us that this album hails from the early years of the CD, when bands (or their record companies) felt obliged to fill most of the available 80 minutes with music, regardless of quality.

There’s a lot to like here – not least of which is Kotzen’s impressive licks – though all nestled amongst a handful of generic shuffles.

It didn’t last long, though, and in a blink Kotzen was out. I recall the rumour that his dismissal came after he was caught spending QUALITY time (if ya know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink) with another band member’s wife… but that may well be an urban myth or an update of the story that David Lee Roth was kicked out of Van Halen for doing the same with Alex Van Halen’s missus – but I have no idea if any of that was true.

Hair metal was pretty much dead too, and record labels were far more interested in signing flannel-shirted down tuners than big haired rockers.