Maybe Bret Michaels simply didn't really want to do a 40th anniversary tour with Poison. He is scheduled to do a few solo shows, but what fans truly want is to see the band, not just the singer. How many Bret Michaels solo songs can you name, for instance?
While a 2026 tour made sense, it's not going to happen. The reason seems simple: Money. All the band members were likely going to make a good amount of money, but Michaels saw himself as more equal than others. He not only wanted more money than the rest of the individual members, but he also wanted a lot more.
In fact, he wanted six times more than anyone else, and the odd part is that the original members of Poison are still around. It might have made more sense had Michaels been the lone original member or maybe one of two, but that isn't the case. He just appears, in this case, to come across as greedy.
Poison won't be touring in 2026 because Bret Michaels wanted an unfair amount of money
According to Page Six, Rikki Rockett said, "It came to was (guitarist) C.C. (DeVille), (bassist) Bobby (Dall) and I were all in, and I thought Bret was, but he wanted the lion’s share of the money, to the point where it makes it not possible to even do it. It’s like $6 to every one of our dollars. You just can’t work that way. I don’t do this just for the money. I do have a love for this, absolutely. But at the same time, you don’t want to go out and work really hard just to make somebody else a bunch of money."
He's not wrong. While maybe the singer is the face of the band, the members have all worked hard enough to help Poison carve out a fairly unique niche in hair metal. They remain one of the more popular bands of the subgenre, and likely will stay that way.
That's the real shame, though. Poison still have their loyal devotees, but because one of the band members wanted a bunch more money than the others to do a tour, fans won't get a chance to see the 40th anniversary tour. One could wonder if the band will ever tour again if the money issues stay the same.
Rockett is still touring, though. He is doing so with his side project, Rockett Mafia. If fans of Poison want to hear some of the band's songs live, they will need to buy two tickets. One for the Michaels solo show and one for a Rockett Mafia concert.