Tim Mosenfelder/Getty ImagesWe'll admit, we had our doubts when an old hair band called Kid Rocker waited 25 years to sue Bret Michaels and Poison over the authorship of their hit "Talk Dirty to Me." Considering that Poison guitarist C.C. DeVille was once a member of the Kid Rocker offshoot Screamin' Mimi's, you'd think it wouldn't take a quarter-century for DeVille's former bandmates to figure out that he stole their riffs. Poison themselves have called Kid Rocker's claims "baseless" and "unmeritorious." That seemed about right… until Kid Rocker unearthed a radio interview with DeVille from 1994 (via Blabbermouth). Let's just say that C.C. might have cost Poison a few million dollars.
In an interview with Los Angeles station KIEV 870 AM, which featured both DeVille and Kid Rocker's Billy McCarthy reminiscing about the old days on the Sunset Strip, this exchange occurs:
McCarthy: "How many albums has Poison sold in their career?"
DeVille: "20 million records."
McCarthy: "I haven't made 20 thousand dollars in my career yet."
DeVille: "Let me tell you something, Billy. For that first album, you should have made some money… Billy and I used to play in the same band."
McCarthy: "Yes we did, we played in Screamin' Mimi's."
DeVille: "And it was an excellent band. In fact, we have video tapes of us doing 'Talk Dirty To Me'."
And, cue the sound that accompanies someone hitting a jackpot. You can practically hear the coins flooding into the slot machine's metal pan. Those C.C. remarks are what the Harvard Law School would call an "admission of guilt" and an "excited utterance," or in layman's terms, a "major whoops" and an "epic fail." The one thing working against this extinct hair band is the statute of limitations, because Poison's 'Look What the Cat Dragged In' came out 25 years ago. However, as The Amp previously reported, Kid Rocker's lawyers had found a loophole that allowed for his clients to sue Michaels and company. Suddenly, Kid Rocker's lawsuit has some legs. Guess this suit isn't as "baseless" as we all thought.