Gary James' Interview With
The Rock And Roll Erma Bombeck
Christopher Long



He's an author. He's a show biz analyst. He's a TV and radio commentator. He's a musician. He's an entertainment personality. He is Christopher Long.

Christopher Long spent over twenty years working with the Rock group Poison, serving at one point as Bobby Dall's (Poison's bassist) personal assistant. What makes Christopher Long's story so unique is his experience with the group. And he's written a book about his experience titled A Shot Of Poison: An Insider's Tale Of One Of Rock's Most Outrageous Bands.

Q - Chris, I saw Poison open for Motly Crue. They didn't strike me as being outrageous. So, what are you talking about here?

A - Well first, when I came onboard with them I entered their story very late, at a time when most people are giving up on their dreams, working at box stores, having macaroni and cheese and being in bed at eight o'clock. That was the time when things started happening for me, particularly with Poison. I'd been establishing relationships with them as a writer for many years. That took a few years to develop. So, at the time it had developed to a point where they hired me to become part of their organization, it was about half way through their story. We were all in our 40s by then. But, back in the early days a lot of backstage debauchery, lots of stuff with groupies, lots of drugs. A lot of, I'll say the crazed personalities, were still in play. I worked specifically for Bobby Dall. I answered to everybody in the band, but I worked specifically as an assistant to Bobby. My first tour with them was in 2006, on their 20th Anniversary tour. He was trying to prepare me for some things before we left to go out on the road. I'm thinking to myself, "C'mon, get over yourself. 1988 was a long time ago. This is going to be like Hush Puppies, be like the cozy sweater version of Poison." In some ways it was, but in other ways he was right in terms of shady characters hanging around. There wasn't the drugs, but there was crazed personalities still. Crazy fans. We would check into a hotel on an off-day, in the middle of nowhere, that was not published on any itinerary anywhere, and the lobby would be filled with crazed fans camping out, waiting for them. So, there was a lot of that. I got to experience a lot of the aftermath I guess we could say. But, in their day, when we were all young, they were just totally driven by that '80s Arena Rock, sex, drugs and Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle, along with Guns 'n Roses and Motley Crue and some of those iconic bands. They lived a lifestyle of debauchery with lots of dubious experiences with female fans. Lots of alcohol and lots of drugs.

Q - Bret Michaels was a diabetic. So he had to really take care of himself on the road.

A - Well, he did to an extent, but he didn't let that keep him from enjoying the party lifestyle. They were at Madison Square Gardens, I guess in 1987, and they were just starting to break and he actually passed out onstage. His blood sugar levels were low and he hadn't been taking care of himself and he passed out. This is pre-internet. Next thing, there's headlines in newspapers about the singer from Poison O.D.ing onstage. That was not the case, although there was considerable sex and drugs and all that sort of stuff around. That wasn't what caused him to hit the floor onstage. That was genuinely a result of his diabetes.

Q - You said there were shady characters hanging around the band. What kind of shady characters are you talking about?

A - Especially for somebody coming into the story as late as I did, there were already lots of relationships with a lot of different people from over the years. If you were in Little Rock, I quickly learned who would be popping up backstage. I learned quickly to figure out where we were in the country based on who was showing up onstage. These people had girls to pimp out. They would go gravitate immediately towards one guy in the band. If they were a dealer they would gravitate to another guy in the band. It was important for me to learn quickly who everybody was in their world and who I could trust and who I couldn't trust. At the end of the day my role was to look out for my guy, and that's "tour speak." Each member of the band had an assistant, had their own personal assistant who was referred to as "their guy." Likewise each assistant referred to their band member as "their guy." So, it's sort of like the word "dude." It had multiple uses. My priority was to look out for and take care of my guy. So, I need to know who some of these people were. Were they trying to get to my guy to bring him stuff he didn't need to be around, or were they actual allies? Although the fellows knew me from doing interviews with them, I already interviewed everybody in the band many times before I was actually part of their staff, on staff touring organization.

Q - What newspapers or magazines did you interview them for?

A - Various ones. This was pre-internet. So, this probably would have been the early days of ink19.com. This would have been for Florida print publications. There was JAM Magazine out of Orlando. There was Brevard Live! magazine out of the Melbourne, Cocoa Beach area. Smaller publications. I thought I was going to be a Rock star. I had been focused my whole life on pursuing my own band and my own music. I discovered that probably was not going to be the case in my late twenties. I gravitated towards writing. So, they were smaller publications at the beginning, like everybody when you start out. I was always able to get access to the band, everybody in the band, and have good personal conversations and interviews. For a guy like me, trying to make it in my own band; Poison was my favorite band coming up. So, to graduate from being way, way back in Section 516 of Triple Q in the Enormous Dome to work my way, little by little, into their organization and backstage and onstage with the band was, I thought, was going to be a dream come true. I got the gig working for them. Although we knew each other and we all liked each other, it was my sobriety that closed the deal. Bobby has just recently gotten clean and it was very important to him to have an assistant that was also committed to sobriety. I was not considered crew. I was considered band, which means I traveled with Bobby on his bus. I didn't travel on the crew bus.

Q - What did you mean earlier when you said people were trying to pimp out girls to the band?

A - I would run into people all the time who were backstage because they were with some of the girls the band would want to be with. If you were a guy who could bring some of those girls to a show, it was an easy in. That's what they were there for. Poison was all about the party.

Q - Chris, to make another point: The Rolling Stones were described as being outrageous. KISS was described as being outrageous. Van Halen was described as being outrageous. Motley Crue was described as being outrageous. I didn't see Poison as being outrageous. They were like other Glam bands of the 1980s.

A - The veiled curtain was pulled back for me and I was able to walk behind that. Just a slice of personal philosophy, I always thought they had something a little bit special, a little bit different. In the public projection, there was almost sort of a Saturday morning cartoon version of debauchery. It was that sex, drugs and Rock 'n' Roll sort of message, but the public persona didn't seem as dangerous as say Guns 'n' Roses or Motley Crue. It was almost like it was the happy, sunny version of that. However, behind the scenes it's all sex, drugs and Rock 'n' Roll. I don't care if you're a Rock guy or a politician, evens some preachers, you get behind that curtain and it's all sex, drugs and Rock 'n' Roll. And it often gets dark.

Q - Being the Assistant, did you ever get the groupies as well?

A - Yes. I don't say that to boast. In fact, as a 61-year-old man now who has taken a drastically different path in life since then, I'm rather ashamed to admit it, but I will. I'll be honest with you. At the time we thought that kind of behavior was cool, especially prior to this social awareness we have these days. At that time that kind of debauchery was considered cool and I absolutely was one of the guys. I was tagging the girl. That's a term, tagging. Before show time every night each assistant for each band member would go down to the production office and pick up a stack of cloth, they're called stickies, the little cloth stick-on, After-Show passes. All of Bobby's passes would have my initials on it. This is terrible to say, but just so you understand clearly, and I want to be clear, that I find all of this behavior now shameful. But at the time, with the girls, for us assistants it was like tagging cattle. And it was a rush that each night, when the doors would open, for each assistant to comb the crowd with a stack of After-Show sticky passes with their initials on it. So, I'm Christopher Long. Anybody within their organization; if you were outside that organization you would just see an attractive girl with a sticky pass on. But if you were in the organization you would have to look to see whose initials were on there. In my case, if the initials on the pass were C.L., that meant that woman has already been tagged for Bobby Dall that night. She now became a "Bobby girl", which is more tour speak. If you're backstage and your purpose for being there was to bang Bret Michaels, then you were a "Bret girl." If your purpose for being there was to become familiar with Bobby Dall, you were a "Bobby girl." So, if you were in the organization, once I would tag a girl with my pass, that meant that she was Bobby's property for the night and no other assistant, you were violating a major Bro code of the road if you were seen removing one of my passes and replacing it with another band member's pass. It was very juvenile, very stupid now, but it was competitive. For a lot of things I didn't get right being on the road, when it came to getting his women, I was really, really good at that. I'm not proud of that, but that was how it went then.

Q - I really don't understand what these groupies got out of it. Who do they brag to about their experience anyway?

A - Well, it's that thrill of being with somebody famous. That's the thrill. How many people can say they banged this guy in this big, Platinum selling, Rock band? At that time that was as important to a lot of those gals as it was to the guys in the band.

Q - Was anyone concerned about one of these women crying rape? Or how about STDs. (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) Or how about underage girls?

A - Those legalities, I was very much aware of that, as was the band. So, I carded a lot of girls. Sometimes those I.D.s were even double-checked by people in the organization with a higher pay grade than mine. As for diseases, we had these rolling wardrobe cases out in the hall and the top drawer would have guitar strings and guitar picks. The next drawer would have Viagra, Advil, Maalox, whatever. And then you'd have another drawer that would have condoms. So, those efforts were definitely made to protect themselves. Biblically they say the only way to the Father is through the Son. In the Rock 'n' Roll world the only way to your band guy is through his assistant, not in terms of they had to do something with me to get to Bobby, but they at least had to communicate with me. They had to at least become familiar with me, and not in a Biblical sense. I want to be clear about that. I was approached backstage in Catering one afternoon in Nashville. A gal comes up to me and says, "You're Chris. You're Bobby's guy," which was really weird because this was before Social Media. These gals would figure this shit out and people would be approaching me in arenas on tour, backstage and hotels. I thought, "Boy, that's pretty good if you can figure that out." But I was approached by a girl in Nashville. She said, "You're Chris. You're Bobby's guy." I said, "Yeah." She said, "Well, that girl over there just turned 18 and she's been saving her virginity to give to Bobby Dall." I said, "You gotta be kidding me." She said, "No. She wanted to a year ago but you guys carded her and kicked her out of the Meet And Greet." I'm like, "Okay. Bring her over." I chatted wither and said, "I hear that you're 18." She said, "Yeah." I said, "Can you prove that?" She said, "Absolutely." Boom! She pulls out her I.D. Sure enough, she had turned 18 the week before that. She made it clear that she was a virgin and she was saving her virginity. She was there for one purpose only, and that was to give her virginity to Bobby Dall. So immediately I just sprint down the hallway and go crashing into the dressing room. I'm out of breath. I'm like, "Boss, you're never going to believe this. I got the ultimate prize for you tonight. I got a blond haired, blue eyed, 18-year-old virgin who wants to give that to you tonight." At the time, I was all proud of myself. He was very, very open to that. Here's what I meant earlier about pimping: I was basically a pimp. I procured this girl for him. Pimped her out to him. By the end of the night I'm digging through that drawer with the condoms and passing 'em through the open doorway. He received her virginity. But I checked I.D. He checked I.D. Everything checked out and everybody got what they came for that night. Years later, as I became a different person, I realized just how disgusting that was.

Q - What if one of those girls had become regnant and hit Bobby or one of the other guys in the group with a paternity suit?

A - Well, that certainly could have happened. I am not aware of that happening. It doesn't mean that it didn't. I just was not aware of it, but I also know those contraceptives precautions were always taken to help insure that that did not ever take place.

Q - And if that ever did happen it probably would have gone through their management and legal team.

A - Sure. Nobody would have been the wiser, I'm sure.

Q - Besides the girls, as Bobby Dall's personal assistant, would your job have entailed being right there to get Bobby whatever he wanted?

A - Absolutely. And a lot of Starbucks orders. This being before the smart phone. My first tour, we were still on the flip phone. Assistants were required to carry these little pocket notebooks. You would have to write down everything; cab driver phone numbers, hotel room numbers, go down to Catering and see what's on the lunch menu today, movie times. So, I just wrote down everything. I'm grateful that it wasn't always a positive experience for me. The realization did not live up to the expectation. If it had been great I might still be a degenerate out on the road doing stupid stuff. After a couple of tours I thought, okay, I've had enough. I'm out. I've got my story and now I'm going to start working on the book. All I had to do was go back to my stack of those little pocket notebooks that they had put in my hands. It was like mini diaries, mini journals. That helped in the process a great deal. Bobby and I were friends before I started working for them. We lived very close to each other for years and we were the best of friends. Every day we're out at Starbucks. We would have little jam sessions. They were going into the studio and he needed to rehearse a new piece of music with a live drummer. He called me up and I would go over and we would work on this stuff and get him prepared to go into the studio. That was the level of friendship. That's what made it particularly confusing and heartbreaking, because all of that changed the second I went on their payroll. This is going to be this party hearty, amazing, fun, nothing but a good time experience. But once you actually enter into that world, you see that that is not the way it is. Within minutes of arriving at the first stop on the first tour I realized quickly that things have changed. Everybody in this organization (was) talking about how they're going to write a book. I come in. Boom! For a couple of tours, write the book, pitch it, got it signed got it published, went out on a book tour and did it while everybody else was standing around talking about doing it. So, towards the end of my experience with them, Bobby was talking about how he was going to write a book. And he was going to name names. I said, "Yeah. Exactly. That's the way I would like to approach my book project." We were sitting in his car and he looks at me and goes, "We're not worried about you." I said, "Okay." He goes, "You want to know why? Because you will never get a book deal." Unbeknownst to him I had already signed the book deal, written the book, and it was getting ready to come out in six months. He said, "You know why you'll never get a book deal?" He was like grinding his teeth and he looks at me with disdain and he goes, "Because nobody gives a fuck about what you have to say." And to this day, fifteen years later (2024) I'm still the only guy who has written a Poison book and had it published.

Q - What's been the reaction to this book of yours?

A - Everybody says, "What was it really like?" But, they really don't want to know. They just want to know what that world was like as long as those experiences align with their perception and what they want to hear. But, if your reality does not line up with their idolatry, then the writer becomes the bad guy. I've read reviews on A Shot Of Poison where readers have threatened me. Don't shoot the messenger here. Those guys did not get along. There were reasons why they all had separate tour buses. My first tour ended with Bret and Bobby actually getting into a fist fight onstage in Atlanta, Georgia. Those tensions had been building all through the tour. Bobby told me before we even left for our first tour, he said, "I don't think we're going to complete all sixty-one dates because I can't stand my singer." Since it did become so widely known in the organization how good I was in providing women for Bobby, that made Bret crazy, knowing that I was scoring better chicks for Bobby than Bret's guy could get for him. In the beginning I believed these guys loved everybody, and that's an example of read the reality of what you see once you get behind the curtain. I would see Bobby make grown men cry on tours. Tough, grizzled touring veterans. It was crazy. He never made me cry, I'll be clear about that. He made me shit blood and I had to be sent home from the tour because I had a friggin' physical breakdown on the first tour. But, that's how difficult it could be, especially when this is coming from somebody you thought was your best friend. But also, at the same time I want to be clear how enormously grateful I am to Poison in general and Bobby specifically. I was 43 years old when I got my first tour. On my 44th birthday the U.P.S. man knocks on my door and delivers my first Gold album. They awarded me their album they put out that year. It was their "Greatest Hits" album. And as a reward for working that tour they awarded me my own personalized Gold album. Those kinds of things happened very late in life, relatively speaking. And none of that would have happened had they not given me that opportunity. It wouldn't matter if they were sunny experiences or less than pleasant experiences. I just wanted to get out in the trenches and have those experiences. So now I know what it's like to tour with a major, Platinum band. I know what all of that is like. So, any Amazon reader who wants to depict me as some disgruntled, former employee, that's not the case at all. I still have tremendous respect and admiration for them. I'm super grateful for them allowing my dreams to come true. Would I go out and do it again? No. I'm certainly grateful for the opportunity.

Q - When you were touring with Poison, it wasn't every night groupies were backstage, was it?

A - Yes, it was. Oh, yeah.

Q - If you're pushing yourself to the limit with drugs and groupies and you fall sick, think of all the people who depend on you for a paycheck!

A - To that I can say by the time I came along there was drastically less of a drug and alcohol factor. But the sex factor? It was women every night. It was crazy. We could check into a motel in the afternoon in the middle of nowhere on an off-day and there would be people there. There would be people following him around at Starbucks or at the local mall. It was everywhere, non-stop. Their fans found them and that often meant girls.

Q - Did he try to disguise himself in public?

A - No. By the time I came onboard he was presenting himself fairly low key anyway. But, people still knew who he was. Now, if a particular fan was particularly obnoxious, he would set 'em straight. But at the same time if fans were cool, he'd stand there in the middle of the mall and sign their records. One particularly heartbreaking story that I remember is we were in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The venue was a hotel next to a casino, so we didn't have to go far from our room to sound check, to the show. We were at a little restaurant and this old lady, probably in her seventies, came up to Bobby. She said, "Bobby, would you please take a minute and say hello to my son?" He said, "Yes Ma'am, I'd be happy to." It was a young man, severely handicapped, barely a torso on a gurney with breathing supports. She would say, "Johnny, Johnny, Bobby Dall is here. Who's your favorite band?" And he could barely make out the word "Poison." So, he went over and said "Hello" to the young man. He was wearing a Poison t-shirt, so Bobby signed the t-shirt. Bobby turned around and looked at me and said, "Get her phone number. Take care of them." So, we said our good-byes and on the way back to the room, he stopped outside the elevator and had to brush away tears. He was so moved by that, which is a big reason why I was able to put up with as much emotional abuse that I took. I knew underneath all of that, who the real guy was. People on the outside perceive Bret as being "the man" in Poison. He's the golden, all American, good-looking front man with the charisma. So, the public thinks that Bret is Poison. Now, if you're on the inside you know that Bobby is actually "the man." He is the brains behind that operation. He's the one who takes care of business. But I think that's where part of the friction is between him and Bret. I think that's the basis of their volatile, personal relationship. I spent time with Poison in the studio. People would make jokes about their musicianship, like "Well, how good do you really have to be to be the bass player in Poison?" But, I was there and Bob's focus, his attention to business, his attention to professionalism, his attention to musicianship, was impeccable. Every day in the dressing room he had his bass on the stand, set up, tuned up, backstage practice amp, and he would spend, especially that last hour or two, warming up. The guys in the band were warming up. Practicing. Everybody except Bret, because Bret never engaged with anybody else in the band on tour, except for onstage at show time. He was always holed up on his bus. It was almost as if two different worlds were traveling together. You had Bret's world and then you had the three other guys. I spent significant time with Poison in the recording studio. I was there when the other three guys, Rikki, Bobby and C.C. would be cutting tracks. These guys were focused, prepared, professional. Nailing tracks in one take. So, they were very focused, consummate professional musicians. They made the agreement early on to split the publishing equally, so you see all those Poison songs credited to each of the four band members. That was a business decision. It would not be wrong to say C.C. Deville was the primary songwriter in that band. And that speaks to the friction between Bret and C.C. Bret wants everybody to think he's this great songwriter, which you can see through his subsequent solo records that the quality of the songwriting is not the quality of the songwriting when he was in Poison. C.C. Deville is still a brilliantly gifted songsmith. This guy knows a riff. He knows a hook. He can write a line, whereas Bobby would have been the business guy. C.C. was really the songwriting force in that band and nobody knows it because of the way its credited on their records. Most people want to think it's all Bret, and it was not. C.C. Deville is just a Pop/Rock songwriting genius. That's why they had hit after hit after hit. Now, forty years later, they're still filling 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 40,000 seat venues. They were just great songs and always will be.

Q - Are you still in touch with Bobby Dall, or is that relationship over?

A - I still will attend Poison shows as a writer. I've seen them many times, reviewing their show, but everything is set up through the proper management channels. I go in, see the show, review the show. They have no idea that I'm there. No effort on anybody's part to connect. That's just not my world anymore. Aside from seeing them onstage and up until I relocated to Oklahoma back in August (2024), Bobby and I still lived down the street from each other, although he lives in a multi-million dollar, gated community and I was living in a regular condo in Cocoa Beach. We have not been face to face socially, engaging personally for ten years. When my second book came out in 2012, he heard about it and he went on Amazon bought a Kindle copy. Read it from start to finish and he actually reached out to me. He said, "Congratulations." My second book was based on projecting a Christian living message. He got that, read it, and seemed to be particularly moved if not impressed by it and reached out to congratulate me. So, there have been a couple of phone calls like that.

Q - These days you're a show biz analyst. What do you analyze?

A - Whatever is happening. That can be music reviews, book reviews, concerts, offering personal perspectives on what's going on in current Pop culture. Somebody in my bio actually referred to me as "The Erma Bombeck of Rock 'n' Roll." In my twenties I wrote like a fan, cooing and ogling over Rock stars. Then, years later I was able to be more objective and just write as a no nonsense, common sense guy, coming into my thirties, forties, fifties and now sixties. You do some of that living and you realize what's really important in life and what's bull shit, and what's actually cool. Bobby told me that years ago. He said, "We are never going to take you seriously or respect you as a writer as long as you keep kissing our ass. You need to get real and start writing like a journalist." So, despite some of the differences we had, there were some real pearls of wisdom that Bob offered me that stayed with me. Oddly though, the second that I did get real and stopped writing like a fan, they all got pissed off at me and I was excommunicated from the inner sanction. (laughs)





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