In an interview following SMITH/KOTZEN’s March 5 acoustic performance at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, guitarist/vocalist Richie Kotzen was given the chance to reflect on his brief stint in POISON, with whom he recorded the 1993 album “Native Tongue” after the departure of C.C. DeVille.”It’s something I’m quite proud of, and I have fond memories of the process of making that record that are very vivid still in my mind,” Kotzen said. “I was very young. I came to L.A. – I was moved here. I was going to San Francisco back and forth from Philadelphia, making albums because [Shrapnel Records] was up there. Then Interscope bought my contract when I was, like, 19 or 20. They moved me to L.A., so for a year, I was working with [future chairman/CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M] Jimmy Iovine and [future chairman/CEO of Warner Bros. Records] Tom Whalley. Then we had Danny Kortchmar ready to produce my album, which was a big thing for me, because he had just done the Don Henley album ‘The End Of The Innocence’, and I was super-excited. At the last minute, Interscope pulled the plug and said, ‘We didn’t sign you to be a balladeer.’ I flipped out — I was barely 21 at that point — and said, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing with me. Let me out of the contract.'”As they were letting me out of the contract,” he continued, “it was Tom Whalley that said, ‘Listen, Bret Michaels has been calling about you. He saw you on the cover of Guitar World, and he wants to meet you.’ I flipped out even more — I said, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? I don’t want to make a hard rock record. I want to do this other thing. I wrote all these songs.’ He said, ‘Just go talk to him. I don’t think you’re ready to make the record that you think you’re ready to make.”So I go out – I drove out to Calabasas, and Bret had this killer house out on Stunt Road. The minute I met him, I really liked him, because he’s from Pennsylvania too. I’m like, ‘I feel like I’m at home.’ We really connected, but then he kind of got me with, ‘Look, I don’t want someone to come in here and just do what they’re told. I want someone to write an album with.’ He wanted a writing partner. The other guys had input as well, but it was primarily he and I [who] really wrote together, to my recollection. I brought in a few songs that would have been on my solo record. ‘Stand’ was one of them. He added some flavor to it, and we worked on the verse lyrics together and added a bridge. It was really great. I think we really made a great record, and it came out of the gate [strong]. It shipped gold, and unfortunately, by the time we got to release the second single, whatever was happening at MTV, the gatekeepers just closed the gates and said, ‘Any band that was famous from a certain era is no longer welcome.’ We were subjected to that unfortunately, but outside of that, I love the record. I’m very proud of it.”As for how he approached DeVille’s solos in concert, Kotzen acknowledged taking liberties. “I didn’t really play them properly,” he said. “I did the best I could — I really did — but I wanted to play them in a way where I maintained the integrity of what was written, but I also am me, so I can’t help it. I’m going to play it the way I hear it.””Native Tongue” — POISON’s fourth studio album and the band’s lone effort featuring Kotzen — was released in February of 1993. The Richie Zito-produced set featured the singles “Stand” and “Until You Suffer Some (Fire And Ice)” and debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard 200, but it was a commercial disappointment compared to the multiplatinum success of the group’s three albums with DeVille, with whom the band would eventually reunite in 1999.After leaving POISON, Kotzen resumed his solo career and has released records at a prolific rate over the past three decades. Additionally, he recorded two albums with MR. BIG (1999’s “Get Over It” and 2001’s “Actual Size”) and three with THE WINERY DOGS, a power trio that saw him play alongside his former MR. BIG bandmate Billy Sheehan and drummer Mike Portnoy (DREAM THEATER). In 2021, he joined forces with IRON MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith in SMITH/KOTZEN; the group’s second full-length, “Black Light/White Noise”, will be released by BMG on April 4.[embedded content]