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Bankrate: Did you write both books yourself?
Bret Michaels: Yes. It's simple business common sense. My biggest strength is using common sense financially. I excelled at consumer math in high school, when they sent you out with a fake $50 to go grocery shopping. I was the A-plus student in my class. It helped when we lived in L.A. without two nickels to rub together. They would send me to the store to get the food, and Bobby was a fry cook, so he'd cook the food up. Now we laugh about it, but in the game of rock 'n' roll, it's about survival at the very beginning, literally -- it's about not starving and having to say, "I have to go back to mom and dad in Pittsburgh."
Bankrate: It's always fascinating how many people have the notion that creative people shouldn't be bogged down with the business end. That's just not a helpful attitude.
Bret Michaels: At one point I told Paul Stanley (from KISS), "I don't know whether to hug you because I love your music, or punch you because I bought this brochure of Learjets and red carpets."
I was at the Texas Jam, playing to 83,000 people on the "Look What The Cat Dragged In" tour. I'll never forget this. They had this construction trailer for us to dress in. Not even a single wide -- a half single wide. I'm inside there, there's Aerosmith under the stadium getting ready, and they have -- and rightfully so -- this great dressing room. I'll never forget looking out the side of my window and there's this old Dumpster, and that's when it hit me, I better get my act together.
We went through a few crooked managers early in our career that we caught right away, and then Bobby and I surrounded ourselves with the best people, and we've had them for 20 years now. We found out in the first year how crooked it really was. That first year, I thought everyone just loved you and took care of you, that you made music, and everyone was completely honest. That didn't pan out.
We learned really, really early that it was the exact opposite of that, so me and Bobby took charge. It was a great lesson from a punch in the face from a low rent manager at the beginning of our career. He was already skimming off the top of nightclubs we were playing, and we were like, this is how it works? So we took control from there. We've fortunately had a good career -- not only succeeded in making music, but in the business as well.
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