Poison drummer Rikki Rockett recorded messages for…
Poison drummer Rikki Rockett was staring down a terrifying risk as he battled cancer: Doctors might need to take away his tongue.
After chemotherapy and radiation failed to stop the disease, the rocker started recording messages for his younger youngsters so they might keep in mind the sound of his voice.
“I was recording pieces of information for my kids so they could watch it, because the next step was to cut my tongue out if they had to,” Rockett (born Richard Allan Ream) told Fox News Digital. “And I wanted them to know what I sounded like and my advice to them growing up, and I wanted them to hear it from me. I wanted them to understand what I was, what I thought I was or would become.”
Rockett, whose weight dropped to 161 kilos during treatment, said the chance of dropping his tongue left him fearing he may not survive for much longer.
“I would’ve most likely had a feeding tube,” he said. “I don’t think I would’ve lived much longer. It would’ve added another year or two. Some people do make it. Some people get all of that done and live for a long time. But I think a lot of times, with the way it was going with me, I don’t think I would’ve survived, quite honestly.”
Now 65, Rockett says he has been free of cancer for a decade. His memoir, “Ghost Notes: My Life in Poison,” chronicles his rise to stardom during the decadent ’80s and his grueling health battle.
From left, C.C. DeVille, Bret Michaels, Rikki Rockett, and Bobby Dall of Poison attend a press convention saying the 2020 Stadium Tour. Getty Images
In 2015, Rockett said he and his household developed sore throats. They have been all prescribed antibiotics, but while everybody else recovered, his symptoms endured.
Rockett returned to the doctor, who examined his nostril and throat with a scope. During the examination, the doctor noticed one thing suspicious.
“I don’t know if it’s cancer, but it’s suspicious, and we got to do a biopsy,” Rockett recalled his doctor telling him. “My life changed at that very second.”
According to the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance, Rockett was recognized with HPV-related throat cancer in 2015. The disease affected the bottom of his tongue.
According to his memoir, Rockett had skilled a sore throat and a swollen lymph node for more than a month. It harm every time he swallowed. After medical doctors recognized him with cancer, he obtained radiation and chemotherapy.
Poison drummer Rikki Rockett performs during a sold-out show at the Pearl live performance theater at the Palms Casino Resort on Friday, Aug. 17, 2007. Getty Images
“Before long, I couldn’t eat solid food anymore,” he wrote. “My weight dropped dramatically because all I could manage was soup, shakes and water. Eventually, I couldn’t eat or drink anything at all.”
Rockett wrote: “I’ve got throat cancer. At its worst, I struggle to swallow even a gulp of water. This morning, my son had to watch tears running down my cheeks as I tried to eat a spoonful of soup. He looked terrified.”
Rockett told Fox News Digital that he finally “wound up in stage 4.” For three months, he obtained radiation 5 days a week, along with chemotherapy weekly, but he said the treatment failed. Doctors then mentioned eradicating his tongue, according to Rockett.
Rockett was terrified. In his memoir, he wrote that he believed he had only a “40 or 50 percent chance of living.” But he refused to give up.
“Even with all the treatment, it still didn’t work,” he recalled. “So then I got on an experimental drug combination at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, and it worked incredibly well. It’s one of those things where, if it works, it’s amazing. If it doesn’t, you kind of go, ‘Wow, maybe I wasted my time.’ So I had to roll the dice. And I did. And when I rolled it, thankfully, it came out in my favor.”
Rikki Rockett on Day 1 of the 2026 NAMM Show at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. Getty Images
According to UC San Diego Health, Rockett participated in a scientific trial involving a mixture of two medication: pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and epacadostat. Rockett was declared free of throat cancer in July 2016.
The treatment took a toll. At one level, Rockett’s tongue swelled so a lot that he feared he may choke. Soon, however, a scan supplied hope.
“The crazy thing was that my first PET scan showed that 90 percent of the cancer was already gone,” Rockett wrote. “And by the second PET scan, it was all gone. It was as if the angels had come down and blessed me. I mean, it was unbelievable.”
Rockett wrote that his doctor appeared just as shocked by the outcomes but explained that treatment needed to continue to cut back the risk of the cancer returning.
But Rockett’s health challenges have been far from over.
“Some eight months into the process, nothing was coming up, but I was getting high white blood cell counts,” Rockett wrote.
Rikki Rockett ready audio messages for his youngsters when medical doctors thought of eradicating his tongue during a cancer battle. Getty Images
“So, they got concerned about that, and to cut a long story short, I wound up with something called CML, chronic myeloid leukemia, and it’s a predisposition thing. It’s a translocation between BCR-ABL, the chromosomes. You’re prone to it if, like me, you have the Philadelphia chromosome. Of course, it absolutely freaked me out. I mean, I just went through one cancer, and now I was facing another one.”
Chronic myeloid leukemia is a kind of blood cancer often related with an acquired genetic abnormality identified as the Philadelphia chromosome.
“The hematologist, however, took everything in stride, and when we met, she was super calm,” he wrote. “She told me, ‘You picked the best leukemia you could. It’s very treatable, and sometimes curable.’ Dr. Jaimeson would be my doctor for the very long foreseeable future, and I was blessed to have her.”
“So, all that happened was that she put me on new medication, which I’m still on. It has some nasty side effects, but the best side effect is that CML has been 100 percent in remission! Zero detection for a number of years now! There must be a reason why I’m still here, I think to this day.”
Rock band Poison, from left, C.C. Deville, Bret Michaels, Bobby Dall and Rikki Rockett, at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, Friday, Sept. 11, 1987. AP
Looking back, Rockett told Fox News Digital his medical crew “actually saved my life.”
Rockett still lives with the lasting results of his treatment. But a decade after his throat cancer battle, he’s targeted less on what the disease took from him and more on what he lived to see — his youngsters growing up.
“Sometimes my voice gets rough, or I get dry,” he said. “I get very dry because my salivary glands got toasted with the radiation. But I’m cancer-free, and I’ve been cancer free for 10 years.”
Rockett has no plans to slow down. He’s been retaining busy performing with his band, Rockett Mafia.
“I’m not out of gas yet,” he said with a smile. “I still got stuff to do. And I love playing because I want my kids to see me, and they have. They’ve been to some Poison concerts. I wanted them to see me, and they did. I got that wish.”
For Rockett, beating cancer meant getting the time he once feared he wouldn’t have. And he’s not losing a single second, he insisted.
“A big part of it was fighting for my kids,” he mirrored. “There’s no question that was a big chunk of my fight.”
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