In a recent interview with Randy Hulsey of Backstage Pass Radio, POISON drummer Rikki Rockett offered an update on his health, more than 10 years after he was diagnosed with oral cancer. The 63-year-old Rikki, whose real name is Richard Allan Ream, said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I am coming up on nine years in remission. And it was pretty miraculous, really, ’cause I only really had about a 10 percent chance of making it, because I was stage four. It didn’t get better. I did chemo, radiation, and it didn’t get better. And I wound up down at Moores Cancer Center, which is part of UCSD [University of California, San Diego] in San Diego, and Dr. Ezra Cohen took me on as a patient and got me on a clinical trial. And in about nine to 12 weeks, it was gone. It was amazing.”
Asked if this was “an alternative type treatment to radiation and chemotherapy”, Rikki said: “Yeah, it is. And a lot of people are receiving it now. It got approval shortly after my trial ended. And so my trial was a big part of that. I mean, I wasn’t the only one on the trial, of course, but, yeah, they pushed it into high gear once they saw my response.”
Regarding whether there were any “warning signs” prior to him being diagnosed with oral cancer, Rikki said: “The thing that was odd about it is the whole family had a sore throat, including me. We all had sore throats… So we went to the doc, got meds. My wife got better, the kids got better. I didn’t. So I went back and I’m, like, ‘I didn’t get better. They’re good.’ He said, ‘Well, maybe you have a secondary infection. Let’s go ahead and scope you. Have you ever had that?’ And I went, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘Well, we go up your nose and look down your throat and I can see if there’s anything else going on.’ And when he did, there was something else going on. And it was a lump on the base of my tongue. The thing that tipped them off was I had a lymph node that was swollen, like really bad. You can feel ’em sometimes if you’re sick, a little bit, but this was, you could see it in the mirror. And so that was another big tip-off too. So then I went through getting biopsies and all that stuff and then went into treatment.”
On the topic of when he found out that his cancer was stage four, Rikki said: “Yeah, head and neck cancers are actually staged higher, for some reason. So if it’s a two, they call it a three. I don’t know why; I don’t remember the answer. And I think they may have changed that now. But the reason I was stage four is because we did the chemo and radiation and we did all that and it didn’t work. So now it jumped to the other side, there’s other lymph nodes involved, and that’s why it became stage four. So now I can’t do radiation, ’cause I’ve already done it. The chemo may keep it at bay, if I try something else. Surgery is an option, but they wanted to take my whole tongue out. So the other option was immunotherapy, but if it didn’t start to respond, I could get to the point of no return. So it was a roll of the dice. And I was just, like, ‘I don’t know if I wanna live with no tongue and a bag and all this stuff. I don’t know. What I know I do wanna try is this immunotherapy. So when I went to the doc, he goes, ‘You know what? I think we do have time. I have a way of getting around some of this. If it seems like it’s going the wrong direction, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.’ So, we did it, and the first imaging they did, it was a tiny little bit left — tiny. And a couple of weeks later, that was gone too. And it’s never come back.”
In June 2015, Rikki visited his primary care doctor with a sore throat. His doctor found a small tumor at the base of his tongue, and Rikki learned he had human papillomavirus (HPV)-related oral cancer. He endured nine rounds of chemotherapy and 37 sessions of radiation therapy. The tumor initially responded, but returned three months later, spreading to his lymph nodes. Rikki then saw Cohen at UCSD Moores Cancer Center, who helped him enroll in a clinical trial of pembrolizumab (Keytruda). Rikki‘s tumor responded immediately. Just over two months into the trial, a scan revealed that his tumor had shrunk over 90 percent.
Regarding the fact that his cancer diagnosis was caused by HPV, the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted infection, Rikki told SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”: “There’s a lot of HPV out there, and HPV is the one — two of the strains, I think 16 and one other strain is the main ones that are causing cancer. In girls, uterus cancer, uterine cancer, a lot of oral cancer is coming down the pike. And this is because of stuff we would never have thought about years ago. We would have never thought that you get cancer from having oral sex with some girl. You would have never thought that, but that’s how a lot of this has gotten spread. But we’re gonna beat it, I think, with the next generation as long as people don’t hold back on these vaccines because the HPV vaccine… I don’t wanna get into politics at all, but I’m telling you the HPV vaccine is the thing that will keep people from getting HPV in the first place. And so my son had it, my daughter just got her first dose. So when they go out into the cruel world and — I don’t even wanna think about it, but when they do, they’re not gonna get HPV and get cancer from HPV, because we should be able to wipe it out.”
Rikki also addressed the fact that regular screenings, such as colonoscopies, mammograms and wellness exams, can lead to early detection and even save your life. He explained: “Yeah, there’s this really delicate line of having health anxiety or being just really on top of your health. And so it’s a fine line to walk, honestly. But I think, go in once a year and get a physical and if something comes up and it doesn’t go away… For me, I did have symptoms. Everybody in my family actually got a sore throat the month that I was diagnosed. The only thing is my sore throat didn’t go away and everybody else’s did. So when I went back in, the doctor said, ‘We’d better take another look and see if there’s a different infection or something else going on.’ And that’s when he said, ‘Yeah, there’s something down there that shouldn’t be down there. We’ve gotta get you a little more imaging.’ And that’s when my life changed forever. It will forever be different now. But I’m going on eight and a half years now that I’ve been in remission, and I’m in great shape. I’m able to ride motorcycles and go to Brazilian jiu-jitsu and go and train, work out and keep up with my kids, which is the most challenging one of all, by the way. And play. You used to hear that — if you have your health, you have just about everything. Honestly, you can have 99 problems. If you have a health problem, you’ve got one problem, ’cause it’ll take you down. So, yeah, everybody stay on top of it, just do the best you can. Some of us have better genes than others.”
In 2020, Rockett told “Trunk Nation” that he was afflicted with the same type of cancer as what IRON MAIDEN‘s Bruce Dickinson and MEGADETH‘s Dave Mustaine had.
“It was base of tongue with an associated lymph node, which is pretty common as far as head and neck cancers these days,” he said. “HPV-related head and neck cancers usually are base of tongue. There’s a few people that I’ve sort of mentored or helped out, and many of ’em are musicians. And HPV is pretty rampant — it really is. If you have a kid, get ’em inoculated.”
Asked what his symptoms were, Rikki said: “I had a sore throat that wouldn’t go away. That was the main thing. And then I had a lymph node that was kind of sticking out. First, they tried antibiotics, and they didn’t work at all — they didn’t even touch it. So it was, like, ‘Okay, we need to do a biopsy. We’re gonna go down and scope and take a look.’ And there was a lump down there. Then, after a few weeks, it started to get hard to swallow, ’cause the lump was getting bigger — the tumor was getting bigger. So I went and did the typical treatment for it, which is chemo and radiation, and it did not work. And by the way, it’s a fairly curable cancer, especially with HPV — there’s a high percentage rate of success with it, of cure. But in my case, it didn’t cure, so my options were a whole lot less. My doctor told me recently — he didn’t tell me this before — but he told me recently that I had about a 10 percent chance if I would have went down the regular path. But we didn’t — we used immunotherapy, and it put it in remission in about 10 weeks. When it works, it is amazing.”
Rockett first revealed that his tongue cancer diagnosis was caused by HPV — the most common sexually transmitted infection — in a 2015 interview. He said: “It is the number one leading cause of oral cancer these days. There’s less and less of the truck drivers that chew tobacco for thirty years getting it, because people are more aware that that kind of stuff isn’t good. So we are getting marathon runners and all these elite athletes with this. I have a friend that’s a therapist, and five years ago, it was five percent of the people she treated, and now it’s close to ninety percent.”
He continued: “It can be spread sexually, but now they’re saying that it can spread [through] deep-kissing and actually hand to mouth. I mean, if you see the Olympic swimmers, they swim and they smack their hand on the side of the pool for each lap, and their hands are full of warts and stuff from HPV. Now the wart kind of HPV is not the same as the strain that causes cancer, but it is spread almost identically. For men, you can’t tell if you have it. For women, you can get a papsmear. But the doctor estimated probably it was 15 [or] 20 years ago [when I contracted it], and my body probably got rid of it, but it mutated itself and my body would probably see that again and get rid of it. But there’s no way to tell who got it. I mean, I know a couple that’s been married for 15 years and they’ve never cheated on each other, and they’re pointing their finger at each other [after one of them was diagnosed with oral cancer], and it turned into a thing until the doctor sat ’em down and went, ‘Look, you can get this so many ways.'”
Rockett‘s memoir, “Ghost Notes”, is due this fall via Rare Bird Books. The book was written with writer duo Leif Eriksson and Martin Svensson.
Rikki is the co-founder and drummer for the band POISON, which exploded into the highly competitive Los Angeles music scene in the 1980s, making a name for themselves in the clubs on the Sunset Strip.
POISON‘s reunited original lineup — Rockett, singer Bret Michaels, bassist Bobby Dall and guitarist C.C. DeVille — completed “The Stadium Tour” with MÖTLEY CRÜE, DEF LEPPARD and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS in 2022. The trek was originally scheduled to take place in the summer of 2020 but ended up being pushed back to 2021, and then to 2022, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In April 2022, Rockett married his longtime girlfriend TC Smith at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara, California.
Rikki was previously married to singer/songwriter Melanie Martel. They share joint custody of their two kids — son Jude Aaron Rockett and daughter Lucy Sky Rockett.
In September 2024, Rikki announced the launch of a new band called THE ROCKETT MAFIA. Joining him in the group are Brandon Gibbs (DEVIL CITY ANGELS) on vocals and guitar, Mick Sweda (BULLETBOYS) on guitar and backing vocals, and Bryan Kimes on bass and backing vocals.
