Production and marketing
The album was recorded and mixed at Little Mountain Sound Studios,Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada,with Canadian producer Bruce Fairbairn and mixer Mike Fraser.
The front cover art features the Poison logo and album title as a tattoo on drummer Rikki Rockett's arm. The cover was originally planned to have a slightly different version of the tattoo after being freshly inked,with inflamed red skin with dripping ink or blood. The original cover was released for the initial pressing in Japan but was removed from all later pressings including those in Japan. The record's marketing reflected the end of Poison's glam image,including excessive make-up and teased,girlish hair as with Look What the Cat Dragged In ,instead being similar to Guns N' Roses.
Songs
Parts of the album are darker and more serious,including overcoming hard times,missing loved ones,long-term relationships,and mass sociopolitical disillusionment. Fun topics include sex,exhilaration from music or motorbikes,and tongue-in-cheek poverty. Some songs have a blues rock style. [6]
The meaning of the album's lead single "Unskinny Bop",one of the band's most popular songs,is obscure. DeVille later confessed that the phrase "unskinny bop" has no particular meaning. He devised it as a temporary measure while writing the song,before vocalist Bret Michaels had begun working on the lyrics. The phrase was used on the basis that it was phonetically suited to the music. The song was later played to producer Fairbairn,who stated that although he did not know what an "unskinny bop" was,the phrase was perfect. [9]
Critical reception
Entertainment Weekly noted that despite their commercial success,Poison lacked respect from music critics who damned their music as "hard-rock candy",and characterized the "harder and more realistic" Flesh &Blood as an attempt to address this,balancing more typical hard rock topics like liberation and sex with more thoughtful subjects. [11] Despite finding "lots to respect" and smile at on the album,they bemoaned that by "taking life more seriously,Poison is taking itself more seriously,too",as per the record's studio chatter,guitar fragments and answer machine messages,and believed the band "plays eagerly but not very well". [11] Chuck Eddy of Rolling Stone noted how,tired of being mocked in heavy metal circles,Poison "now wants to rock,damnit",but criticized the resultant album for "[letting] pop fall by the wayside" and forgoing the group's strengths. [14] He further panned Fairbairn's "stale air" production for recalling the 'slushy' sound of his late 1980s albums with Aerosmith,adding:"The guy's got no use for rhythm sections,and his aesthetic hearkens closer to Days of Future Passed than to Toys in the Attic ",which for "concise 4/4 hook-and-riff bands" like Poison is unhelpful. He further deemed Flesh &Blood "the Poison CD for suckers who think Pump was good Aerosmith." [14] The Village Voice 's Deborah Frost was more favorable,enjoying the Aerosmith similarities and noting that Poison's specifics "give you a sense that they're writing from some real experience rather than the How To Be a Tough Hollywood Mofo manual. They also sound,as Fairbairn has recorded them,most like a real band,not a rack of studio effects." [15]
In the United Kingdom,where the album reached number three and "Unskinny Bop" was a top 20 hit,both achievements coming ahead of their British concert (at Castle Donington),Paul Sexton of Select wrote that Flesh &Blood "abounds with anthemic rockist singalongs" on the subjects of sex and the rock band lifestyle,but adds that they can "pull in other directions",noting the themes of disillusion and ideological unclarity on "Life Loves a Tragedy" and "Something to Believe In",respectively,as well as musical detours such as the minute-long,New Orleans-style slide guitar instrumental "Swamp Juice" and the rootsy "Poor Boy Blues". [16] The Stud Brothers dismissed Flesh &Blood in their Melody Maker review,deeming it "the most hatefully hackneyed and infuriatingly pedestrian collection of songs you're likely to hear this or any other year",writing that the "matey asides" punctuating the songs and "mannered idiosyncrasies" are unsuccessful in elevating the quality. They wrote the band omit references to debauchery,decadence or anything "even vaguely interesting",with stomping choruses being most important to the band,opining that "the words,really just the songtitles,are there simply to be shouted." [17]
Among retrospective reviews,AllMusic's Steve Huey wrote that Poison "made a bid to be taken seriously" following the critical panning of the best-selling Open Up and Say...Ahh! (1988),adding:"Even the title of Flesh &Blood indicates a desire for more substance and reality in their music,as do darker songs [on the album]". Huey believed it occasionally works successfully,aided by the band's consistent songwriting and "wider musical range that occasionally veers into swampy blues-rock",but that at other times,Michaels seems "too self-consciously proud of his own ambition to recognize when he oversteps his bounds". [6] Ultimate Classic Rock 's Jeff Gilles agreed that Poison "set out to prove they were more than just a few pretty faces",arguing that successful bands need occasional chances to show their darker sides. He believed the album balances sexualised glam metal with darker themes. [18] In The Virgin Encyclopedia of Heavy Rock (1997),Colin Larkin wrote that,by Flesh &Blood,Poison had dramatically toned down their 'glam band' image and make-up wearing. [10]
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