BRET MICHAELS Discusses New Solo Album, Marriage Rumors

Denise Quan of CNN recently conducted an interview with POISON singer Bret Michaels. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

CNN: When did you have time to record an album? Rumor has it you've been a little busy.

Bret Michaels: The new album, "Custom Built", we started working on long before I got sick. The album was originally supposed to come out in March or April, and then I got sick. Not only does it have a bunch of brand-new, original material — it also has my song, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". I did a real rootsy, kind of cool version of that on here, and then I redid a SUBLIME song called "What I Got". Its lyrics are relevant in my life: "Love is what I got, so remember that."

CNN: Is that what went through your head as you were in the hospital?

Michaels: No, what went through my head, honestly, is the pain. I'm pretty sure that the ICU unit is also a sleep-deprivation experiment. Everyone who's been in the ICU knows every two seconds they're like, "Can I just..." They give you Dilaudid [a morphine derivative], which is like, really good. I understand why people get addicted to stuff. I'm just being brutally honest here. Then they give you Soma [a muscle relaxer] and Oxycodone [an opiate-based analgesic] and all this stuff to get better, and then my brain started thinking, "Man, I'm going to end of up having an addiction problem when this is all done!" There's no way to describe the pain. It feels like you have the most intense migraine headache all the time. It starts to get very depressing. You learn to walk like five feet, and you sit back down, and your speech is slurred. So you're learning, all these things are coming back.

CNN: So are you thinking about possibly getting married now?

Michaels: There's rumors of that out there. Uh, it's a work in progress. Can I leave it at that?

CNN: But isn't it always a work in progress? I mean, I watched "Rock of Love".

Michaels: Listen, we've already got the babies out of the way, do you know what I mean? Kristi and I already have kids.

CNN: What is it about marriage that you're afraid or, or don't want?

Michaels: Let me say this. Marriage is the finest thing any two people can do if they're good at it, right? I love my kids. I love Kristi. I respect her. We love each other. We've been together for a very long time, on and off. And the truth of the matter is you don't have a brain hemorrhage and want to be married. That's not how it works. I don't want her to think that that's the reason I would do it. You do it out of love. I have never found in my life that you needed a piece of paper to be in love. I would love to be married. I just don't know when that day's going to be.

Read the entire interview at CNN. You can also watch the chat below.