Drummer Rikki Rockett doesn't even try to sugarcoat it.

"We are one of the most hated bands ... by other bands," he says.

And that's not even getting into what the critics think of Poison, who came along in 1983 to further the cause of hair-metal with fluffy hits like "Talk Dirty to Me" and "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

Sebastian Bach was openly critical of Poison. Now, he's opening for them on the current tour, which stops at the Post-Gazette Pavilion on Sunday. In June, Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott noted, "We refused to go out with Poison or Winger or Warrant or any of those -- bands."

Rockett, along with challenging Elliott to a duel, shot back with, "I'd be hurt if this were coming from John Lennon."

Still, Rockett doesn't mind being the hated band. "I think that's cool. Because we are one of the only bands out there from our era. Name another one that has all the members intact and is out there doing successful business right now."

And don't say Van Halen, because, of course it was more of a '70s band and Michael Anthony isn't there anymore.

"It's a feather in our cap that we're still together," Rockett says.

There was, though, a short hiatus in the Poison career, in the mid-'90s, just to allow VH1's "Behind the Music" to reflect on the insanity that had preceded. Then, Poison reformed in the summer of 1999, and it's been steady since then -- thanks, in part, to separate tour buses.

"We figured out how to do it in a comfortable way," Rockett says. "When you've been with the same guys for 22 years, you can get on each other's nerves. Part of being a team is knowing when to back off."

While Poison has been a touring machine since the reformation, the band hasn't added much to its recording legacy. It issued "Hollyweird" in 2002 and new tracks here and there on compilations. Last year Poison felt the need to add its two cents to Bowie, the Stones and Jim Croce, with a covers album called "Poison'd."

But the new material has been reserved for Butler native and frontman Bret Michaels' solo albums, somewhat to Rockett's dismay.

"Recording another album is a priority for me. I say to Bret's face that's what we need to do. But you can't make people do what they don't want to do. I would go in the studio tomorrow."

There have been other distractions as well. While Michaels was waist-deep in young women trying to date him on his VH1 reality show "Rock of Love With Bret Michaels," Rockett was dealing with the reality of a rape charge that proved to be bogus.

He was arrested in March in Los Angeles, charged with sexually assaulting a woman the previous September at a Mississippi casino. As it turned out, Rockett had never been to that casino and wasn't even in the state at the time -- but there was indeed someone else there claiming to be Rikki Rockett.

"It was one of the worst things I've ever been through," he says. "Six weeks of hell. If someone wants to take a potshot at me, they'll still use it. It was a mistaken identity thing. They went after me. And even after they realized it wasn't me, they were going after me anyway."

At the time of the alleged rape, Rockett actually was in wedding preparations with his fiancee, Melanie Martel, a pop-country singer from Nashville, now based on the West Coast.

On Sunday, after the Poison show, Rockett will join Martel for a set of her songs at the Lighthouse in Imperial ($20; 724-695-2247).

"It's sort of like pop-rock-country music, and we'll be doing it acoustically," he says. "While she's working on a record, we put together this acoustic thing just to have some fun on the road."

And find a safe haven from the craziness of Poison.