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 Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:59 AM CST |
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Kid Rock cometh
Performer to take over Coliseum with Peter Wolf and Reverend Run
Kid Rock's fans know full well how his musical temperament seems to careen all over the map. Exhibit A, of course, is his 2002 segue into easy-listening/country balladry. The result was "Picture," a blockbuster Top 40 hit duet with Sheryl Crow -- the one you could play in front of your grandma without fear of being told to go to the bathroom and wash your mouth and ears out with soap. Imagine the surprise of freshly hatched Kid Rock fans motivated by the single to pick up the album it hailed from, "Cocky." There "Picture" was, nestled between the more Kid Rock-like likes of "You Never Met a (expletive deleted) Quite Like Me." But they hadn't, indeed. That's OK, says the man born Robert James Ritchie: "I love stuff that comes from outside the box." While Kid Rock won't be bringing fellow U.S. Cellular Coliseum alumnus Crow to his Saturday night "Rock and Roll Revival Tour" show at the venue, he will be chaperoning several pals from differing sectors of the American pop music spectrum. Among them: rap pioneer Reverend Run (the "Run" in Run-D.M.C.) and classic rock veteran Peter Wolf (former front man for the J. Geils Band). They may not be outside the box, exactly. But neither are they at the center of it. As the tour progresses into the spring, classic Southern rock pioneer Dickie Betts, founding father of the Allman Brothers Band, is also set to join the rollicking caravan (which also includes Rock's own 11-piece revue, Twisted Brown Trucker, complete with horn section, two female backup singers and one turntable spinner). Instead of segregating his guest stars into opening acts, Kid Rock says he'll bring out Rev. Run and Wolf from the moment the lights go down. "It's going to be a come-on-and-party-with-the-stars show," he says. "We'll begin with (Wolf's) 'Love Stinks' and then start digging into his soul music. It'll be as much an education for me as a concert -- he's such an influence, huge. This is gonna be great!" At the same time Kid Rock's signature rap and hip-hop origins will be blessed by the presence of long-running mentor Reverend Run, whose roots run even deeper. It was Run-D.M.C. that helped inspire 11-year-old Robert James Ritchie to buy his own cheap turntable and tutor himself in the late-'80s art of DJ-ing. In the quarter-century since, inspiration has turned to abiding friendship -- kinship, even. "I'm so blessed to have someone who was such an influence on me as a kid as one of my greatest friends now, along with his wife and kids, who were just over to the house the other night." All told, Saturday night's party is going to be about everyone's greatest hits, says Kid Rock, adding that no one can be more disappointed than he is when he goes to a concert and doesn't get to hear the music that made him a fan. "We won't be forcing new songs down people's throats. You're going to hear hits." During his interview with GO!, this notorious rock bad boy behaves with a surprising low-key demeanor, sounding more like that fan still dumbstruck by his own good luck. Certainly, the past year has been a good one for him, at least on the recording front. The October release of his 11th album, "Rock N Roll Jesus," saw the opus enter the charts at No. 1 -- the first Kid Rock album to do so, besting even his biggest seller of yore, "Devil Without a Cause," currently ranked as the 60th best-selling album of all time. All time. Most rock stars who've been around for 11 albums are lucky to see their latest efforts even carried by a major record label, let alone come out of the gate at No. 1. "It really is probably the best record I've ever made," says the man born 37 years ago this month in Romeo, Mich. He thinks it's taken 11 albums to peak because of the level at which he started some 20 years ago. "I don't think anyone could have started any more at the bottom than I did -- which was the complete bottom," he says. "I went from the ground up: small town, no cable, no MTV, nothing." To that end, Kid Rock's famously humble blue collar, small-town roots are part of both his fame and his infamy. "All I had was radio and my parents' record collection," he recalls. About that collection: "Wow, there was a lot of everything in it -- Johnny Cash ... a lot Sun Records stuff ... Motown ... Bob Seger ... Elton John ... the Beatles ... the Stones ... I just absorbed it all." After the absorption came the mix-mastering. At age 11, he was fusing rap and rock with a band called The Furious Funkers and toting his own cheapie turntable around to parties -- a prepubescent, white, small-town DJ inspired by Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys. "Hip-hop: I just loved the culture -- the graffiti, the break-dancing, the rap music -- even though there was only a very small black community where I grew up," he says. "I carried my own DJ equipment around at the age of 13, which was the turntable my mom did her aerobics to and around seven to eight crates of records." He remembers his first attempt at sampling, a decidedly un-hip-hop appropriation of soft-rock balladeer Jim Croce. He continued those pursuits through high school, earning his stage name of Kid Rock along the way. The rap trajectory followed him into the Detroit hip-hop group The Beast Crew, which led to his first record deal, at the tender age of 17. The resulting debut, 1990's proudly lewd, orally fixated "Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast" set him on the road to infamy with its FCC-banned hit, "Yo Do Lin in the Valley." Around the same time, another white rapper, name of Vanilla Ice, came along and stole the thunder. When the Ice quickly melted, the negative fallout took other white rappers with it. "It was terrible," Kid Rock recalls. How terrible? He was dropped by his label after that one album. But not deterred: "I started hustling my own CDs and tapes out of my bedroom and got free time in a (recording) studio sweeping the floors." Along the way, he kept waiting ... waiting. "People didn't get my music yet," he remembers, adding he was convinced they would, "in time." It took the better part of the '90s, but Kid Rock's time came due in 1998, with his signing to Atlantic Records and the release of his signature "Devil Without a Cause" album, packing its theme songs, "Welcome 2 the Party" and "Bawitdaba" and earning a pair of Grammy nominations. The Kid Rock era was ready and waiting to swing into the new century, taking no prisoners as his flamboyantly white-trash persona became a media darling and the scourge of parental watchdog groups, appalled at his antics, on-stage and off. The latter include the tabloid feeding frenzy triggered by his rollercoaster relationship with fellow white-trash traveler Pamela Anderson, whom he wed and divorced in the space of five months, circa 2006. "There's nothing you can do nowadays to avoid -- the (bleeping) camera phones are everywhere. The only thing you can do to escape 'em is to sit around the house and hide. And I'm having too much fun to do that!" Then there's the Kid Rock who's spent the past two Christmases entertaining American troops in Iraq. It's an experience, he says, "I can't even put into words the experience and emotions of it." To certain of his fellow rockers who've declined invitations to make the trip overseas, all he can say, he says, is "shame on them ... shame on them. This can change your life." As he zeroes in on the big 4-0, Kid Rock says the prospect of rock-and-rap middle-age doesn't daunt him. Nor will it curb his seemingly insatiable appetites for music and the infamy that has trailed in its wake. "I've never really believed in middle age, and actually I'm looking forward to it," he swears. Meanwhile, after spending the better part of 2007 playing a series of intimate club dates, all the better to test out new material, Kid Rock says he's ready to take on the arena circuit again, packing more than a decade's worth of experience and hits. And it'll be fresh: the U.S. Cellular Coliseum date is only the second one out of the tour box. "Everybody's definitely excited and ready to play again," he adds. At a glanceWhat: Kid Rock with guests Reverend Run and Peter Wolf When: 8 p.m. Saturday Where: U.S. Cellular Coliseum, 101 S. Madison St., Bloomington Tickets: $33 to $46.50 Box office number: (866) 891-9992 Kid RaucousFrom the get-go, Kid Rock has curried controversy with arms wide open. Following is a chronology of some of the more colorful outcroppings of that invitation: • 1990: KR's first single, "Yo Da Lin in the Valley" (from "Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast"), is banned from the airwaves by the FCC for raunchy lyrics. • 1999: KR is voted "Sluttiest Male Celebrity" at the MTV Video Music Awards. • 2001: KR and Playboy playmate/actress Pamela Anderson begin dating. • 2002: KR and PA are temporarily engaged before changing their minds. • 2004: KR's performance at the Super Bowl halftime show is second only to Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction as the motivation for the 540,000 complaints eventually filed with the FCC. • 2005: KR and his Twisted Brown Trucker Band are announced as pro-Republican performers at a youth concert for President Bush's inauguration, only to be removed by popular conservative demand (one of KR's songs, "Pimp of the Nation," contains a lewd reference to Barbara Bush). • 2005: KR is arrested on assault charges and sued for $1 million after punching a DJ in a strip club. • 2006: KR and Pamela Anderson tie the knot, then divorce five months later; KR charges Anderson with falsely proclaiming herself pregnant and subsequently suffering a miscarriage. • 2007: KR and Anderson's other ex-rocker/husband Tommy Lee tussle at the MTV Video Music Awards after Lee takes KR's seat and won't relinquish it. • 2007: A month after the Lee melee in September, KR is involved in a parking lot fist fight outside an Atlanta, Ga., Waffle House. His opponent: a drunken heckler. • 2007: On an October "Late Show with David Letterman" appearance, KR assesses Anderson's latest marriage, to Rick Salomon: "I wish somebody would have given me the advice that I'd like to give her husband: "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" E-mail this story | Print this story | Search archives | RSS Show comments |  Hide comments | Hide comments on all stories |
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