The Killer Inside Kid Rock
Rock sometimes seems like a right-wing politician catering to his base. He won’t play Europe or mainstream U.S. festivals, but he will play SeaWorld. His fans love it when he shouts things like “Fuck Radiohead” onstage or attacks mainstream pop. He’s “flabbergasted” by Beyoncé worship. “Beyoncé, to me, doesn’t have a fucking ‘Purple Rain,’ but she’s the biggest thing on Earth. How can you be that big without at least one ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ or ‘Old Time Rock & Roll’? People are like, ‘Beyoncé’s hot. Got a nice fucking ass.’ I’m like, ‘Cool, I like skinny white chicks with big tits.’ Doesn’t really fucking do much for me.”
Rock is “flabbergasted” by Beyoncé worship: “How can you be that big without at least one ‘Sweet Home Alabama’?”
Rock could have had a country career after his 2001 hit with Sheryl Crow, “Picture” — he is routinely asked to co-write with Nashville’s top songwriters – but he’s not interested. “In country, those award shows make your career . . . and I don’t suck dick,” he says. “I’ll tickle your balls a little bit. But I ain’t gonna suck your dick.”
Still, Rock wants another big song, something he hasn’t had since 2010’s heartland anthem, “Born Free.” He writes off his last album, 2012’s Rebel Soul: “It fucking flopped. Before that, I had never not been platinum. I should just go smack somebody at the Waffle House. That worked out great.” Days after 2007’s Rock N Roll Jesus came out, Rock and some of his entourage were arrested for getting into a brawl with a customer. “The judge said, ‘What were you doing at the Waffle House at five in the morning?’ and I’m like, ‘We’re drinking. Who goes to Waffle House sober?’
“Watching the news, it was like, ‘Kid Rock — his album just came in at Number One — was in a fight last night.’ It was like, ‘I should just go smack somebody when my record comes out! I think I should get caught in Malibu firing my cannon on the Fourth of July. They’d raise a stink in California and send me to jail and shit. How could that not be cool?”
Rock has always known how to get attention. He remembers riding around Detroit in the Nineties in a Cadillac painted with gold flames, alongside Joe C., his three-foot-nine hype man, along with “my black girlfriend at the time, who had a body like Jessica Rabbit.
“There’s probably photos of it somewhere,” he adds. “The caption should’ve been, ‘Somebody look at me! Over here!’ ” Before he became a star, Rock would decorate his stage with stolen liquor-store signs and burst out of a pyramid made of peg boards and construction paper. “People were like, ‘What the fuck’s the matter with this kid? He thinks he’s in a stadium!’ ” Rock’s dad, who owned a Lincoln-Mercury dealership, didn’t approve; he wanted his son to take over the family business. “He would ask, ‘Why would you want to be a nigger?’ ” says Rock. “But I’ve seen him change, and he couldn’t be more proud. Now he’s crying after shows.”
The Killer Inside Kid Rock, Page 4 of 8