MusiCares: Grammy's Best Secret
Year after year, MusiCares puts on the greatest show you'll never see.
It is Grammy Week's best kept secret: the most famous faces and voices in music, all on one stage. There are no divas allowed; egos are checked at the door.
The goal? Raising millions to help musicians in need.
"The music business is also very fickle," says singer Natalie Cole. "You're riding high one day and the next..you never know."
Singer Wynona says a lot of people in the business end up penniless and alone. "They can't pay their medical bills. They have drink problems; they have a drug habit they can't handle. They can't simply live from day-to-day," she says.
It's a world Paris Cronin knows all too well.
"I started using drugs when I was 13, and I finally got sober when I was 29," he tells The Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez.
His dad is REO Speedwagon's lead singer Kevin Cronin, and some of the band's early videos show a very young Paris.
"I've been on tour since I could walk, since I could talk....I was raised on the road," Paris recalls. And that life on the road included rock and roll excess.
"My dad's gonna kill me for this, but I could find his pot from the age of 7," Cronin tells Rodriguez. "I knew in his travel case in his brown bag, there would always be a bag of weed."
Cronin picked not only his father's musical talent, but his partying lifestyle. It was alcohol and marijuana in eighth grade and lots of hallucinogenics - ecstasy, acid, mushrooms - at 15 and 16. And he quickly escalated to heroin and cocaine.
"I was making $200 dollars a night and spending $300 dollars a night on crack and heroin," Cronin remembers. "I would just start crying. I felt so empty and so hollow and so scared and so stuck."
The scariest call was telling his father, but the singer responded with open arms to help his son.
For Paris Cronin, rehab was a 10-year journey, in the company of his father and other family and friends. MusiCares also stepped in, paying for months of sober living.
Today, Cronin has a new band called Shut Up And Kiss Me and he mentors a new generation of rock stars fighting to stay clean. He says he owes it all to MusiCares.
"They absolutely save lives," he tells Rodriguez. "They saved my life and I'm eternally grateful."
This Grammy Week, MusiCares will honor Aretha Franklin as person of the year with a celebration Feb. 8. Franklin knows the power of giving back.
"In addition to making you feel good that you have been able to help someone, your self-esteem goes up. You've been blessed that you're not the one that needs the help."