Kid Rock: Motor City's bad boy does good
(CBS News) When Kid Rock teamed up with Sheryl Crow for the song "Collide" last year, he was showing just one of his many talents. This morning he talks with our Tracy Smith For The Record:
The guy who said you can't be all things to all people probably never met Kid Rock.
His sound is a mix of styles: Urban rap, rock and roll, country and western.
And it pays to be a musical chameleon: Kid Rock has sold 27 million albums worldwide, and filled arenas from coast to coast with a show that is equal parts music and mayhem.
"Playing a concert for 2 hours is pie," Kid Rock said. "I would do that every minute of every day if I could. I love to perform. It's the 22 hours before the next show that kills you."
Away from the stage, the party god is something of a perfectionist: "Too early to be drinking beer now, so I grabbed the hot sauce."
He's a self-taught musician who can play every instrument in his backup band. Kid Rock lives large, with his own recording studio on a sprawling estate north of Detroit, and a Mt. Vernon-style mansion close to downtown.
"So when people hear Kid Rock, what do you hope that they think?" asked Smith.
"Doesn't matter," he replied. "There's enough information out there for people to make it into anything they want. The people that don't like me, they can go on this Internet and find enough stuff to make them hate me. The people that love me, they can go on there and find enough stuff to fall in love with me. But at the end of the day, I'm all that. So I'm just doin' me."
Photos: Kid Rock
Motor City's bad boy is actually from the suburbs. Kid Rock was born Robert Ritchie in middle class Romeo, Mich., the son of a self-made car dealer.
Early on, young Bobby knew his future was in music, and that he was going to be successful at it. "I didn't realize I was gonna be this successful. But I thought that I would hit a lick somewhere."
That "somewhere" turned out to be one of the rougher sections of Detroit. Bobby Ritchie left home and moved there as a teen to pursue his love of rap. His parents were not amused.
"I think one of the -- funniest times in the world is, like, I'm in, like, the hood, Mount Clemens, and I'm kind of selling some drugs to make some money to buy records, workin' at a car wash. I for instance was 15, 16, somewhere in there. And I'm standing with my buddies on, like, one of the porches, one of my black friends. It's, like, my dad came by and, like, picked me up for an orthodontist appointment."
"What did that do for your street cred?" asked Smith.
"Nothing."
Still, he kept at it. Bobby Ritchie became known as "that white kid who rocks," and took the words kid and rock as his stage name.
After a decade in the Detroit rap music trenches, he put out 1998's "Devil Without a Cause." The kid was suddenly hot.
His outlaw image attracted legions of adoring fans, and one in particular: actress Pamela Anderson. The couple married in 2006 - and split four months later.
"Did you think it was a forever thing?" asked Smith.
"I thought it could be, yeah," Ritchie replied. "I wouldn'ta gone in like that if I didn't."
The sting of the breakup changed his view of relationships.
"Uh-huh, yeah, you touch a hot stove, you get burnt, don't touch it anymore," he said.
"So that was basically it? What do you mean?"
"Oh, I didn't touch the stove, I like put both hands on it and held 'em there for like an hour!" he laughed. "I don't even go near the stove anymore."
"Does that mean you won't get married again?"
"Oh, I don't know what it means at all. It probably means I'm not gonna be screwin' around lookin' for love in Hollywood, ever," he replied.
These days, he keeps his love life private and his vices in check . . . almost.
There is still the ever-present cigar. "Yeah, it's a problem," he sdaid, admitting to going through 5 - 6 a day. "If we're having a good time, 10."
"Gonna quit?"
"Nope. I quit smoking because it was bad for my voice. I don't inhale these. You get the nicotine through the blood vessels in your cheeks and at the end of the day I thought, you know what? It's pretty hard to replace a lung. I can buy a new lip."
Ritchie has never been shy about speaking out for what's closest to his heart. His song "Born Free" became the unofficial campaign anthem for Mitt Romney.
And on his critically-acclaimed new album, "Rebel Soul," his hometown pride is front and center - with "Detroit, Michigan" playing at halftime at the Detroit Lions game on Thanksgiving Day.
Driving around the city in his police cruiser, you get the impression that he takes Detroit's revitalization personally, and that every new building downtown is a victory.
"There's a lot of work to be done, but the fact is there is work being done," he said. "It's not going to happen overnight, it's going to take some time. But the fact that people are coming together and trying to make this what it once was, a great viable city, is what I like to see."
And he does more than just talk about it: One concert last spring was a benefit for the Detroit Symphony, only one of the many charities he's raised money (or written checks) for.
Kid Rock is a high-minded civic benefactor in a low-brow disguise.
"How much money did you give away last year?" Smith asked.
"I don't know, I'm sure you can Google it or somethin'," he replied.
"I think it's close to a million dollars."
"Probably," he said. "How lucky am I to be able to do that?"
But Bob Ritchie is proudest of being a dad. He was still a struggling rapper when his son, Robert Ritchie, Jr, was born, yet he wanted full custody.
"I think a lot of guys would have run away from that responsibility of being a single dad. Why didn't you?" Smith asked.
"I don't know. Good question. That didn't even seem like an option. Just who would do that?"
"You just knew from the moment that he was born that, 'I'm gonna take him and I'm gonna take care of him?'?"
"Yeah, I would do everything I could. Yeah. Might have something to do with my upbringing, you know? Thanks, mom!" he laughed. "Just seemed like the right thing to do."
The younger Ritchie - now a college student - didn't adapt well to school in California during his dad's brief marriage to Pamela Anderson.
Ritchie recalled a time he picked up his son from school: "He got in the car and he was kind of choked up. And I said, 'Hey, what's wrong, Buddy?' He was, like, 'All these kids do here is ride skateboards and do drugs.' I was, like, 'Hey. Hey, hey, hey - Stay off them skateboards!'"
Just a joke - maybe - but behind the juvenile humor, Kid Rock is a man who knows just how lucky he is.
"I think anybody that's worked hard and has built something and has been successful can testify to how, you know, how wonderful that was, how wonderful it still is," he said.
"You still are grateful for it?"
"Still grateful for it and, you know, would never sit here in front of a camera and bitch about, you know, how tough my life is at some levels that maybe people can't understand. When that starts happenin' I just stay home and, you know, drink an expensive bottle of wine and be like, 'You know what, everything's all right. Even though you're having some difficulties right now, you're doin' pretty well. Be thankful.'"
For more info: