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Kid Rock Ain't Done Yet

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So you feel you represent something that doesn't get as much airtime, that's not right or left but down the middle.
KID ROCK:Yeah, I think that's middle America. I think it's the way the majority of the people feel. But for some reason, all these f---in' freak-ass left-wing people and freak-ass right-wing people are fighting for the power, and the people in the middle are just going, ''Jesus Christ, we're sick of this bulls---.'' And I still live in a small town in middle America and I deal with these people daily. You know, my friends aren't all f---in' big rock stars and movie stars in big houses.

''All Summer Long'' is the tune that really brings together some different elements on this album.
A friend of mine, Mike Clark, made a beat and put [Warren Zevon's] ''Werewolves of London'' over it. He was like, ''Check out this beat I made.'' I'm like, ''No, I'm not really doing a rap record.'' But I go ''God, listen to that. How many great songs were made off that chord progression, from 'Take the Money and Run' to 'Sweet Home Alabama'?'' At the time, I had been to a few nightclubs around the country and been listening to all these mashups that had been going on, because I'm a big fan of old-school hip-hop and I love classic rock & roll. So when people put these together and you can go to nightclubs and you hear these songs mashed up together, I'm like, God, this is great! You don't have to go to a nightclub and hear f---in' techno! Some of them, you will hear a house beat, but you hear the Four Tops over the top of it, and it's all right; there's some melody to it. And so when this came around, I said, S---, let's do our own mashup, but let's take it a step further. Let's take ''Werewolves of London,'' put it with ''Sweet Home Alabama,'' and write an original melody and lyric over it. To me, that was just pushing the envelope and taking it one step further.

It's amazing how far it's come. I remember doing my first record in 1989, and writing a letter to Jim Croce's widow because I had used some of his lyrics as a scratch in a song called ''The Genuine Article.'' They were like, ''No, we won't let you use it,'' because nobody understood it — they were all ignorant. And now, to have Warren Zevon's son say ''we love it'' and have the guys who control the Lynyrd Skynyrd estate say ''we love it'' — it's great how far everything's come. Because everyone said, ''God, it's going to be a licensing nightmare,'' and it really worked out fine. Things have changed so much in the almost 20 years.

You got Billy Powell from Skynyrd to play the piano part on there, instead of sampling it. But this isn't a star-packed album. Other than Powell and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, you didn't pack a lot of guest cameos on there.
No, I actually didn't. The only guest I wanted to have was Fats Domino, and we were gonna do it and the scheduling was tough. I wanted to call the album Kid Rock Featuring Kid Rock just to put a finger in the air to all the rappers who can't make a record without a million guests... And then you can't put out an album without f---in' 18 bonus tracks and 12 DVDs so Best Buy and Wal-Mart and Target can all be happy. It's like, Can we all just make records?

Everything has to have a ''value-added'' extra component of some sort now, right?
You know what a bonus track is? It's the worst f---in' song you ever made. It's something you give away for free. You don't go, ''Wow, this is a f---ing smash — let me put it as a bonus track!'' You go, ''Here, I'm gonna give you the biggest piece of s--- I ever made.'' And the f---ing corporations think it's added value. It's incredible, the way this s--- works.

Posted Sep 20, 2007 | Published in issue #956 Sep 28, 2007 | Order Article Reprints

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