The New Kid Rock: Your White-Trash Replacement Bono Is Finally Here

In addition to some newfound self-help speak (“And I’m more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been in my whole life”) and the expected classy take on the Tommy Lee slap-off at the VMAs (“If I had known the attention it would get, and right before my album is due, I would have thrown a few more punches”), this Kid Rock interview in the L.A. Times is notable for Bob’s developing interest in the social ills of the modern world, with his recent lyrics taking the, uh, tenderness of “Only God Knows Why” to strange new levels:

“Then there’s Rick Rubin, the guru to the late Johnny Cash, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys and Neil Diamond who challenged Kid to write something more than a lap-dance soundtrack.

“He basically told me that he had been listening to me my whole career and that he thought I had something more in me, something relevant,” Kid said. “I thought: ‘I’ll show him.’ I went to friend’s house over in Malibu overlooking a bluff and I sat there and looked at the ocean. And I thought: ‘Amen.’ What a powerful word.”

That word gave him the title for a new song that bemoans the influence of lawyers and corrupt pastors in America even as troops continue to be in harm’s way overseas and families go hungry in Africa:

It’s another night in hell

Another child won’t live to tell

Can you imagine what it’s like to starve to death

And as we sit free and well

Another soldier has to yell

Tell my wife and children I love them in his last breath

Never short on confidence, Kid said those are “some of the relevant lyrics of our day and age.”

O RLY?

Dreaming Big About Acting Big [LA Times with hat tip to Ned “But I Ain’t No Midget” Raggett]