#Song bar room romeo series#

I've worked with five or six pretty big stars - Eminem, Rufus Wainwright, Phish - and there's a certain archetype personality that just needs to be famous. So he was probably most alone at that point - being heartbroken and away from his family and being on a smaller label like Continuum, not getting as much financial support.īut the one thing that was still there: He was motivated by fame. There wasn't a lot of financial support coming from the family. He was also kind of disenfranchised from his dad at that point. They split up and that's when I moved in the apartment. He was really emotionally torn up, going through that deep heartbreak stuff. There were three kids, he thought two of them were his, and then he found out that one of them wasn't.

#Song bar room romeo series#

Rock soon launched his own label, Top Dog Records, and kept himself in local record racks with his 'Bootleg' cassette series featuring new tracks and reworked material.īOB EBELING (drummer, engineer): We were living together (in Sterling Heights) at possibly his lowest point. When I heard it, I thought, wow, this guy is on to something. NIEPORTE: 'Polyfuze Method' had a great rap presence, but also brought a strong rock feel. If that was mixing a flute or heavy metal guitar on top of 808 drums - as long as it sounded good, that's what he did. When he goes to make music, he does what he thinks sounds good. At one point we had a flute player come in.

'The Polyfuze Method,' a heavy, frenetic record, was released in summer 1993.ĬLARK: We were adding rock guitars, sampling Pink Floyd, any crazy stuff. Definitely Seger, which was like old-people music at that time. And he always told me it was his parents' music that influenced him. In his first interview (with Orbit in 1990), he was saying he's not a Vanilla Ice, that he was trying to be the real deal. It was a source of shame in that whole thing. PETERSON: The whole Vanilla Ice comparison, he dreaded so much. TOMMY VALENTINO (music attorney): His attitude now was, 'I'm not going to count on any record company to make me a star.' So he was like, '(Screw) it, I'm going to do my own thing.' But - and this is just my opinion - he got disillusioned by being dropped. With Jive, he tried to be the rap guy, keeping it all hip-hop. He gave him a couple of his tapes: 'Check me out.' At least Kid Rock was cordial about it. Maybe one day you'll have your day, but leave the guy alone.' He followed him out to the parking lot still wanting to battle. I came up to him: 'Dude, this is his day, his event. Toward the end, this blond-haired skinny kid kept yelling out - 'I'll battle you! I'll battle you!' Just persistently getting in Kid Rock's face. He had the tall hair, spinning like he would at the bars in Mt. MIKE HIMES (owner, Record Time shop): When 'Grits Sandwiches' came out, he came in for an in-store (performance) at 10 and Gratiot. But I remember telling him, 'Dude, if you're going to make it to the next level, you've got to clean it up.' I wasn't a big rap fan, but I liked his stuff. You've heard that early stuff - a lot of profanity, real edgy, hard-core. NIEPORTE: Bob was just straight-up rap then. JERRY (VILE) PETERSON (publisher, Orbit magazine): He had this giant Mt. He had a great street team, a lot of little kids helping him back then. We did the gig and he put 1,200 people in there. He came in pretty cocky: 'I'm going to fill this place.' Every band I talk to says that. JOE NIEPORTE (manager, the Ritz, State Theatre): I ran the original Ritz in Roseville, an 1,800-seat venue. He took those demos and got a deal with Jive. He had a shitty little Casio keyboard, and knew exactly how he was going to do it.

You could tell right away he wasn't bullshitting. He was very confident, had the high-top fade, very sharp. He had his shit together and blew me away. He had his turntable, had his beats, his stuff already written. A white guy is going to rap.' But he shut me up. I didn't know he was white - we caught each other off-guard when he came in. I was working with mostly young black teenagers then. CLARK (producer-mixer): I cut his demos as a kid before he got signed in 1989. It would be the key stage in Kid Rock's evolution, as his hair grew longer, his music grew louder and his live show grew bigger. But his Jive stint was brief, and the young rapper was soon back in Detroit plotting his next move.