Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.
I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk.
Having that music around us all the time, it was so inspiring. But at the same time, I was a kid. I didn't pay attention to any of it. I'd get on the drums and hit them a few times, and then go outside and play.
Some of the wise boys who say my music is loud, blatant and that's all should see the faces of the kids who have driven a hundred miles through the snow to see the band... to stand in front of the bandstand in an ecstasy all their own.
Because I was a dancer when I was a kid, I have so much empathy for these young girls who are so drawn to something lovely in music and in movement, and yet they encounter a world full of judgment and criticism of 11-year-old artists and bodies.
As I was sitting there, the deejay was playing music and talking over the music, and the kids were going crazy. All of a sudden, something said to me, 'Put something like that on a record, and it will be the biggest thing.' I didn't even know you cal...
Since I was a kid, music was what I wanted to do. I thought I could make it by my own talents. That's what I wanted to prove.
People will come up to me and try and be secretive and say, 'Can you do the Gollum voice for me?' And I'm like, 'Are you kidding? It's 8:30 in the morning on the Victoria Line.'
Make no mistake: Bob Ritchie's up early in the morning taking pictures of his son on the first day of his senior year. Kid Rock is passed out in a hotel room somewhere with four scantily-clad women.
I always keep myself busy. I'm writing. Or I'm creating something. Or I'm doing stuff with the kids. I'm up incredibly early in the morning; I go to bed incredibly late at night.
How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.
As a kid, I was always mad - just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don't want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.
Every night, I say goodnight to the kids like Rajesh Khanna, muah muah, two kisses, say goodnight to my wife, and every night, I'd go to the recreation room and watch cricket with two old men.
It's taken me to be an older guy, an old man, to have an old man's voice. Because I only liked old men's voices. As a kid, I didn't like pip-squeaked singers.
I have lots of friends and, like me, they're not married. So my kids have lots of godparents - men and women, gay and straight. My loft is always filled with people helping me out with them and loving them.
Being a kid is so much more fun than being an adult. I think that's the crux of it. I think men are just less inclined to grow up because it's much more fun being a child.
I am compelled to continuously see the bright side. It is in my DNA. My kids look at me and say: 'Mom, you're so happy!' And I do feel happy. I feel joyful inside. I can't explain it.
I never met my Uncle Jack. My mom was six months pregnant with me when he died. But I knew his wife and two kids very well.
I'm an immigrant kid who came to America from India when I was very young and grew up in New York City with a single mom and really was influenced by all of those immigrant cultures bumping up against each other.
I really wanted to be a mom. I didn't want my kids to be raised by a nanny, which would have been the case if I were working two movies in a year, you know? And I would have been hospitalized with fatigue.
I skated and rode bikes on ramps, and my mom was always super supportive. She was one of the only divorced moms in the neighborhood, so all the other parents looked down upon her for letting her kids do that kind of thing.
