Kid Rock Accepts Detroit NAACP Award

Rebecca D'Angelo/For the Washington Post/Getty Images

Kid Rock accepted the Detroit NAACP's Great Expectations Award on Sunday despite protests from members who object to his use of Confederate flag imagery onstage. Prior to the event, a group of about 50 people picketed outside the Cobo Center, where the awards dinner was held. Back in March, Adolph Mongo, the head of the organization Detroiters for Progress and a boycotting NAACP member, told the Detroit News that Rock's use of the flag is "a slap in the face of anyone who fought for civil rights in this country."

Choose the Cover of Rolling Stone: Vote Now!

Rock maintains that his use of the flag is part of a Southern rock tradition inspired by Lynyrd Skynyrd and has nothing to do with how he feels about black people and African-American culture. As he accepted his award, which was given to him in honor of his ongoing support for the city of Detroit, Rock said, "I love America, I love Detroit and I love black people."

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter