Musicians to Race for Charity
Aug. 6, 2000 -- Rock stars, start your engines, and rev up for a cross-country trek with the goal of raising money for charity.
Lenny Kravitz, rap singer Pras and members of No Doubt and Papa Roach are among the performers who have offered to skip traveling in deluxe tour buses and cushy chauffeured limos and get behind the wheel as temporary race car drivers.
The five-day Rock ’N Road Rally will take drivers from New York to New Orleans next May, with challenges along the way to help determine a winner.
The celebrities pick a car, a racing team and attract sponsors to root for their team with donations going to nonprofit groups, including the American Cancer Society, Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International.
Coordinator Jack Healy says it’s all an effort to shake up the fund-raising world, “to think bigger, and to go around the world and lift up [charities]. Charity is sometimes too conservative.”
He’s hoping the celebrity drivers will get a little crazy out there on the road, as long as they drive within legal boundaries, of course.
“We want them all to let loose, so that’s fine, we like the artists to go crazy,” says Healy.
Paparazzi Laden Preview The event is eight months away, but organizers gave racers the chance to jump the gun and warm up with some toy cars at a private party Thursday night at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers.
Kravitz says he wants to drive a Ferrari in the real race, and is more than ready to give the other participants a challenge out there on the road. “ I like to drive fast,” he says.
Fugees member and now solo act Pras told ABCNEWS.com he’ll race to the beat of tunes by fellow competitor Kravitz. But don’t mistake his choice in road music as too friendly a gesture — Pras is also looking to clock in as the winner and help those in need. “I want to give back to the people, do something meaningful,” he says.
Pras also wants to remind individuals that even small charitable donations can make a difference, “if you feel like even if you have just a dollar [to give], a dollar can mean a lot to someone who doesn’t even have a dollar.”
Ex-Beverly Hills 90210 star Luke Perry, who drove his share of flashy sports cars on the series, stopped by the party to show his support for the race. Now sporting a full beard, he says he has no upcoming projects and instead has intentions of “taking a long rest” from his TV career.
Second Leg of the Race: Africa The Rock ’N Road Rally will be cybercast over the Web and filmed for a possible movie. Healy will then take the show farther down the road, traveling to Africa in 2002 in a global effort to change young peoples’ habits and attitudes toward human rights.
Healy hopes the race will revive support for efforts like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “We live in a tough world, and we want to make it less tough,” he says.
For Third Eye Blind’s lead singer, Stephen Jenkins, the cause is a more local one. He’ll be in the race to New Orleans to generate funds for the Teak Fellowship, which gives scholarships to underprivileged kids in New York.
Jenkins says he’ll ask Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst to join his team, along with MTV host Carson Daly. His car will be cranking tunes by Motorhead and Led Zeppelin. Unlike Kravitz and Pras, he’ll be happy driving a basic American car. “I have a ’61 Buick. I like large, old cars,” says Jenkins.