Nugent railing with Alex Jones on premier paranoid whacko radio — condensed:
Four judges including two women on the Supreme Court are subhuman racist punks, the Obama administration is guilty of high treason, is Adolf Hitler, are wanna-be Joe Stalins, the government has secret papers or something that say if you have a photo of Ted Nugent in your house you’re a terrorist, the Mao ZeDong fan club is working for Barack Hussein Obama’s Indonesian dream, if there is a revolt and all Hell breaks loose Ted knows most of the military and police forces will side with ‘the people.’
In three parts, virtually unlistenable, I jumped on the grenade for you.
“I’ve written thousands of articles that no one can argue with on tednugent.com,” sez Ted. And “they” use the Saul Alinsky playbook to attack me, he adds.
Ted Nugent is educated, well-spoken and intelligent.
That’s if you discount the run-on sentences and the use of profanity as a crutch — something he used to never do. So about 0.5 out of three is still good, right?
The story informs Ted is prepping two new books — and selling a brand of coffee called Nuge Java. Something every bit as successful as Gonzo Meat Biltong.
Ted Nugent coffee, bound to wipe the floor with the sissy competition at Peet’s. He’s the next Newman’s Own brand. Uncle Ted — best dabbler at dabbling, ever.
Anyway:
Expected to soon join … other popular Nugent-scribed
books on store shelves are two more book projects, a coffee table
photo book glorifying outdoorsmanship, “Blood Brothers,” and a new
biographical tome, “Stranglehold: The Life Story of Ted
Nugent.”
Blog readers should consider getting a review copy of the latter when it hits stores. For DD. Imagine the riches of embarrassment I could find.
Which brings up another possibility.
DD writing an unauthorized biography of Ted Nugent as a study in American extremism.
And how the man went from being an arena-busting draw in late Seventies America — a guitar hero for the class that made stuff in factories — to a dried-up but furious extreme right pundit with a uniquely shriveled and mean viewpoint, a trajectory mirroring the decline of the nation’s reputation and vitality. A man who was one popular symbol for the old muscle of Detroit and Michigan. To someone who left the state for Waco, Texas, after being run off the bill of a big family-oriented summer concert series in 2003.
A rock ‘n’ roll Lyndon LaRouche.
Naturally, DD would not forget to analyze the Nuge’s loss of rock audience.
How did he get banished to playing third tier joints in Lake County, Indiana?
It’d be better than some propped-up Nugent-approved self-glorification, dontcha think?
Calling the Obama government the Mao ZeDong fan club? Check. Insist an African American member of the administration is a racist? Check. Advocate armed revolt? Check. Invocation of GOP whacko paranoid conspiracy theory that DoJ is suing Arizona to enslave illegals and get their votes? Check.
Excerpt:
Fedzilla is suing Arizona to show illegals in America that they have a friend in the District of Clowns. This, of course, is a sham. It is ultimately about getting their support and eventual votes and enslaving them by showering them with all kinds of Fedzilla pork-barrel programs, thereby stripping them of their work ethic and pride. Hey, it worked for many of my black fellow Americans, and we all know how well that has worked out.
If you disagree with Ted Nugent’s politics, it’s tough to like him. That said, he’s by no means a stupid guy, and his charitable work for military veterans is without a doubt admirable. His opinions are generally well-articulated even if they do often include threats of violence against his critics. But therein lies the rub: Dude’s a fucking prick, and not in that likable-asshole kind of way. No, his general dickishness comes in the way of suggesting Iraq should have been nuked and his frequent suggestions that those occupying the opposite end of the political spectrum should “suck on my machine gun.??? Sure, there are plenty of attendees at a Ted Nugent concert who can’t wait for his inevitable mid-set tirade wherein me might fantasize murdering Hillary Clinton or threaten to shoot that commie Obama in his non-American face, but some of us just want to hear “Stranglehold.???
Such previews are proof it’s impossible to defame Nugent. He may complain loudly in columns that he’s been dubbed a race-baiter unjustly and that people better get their facts straight. But his own persona has created a substantial body of opinion that he is precisely what he says he is not.
In mid 2003 Nugent had a big gig lined up at the Muskegon Summer Celebration in Michigan. He then went on a radio show in Denver to do his inimitably Ted thing. The radio hosts pulled the plug on him.
The result — Nugent summarily dropped by the concert. Billboard, at the time:
“Derogatory racial remarks made by veteran rocker Ted Nugent have cost him a gig at the Muskegon Summer Celebration. Festival officials cancelled his concert following an interview last week with two Denver disc jockeys in which the DJs said he used slurs for Asians and blacks.”
Three months later Nugent sued the Muskegon concert officials for defamation. In his complaint, it was linked to a tortured argument about violation of his 14th Amendment rights and breach of contract, which had deprived him of an $80,000 guarantee.
The Billboard image/article is here in a parcel of articles and comes from the case files entered by Nugent’s legal team. (DD has more and may get to them in a future post.)
The lawsuit became a celebrity trial in Michigan during the course of which Nugent’s defamation claim was tossed out. Nugent eventually took the stand, saying the DJs had misinterpreted his use of the n-word in a conversation. Nugent said he had related a story about how an African American had told him, after watching him in performance: “If you keep playing … like that, you’re going to be an ‘n word’ when you grow up.”
Whether this was all Nugent said during the course of the radio appearance was not determined. No tape of it existed, apparently.
“Unmentioned at the trial were news accounts of Nugent’s use of the other words,” reported the Muskegon Chronicle in 2005.
Continued the newspaper:
Asked about it later by a Chronicle reporter, Nugent said he referred to “Jap guitars” in the context of a conversation about how some guitars are soulful, others not. Nugent said one of the disc jockeys then said the word “Jap” is offensive — a point Nugent disagrees with — and that he jokingly responded something to the effect of, “That’s not offensive. g—–‘ is offensive. [Apparently gooks.]
I didn’t call anybody a g—,” Nugent added.
Nugent claimed a subsequent Rocky Mountain News story about the radio interview — which generated a wire story that ran in The Muskegon Chronicle, launching the Muskegon uproar — was biased and false, although his own account of his on-air words resembled that given in the newspaper story.
By today’s Nuge-standard, it all reads rather mildly.
While the defamation part of the case was dismissed, Nugent was successful in his breach of contract suit. He was eventually paid his guarantee although Muskegon Summer Celebration lawyers had to prod him into admitting it had been settled.
What had and has been determined is that Nugent was a highly divisive character — and not in any good way, to paraphrase the Nashville Scene — someone always accompanied by maximum ugly controversy.
In a newspaper article after the trial’s conclusion, one read:
Shoppers at The Lakes Mall who had been following the case of rock star Ted Nugent and his lawsuit with the Muskegon Summer Celebration committee weren’t surprised by the outcome. A jury Thursday afternoon returned a quick verdict awarding Nugent … his breach-of-contract suit against the summer festival.
“I love Ted Nugent’s music. I understand Nugent has to be taken in context. Everybody don’t see it that way,” said Mike Elijah, 49, who is African-American and a fan of the festival.
“Most people see things as black and white,” Elijah said.
Elijah said he agreed with Summer Celebration’s decision not to allow Nugent to appear at the festival after allegations he made racial slurs during a live Denver radio show.
“Several teenagers asked for comment about the Nugent case were unable to do so without first receiving a briefing that Nugent was once a rock star,” added the newspaper.
If you’ve wondered why the blog devotes more and more time to Ted Nugent, here’s why.
I use him as a very public face of American crazy extremism. And you can judge its mainstreaming by how Nugent’s currency as a pundit rises and drops and where it does so.
Paradoxically, when Ted Nugent actually sold records and was a leading draw in American arenas, such extremism was unacceptable in the mainstream. Uncivil, polarizing, vindictive and irrational, it never really had a place in Nugent’s act. If Nugent actually was the depressingly mean foaming-at-the-mouth nuts guy then that he is now, he kept a tight lid on it. It had no place, even in rock music magazines or, oddly, the embarrassing-for-different-reasons VH1 Behind the Music documentary on him about a decade ago.
How he went from being the young man jumping off the top of his amplifier stack in the video embedded here a few days ago to furiously screwed-up geezer is a story that cries out to be told. What was it that curdled Ted Nugent so thoroughly?
Anyway, the elevation of Nugent-style thinking to the commonplace in politics and public debate is one symptom, among many, of the colossal failure of intellect in this country. That Nugent as a polemicist has any audience at all — and he has a big one — does not bode well for any belief in the country’s ability to deal rationally with present and future challenges.
Media Matters runs a regular ticker on Nugent, too, and a post today notes an eye-popping run-on sentence from the man’s latest column in the WaTimes.
While Nugent’s weekly rubbish is notorious for run-ons capable of reducing copy editors to tears, even by the lax standards at that real estate, this one was simply spectacularly bad:
In the otherwise universally recognized perfection of the American experiment in self-government, where evil monsters like Che Guevara and Mao Zedong are routinely worshipped by the very imbeciles that these historical murderers would have slaughtered unhesitatingly, to a community-organizer-in-chief whose terminal rookie agenda is maniacally to spend our way out of debt and drop charges against clear and present criminal New Black Panther thugs threatening voters in Philadelphia, to black-robed idiots claiming Americans have no right to self-defense, where pimps, whores and welfare brats party hearty with the mindless fantasy that Fedzilla will wipe their butts eternally, ad nauseam – I am compelled to increase my crowbar swinging to new heights every day.
If one were to liken the English language to a great hunting ground for Nugent, you could say that instead of being of mighty skill, Ted was eaten by a bear and shit out in the forest a long time ago.
Ted, as whacko, was also on Alex Jones last week, that show being one of the top two radio venues in the country for awe-inspiringly stupid crank conspiracy theory. (The other being Coast to Coast with George Nori.)
Ted now calls Texas home. However, Nugent’s brand is frequently too extreme for some kinder parts of it. One Houston newspaper writer noted an upcoming appearance in the suburb of Pasadena:
My problem is definitely in Nugent’s delivery, specifically the toxic way in which he forces his audiences to listen to his rants in-between songs.
Delivering a message in the course of verse or lyric is an honest approach to getting listeners to think and react.
Holding ticket holders anxious to hears ’70s guitar anthems “Stranglehold” or “Cat Scratch Fever” captive while Nugent howls, “Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun” is cheating the whole creative element a bit …
What Nugent has never understood is that people don’t go to his shows to hear his stump speeches. If we wanted to hear a crazy old man yell political “fire” in a crowded room we could hang out at Walmart or the Greyhound bus terminal downtown for a lot less money.
(The fact that Nugent is out in Pasadena, and not at the more prestigious Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, make it clear that there are others who have tired of his rap as well.)
Days later, another Houston paper covered Nugent’s performance.
The piece was supremely entertaining, capturing Nugent’s current state as a ranting kook perfectly, along with his small rock audience of bottom-out-of-sighters.
Some excerpts:
We aren’t sure if you can have a painting of yourself running over the President and most of his cabinet as your stage backdrop, but manners didn’t stop Gwar from eating a Dick Cheney effigy on stage for the better of four years in the Bush reign.
———
“Free machine guns for the kids,” Nugent screamed while wielding what we rightfully assume were real machine guns. This was the Nugent that we had been hearing harried and scared reports about for years now. It’s like when you finally get to see Alice Cooper in the guillotine or Slayer’s blood shower during “Reign In Blood.”
What followed was the mother of all tirades against the mayor of Chicago, President Barack Obama, most Northerners, gun-haters and every “Chairman Mao motherfucker in the White House.” We don’t remember hearing this sort of language directed towards Dubya during his tenure in office, at least with not this much volume and hate.
Shit is getting real. He’s preaching. Fuck this and fuck that. He’s railing. It’s awe-inspiring.
I don’t think he likes the President much. I’m swimming in hate.
——–
At this point the little liberal part of Aftermath’s brain wanted to bolt, but instead we walked to the merch booth and bought a shirt for $35. It’s strange how the more heated and aggressive the show, got the more proud we were to have bought the shirt. Free speech isn’t always clean and peaceful, but Nugent believes this stuff, even if there seems to be a pinch of bandwagoneering going on. He didn’t touch on immigrants last night, which would have just confused his message.
He just covered Soul Man ten minutes after the hate-parade. I love cognitive dissonance like whoa.
It’s interesting how the new right wing uses Martin Luther King Jr. as an icon for its perceived struggle, and Nugent interspersed a few photos of the slain civil-rights leader with footage of himself teaching kids about hunting animals. “I celebrate killing shit!” he exclaimed right after the song and video were over.
The writer wryly described the crowd: “Folks in wifebeaters, older gals sporting sweaty cleavage, younger guys in leather vests and a healthy dose of bikers.”
And while they may like to see him these days, it is a group that does not buy Ted CDs anymore.
When Ted announces he’s selling an album on the 4th of July for 76 cents, he gets very little attention.
However, when he writes one of his WaTimes columns and Media Matters notices, he gets more decent publicity. But it’s the kind that stems from feeding his new audience of extremist white bigots in the GOP/Tea Party.
“In Wash. Times op-ed, Ted Nugent uses New Black Panthers case as an excuse for race-baiting,” reads a post from Media Matters here.
It then excerpts from his column, debunking his claims (in a companion piece) on a new bit of manufactured outrage from the right, a ‘scandal’ tooted loudly all afternoon on Fox.
In his column, Nugent also complains he’s been vilified as racist by other media sources. As proof he is not so, Nugent cites another famous African American as an inspiration.
Over the weekend on Hannity, it was MLK. Now it’s Rosa Parks. (Notably, Ted’s inspirations are always dead so they can’t be reached for comment.):
As a proud, dedicated protege of my hero, the czaress of defiance, Rosa Parks, and as someone who has been unjustly labeled a racist by bottom-feeding, race-baiting human scum, I say if you are going to level the ugly charge of racism against someone, be prepared to back it up with facts or shut up.
However, over the weekend, a fan site devoted to heavy metal news, Blabbermouth, posted the Nuge’s appearance on Hannity, the one in which he invoked MLK.
Ted doesn’t amuse the demographic he owned decades ago, good guitar playing notwithstanding.
As posted previously, Ted can’t evade the belief held by many that he’s a bigot. This comes from his record as a pundit for the extreme right in regular columns charged with race politics, material that simply uses the dodge of vaguely anonymized name-calling to vilify the inner city poor, union workers in Michigan, people on welfare, illegal immigrants and others — like the President.
And everyone understands exactly what Ted means. The cracker whacko wing of the GOP — basically, the entire party — loves him for it.
At the height of his power, what the Brits would call a performance on sulphate. Even after doing a badly executed jump from the top of amplifiers. No profanity. Deemed a classic from German music television.
More recently:
Keep the shirt buttoned, not like the cartoon on the bass drum head. And that’s “No shit!”
Derek St. Holmes, the black-haired guy to the left of Ted in the “Motor City Madhouse” video from the mid-Seventies, is the more-dapper-than-Ted guy with the shaven head.
How to look, how not to look — when you’re an old rock ‘n roller. No gettin’ around it, deterioration and the depradations of gravity aren’t optional.
You, Sean Hannity, and Fox News represent, by word and deed, the pulse of the most productive and conscientious members of this American dream across the board. And I bring you a salute and a thank you.
Which is to validate previous observations on the blog. Ted must suck up to Fox and the Tea Party because that is now the only way to a potential audience for him. His word-of-mouth draw in the world of rock music is far from what it used to be.
Speaking of which, Ted’s 76 cent Internet album, Happy Defiance Day Everyday — the one that compiles the hits from all his records that didn’t sell, collected many favorable reviews on Amazon.
However, there were a couple flies in the ointment, a few one-stars, the most scabrous of which was:
So we celebrate independence day by promoting a racist, misogynist, draft dodging dead beat dad? He represents everything about America that sucks. Good guitar player though.
First, the guitar playing is top notch. The main reason I have always liked Ted Nugent. Second, the vocals are bad. They make Uncle Ted sound like Grandpa Ted. Time to hire a vocalist. Third, next time try using a lot less “F” bombs. Fourth, delete “Girl Scout Cookies” altogether. It just seems weird and not right to hear someone of Mr. Nugent’s age to be singing about this subject matter. Finally, I think the main problem is that I have grown-up over the years and Uncle Ted hasn’t. I can no longer relate to him. With all that sexual bravado, does the aged Mr. Nugent acutually think the girls are interested in anything he has in his pants other than his wallet?
I do agree that Girl Scout Cookies is a poor choice of songs to include. The sexual innuendos about eating girls scout cookies is a bit unsettling, especially for a guy like me with a teenage daughter.
Profanity and flirting with taboos did not grace Ted’s records in the Seventies. They were no-nos.
But tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than absolutely necessary per set. So, such being the case, one must furnish some kind of filler.
Perhaps the Nuge’s record company — Eagle — wasn’t that thrilled about giving it all away for basically free on-line. Or maybe the Nuge himself wasn’t totally happy with the promotion. Given his well-known antipathy toward the idea of stuff on-line for zip.
Or maybe it’s just likely your standard momentary on-line screw-up. Or maybe, as my grandpap used to say, “He’s got things all balled up.” And he’s desperate.
However, Ted is nothing if not an interestingly amusing hypocrite.
PopMatters.com: How much are you bothered by the fact that many people are getting Free-For-All or Double Live Gonzo! without paying for them via illegal downloading and file sharing? Do you have any thoughts on what the music industry will look like as CD sales continue to dwindle?
Nugent: “All thievery is wrong and upsetting to anyone connected to logic and decency. Fortunately, I have such an incredibly diverse and exciting lifestyle that I am able to escape the violations of my fellow man. My professional management team will always optimize my commercial entities.
And nothing says “I’m a mixed-up loser” quite as emphatically than vague doublespeak like “optimizing commercial entities.”
However for the Wall Street Journal, back in 2001, Ted was much more direct:
Hey Napster, get your greasy paws off my intellectual property.
=====
To think a third party should be allowed to give away our product
for zero compensation is brain-dead and un-American.
But perhaps Ted Nugent really has changed. And he really does like the Internet, wanting to give a digital copy of his new anthology away for about free for one whole day.
Whatever the circumstances, Nugent has his job cut out for him. Happyl Defiance Day Everyday (Ted’s lame attempt to get Independence Day renamed) is a grab bag of stuff from his days of fail, stuff that his fans — to steal a phrase — trampled and hurdled.
It contains the greatest hits from albums like “If You Can’t Lick ‘Em … Lick ‘Em,” “Little Miss Dangerous” (from when Ted was into Miami Vice), “Penetrator,” “Spirit of the Wild,” “Love Grenade” and the last couple of live albums, which were a move to consolidate some of Nugent’s classic tunes from the arena-busting days as new live versions on platters the man could actually collect royalties on. If you think you’re getting the originals, you’re not.
Of these records, Little Miss Dangerous is the most interesting. It charted a radical departure in Nugent’s sound. A a little more than half, perhaps almost all, of the record has the Scholz Rockman guitar tone that was on the Eighties hits of Def Leppard and ZZ Top. Nugent never went back to it.
The title cut itself, besides being the theme for an episode of Miami Vice, was inspired by Pele Massa, a girl Nugent met when she was underage. Massa spent ten years raising Nugent’s children, leaving when he started screwing others while out on the road.
In Nugent’s Behind the Music episode, Massa infamously described the Nugent credo: “Bag it, tag it, call a cab for it.”
Number of times Ted Nugent called the Obama administration some variation on the “Mao Tse-Tung fan club” in the last week:
The criminality of the Mao Tse-Tung fan club in the White House will go down as … — Broward/Palm Beach New Times
[But] in these here United States of America with a Mao Tse Tung fan club in the White House, our passion for real America drives our musical celebration to new highs knowing that our “we the people” demand for a return to a real America is catching fire all across this great country and it brings us much energy. — The Monitor
To establish a Mao Tse Tung fanclub in the White House is beyond the pale. — Boston Herald
Americans have had enough of political shysters, lawyer lingo, doublespeak, crooks, liars and frauds in Washington. The Mao Zedong fan club will be looking for new digs by deer season … I would much rather put our country’s future in the hands of Wall Street than in the bumbling hands of Fedzilla. — Washington Times, I
After watching Gen. McChrystal in a “60 Minutes” interview a year or so ago, I had no doubt that he believed then that the Afghanistan war was a total klusterphunk in progress because of the community-organizer-in-chief, Mr. Obama, and the Mao Zedong fan club with whom he had surrounded himself. — Washington Times, II
They are nothing but economic parasites who live off the sweat and hard work of the producers. Mao Zedong would be proud. — Washington Times, III
The WaTimes continues to furnish Ted Nugent with real estate for self-promotion.
Again this week, Nugent pumps his “Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead” tour to places like a rib shack in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the Donna Corn Maze, or a “surf” ballroom in Iowa. Practically speaking, it’s harmless enough. No one who reads the WaTimes buys Nugent CDs.
His musical career is dead in the water. It has been for decades. But more on this after a couple of the usual Ted-isms, like his repeated working of the word “bloodsucker” into every column.
In the world of Ted, “bloodsuckers” are those who don’t share his politics, anyone he doesn’t like:
Only bloodsuckers, dopers and socialist stooges believe higher taxes are good.
They are nothing but economic parasites who live off the sweat and hard work of the producers. Mao Zedong would be proud.
If you believe we are in rough, choppy economic seas now, just wait a few more months. Things are going to get worse, possibly much worse under this rookie regime in the coming months.
The world is in the process of learning a painful economic lesson. That lesson is that liberals and their thirst for more government spending and control ultimately lead to economic collapse and despair. If the world – America included – does not make a very hard turn to fiscal responsibility and sanity, America will face the same fate as Greece in the not-too-distant future.
Next week, for example, “bloodsuckers” may be used to describe illegal immigrants, Democrats specifically, minorities on welfare, fat people, the census, the Social Security Administration, or those who approve of the BP escrow fund.
It’s the standard far right GOP scripting. Unlike in rock guitar, Nugent’s not original when it comes to politics. He’s embraced the Tea Party, just like any standard old school GOP pol hoping to vacuum up votes and head off challenge by someone further to the right.
Since his books now sell more than his albums, Nugent has to suck up to any potential audience on a growth curve. And that means the Tea Party. If you follow his name in the Google news tab, you’ll notice Uncle Ted trying to build a business in speaking at their events. Ted, when you get right down to it, can only aspire to being a poor man’s Glenn Beck. He has no venue in which to field a chalkboard and cite the books of Ayn Rand.
Nugent is and was a great rock guitarist. It must certainly sting to know idiots pay more for his words — idiots who would have never liked him in his heyday — than they’d ever pay for his records. That he has to be a toady to the likes of Sean Hannity for scraps from the table.
Which is to say he’s crummy with words. Any examination of the writings of Nugent show his fondness (or an assistant’s) for cut-and-paste and a love of a few odd but always mean slogans of his own invention. Copy editors prop him up big time but can’t massage the artifice out of the work.
What works in ferocious rock and roll — the repetition of angry money shot licks of your invention in subsequent recordings — doesn’t work for print.
However, this hasn’t stopped Nugent from trying to work various Ted-or-isms, like “Fedzilla” and “Trample the weak, hurdle the dead” into the vernacular, as if they’re the riffs from “Cat Scratch Fever.” The only place one sees Ted coinages are on his own borrowed land.
One of Nugent’s regular political riffs is how the US government can’t run an economy. And Ted knows this because he’s always been captain of his own business. Sort of.
The Ted line of thinking goes like this:
[It] does not appear to me that anyone in the Obama administration understands this most basic economic reality. That’s scary, though predictable for central planning liberals like President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Having zero experience at operating a business of any kind, this is all too predictable.
What Nugent doesn’t tell readers is that he captained his business into the ground in the early Eighties.
Nugent went from the being the biggest arena draw in the US to a laughable anachronistic nobody in a loin cloth in a couple years as tastes changed and he didn’t. Even famously over-the-top friends like Sammy Hagar flinch over the memory.
Ponder the guy who regularly rags on overweight “gluttonous” Americans, a man who now conspicuously wears a shirt — thank God — at all his gigs. This same guy who used to shave himself smooth and be in little but a hide g-string and boots for arena gigs. Despite his assertions, Father Time and gravity have worn on Ted as much as they have on everyone else.
During the height of his power, Nugent’s career was handled by one of the biggest management teams in rock — Leber-Krebs, the agency also reponsible for Aerosmith, Mahogany Rush, Parliament/Funkadelic and others.
But about a decade ago Nugent was part of one of VH1’s “Behind the Music” specials, documentaries on stars who’d gone from major success to epic failure, usually with piddling uplifting bits tacked on the end about how said wash-ups were revitalizing their lives, learning to cope with diminished expectations, battling free from substance addictions, or launching minor alternative careers in reality TV — which would inevitably result in nothing.
And Nugent hadn’t yet been discovered by Regnery Press, the publishing company which would make him a professional windbag from the extreme right.
So it must have seemed like something of a Hail Mary pass to cooperate with “Behind the Music” for the story of the collapse of the Nugent empire.
Nugent’s present manager explained the rocker was 30-60 days away from losing “everything” around 1982.
Risky investments had been made in mink farms and the raising of Clydesdale horses.
And, apparently, they went south, taking Nugent’s fortune from arena stardom with them.
“Wiped me out … wiped me out,” he says for the TV, adding he was “flat broke.”
In the doc, Nugent — as usual — puts all the blame for failure on others.
“We had a bunch of inefficient power-addicted, stardom addicted business associates that could give a rat’s ass about the source of the income — [me],” he says.
“I don’t know who gets the gomer award, me being stupid enough to believe them…,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. It’s uncharacteristic self-examination.
Nugent fired his management and financial adviser. These steps did not resurrect his solo career — which has remained stubbornly dead as a door nail. His fortune returned briefly with Damn Yankees, an act assembled from pieces of Night Ranger and Styx.
My band is the best in the world. The weak got trampled, the dead hurdled. It’s how we got to yet another amazing rocking tour in 2010.
Keep telling yourself that Ted while you’re onstage at the rib joint in Fort Smith.
In terms of business acumen, another of Ted’s minor failures was his marketing of Gonzo Meat Biltong.
Consider the case of the man always extolling his talent for shooting game and preparing sumptuous feasts off the results of his hunting skills, completely ineffective at selling packs of beef jerky to his core audience of self-sufficient he-man survivalism freaks.
Schools should augment brisk walks by also replacing goofy games during gym time with rigorous calisthenics, including jogging, sprinting, sit-ups and jumping jacks. Kids need to work up a healthy sweat and get worn out during gym class. Huffing and puffing is a good thing.
Every grade school and middle school in America should implement a brisk-walking club in the morning before school starts. Any school that doesn’t implement a before-school walking club for this coming school year should have all public funding rescinded immediately and the principal fired. I mean it.
The goal is simple. Every young person who graduates high school should be able to pass the U.S. Marines Corps fitness test.
=======
All of this requires effort, commitment, sacrifice and hard work.
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy or cheap. But we must do it. While America faces a number of economic and international challenges, I firmly believe there is no challenge greater than to improve the health of our young people. The blubberization of America must be reversed immediately.
=======
I am just a guitar player, but I worked up another serious sweat last night when I dragged my dead bear out of the Canadian wilderness. I suppose not everybody can perform such perfect hands-on physics …
In a brief interview with Ted Nugent, the newspaper’s music reporter asks, “If you had not become a musician, what do you think you’d be doing instead?”
Replies Nugent, emphasis mine:
I do so much as it is, musician, writer, speaker, hunting guide, law enforcement officer, off road racer, standup comedian, TV producer, gay rights advocate, Motown dance instructor, professional breeder, etc. etc., that I’m sure my passions would still dominate my American Dream without the music, though the thought of not rocking is rather silly.
The Nuge as a ‘gay rights advocate’ at Human Events, a publication of the far right:
Enter the debate over allowing homosexuals to openly serve in our military. What this issue boils down to is what may or may not happen to the military’s good order, discipline, morale, and unit cohesion if they are allowed to openly serve. Until someone can convince me that by allowing gays to openly serve in our military will improve our ability to wage and win wars, we should continue the 1993 law that does not permit gays to openly serve.
It is possible, I suppose, that a quietly subversive copy editor was having mischievous fun with Nugent re the ‘gay advocate’ thing.
