June 11, 2002

9:13 AM

Salon spends time with Ted Nugent - love him or hate him, you gotta admit he gives an entertaining interview. Also, the man has apparently yet to meet the word that he couldn't spell more interestingly.
posted by GriffX (23 comments total)

Though Nugent writes in the first chapter, "Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians -- except for the occasional mountain lion steak."

I've always been a fan of Nugent, in spite of his ridiculous rock and roll costumes.
posted by insomnyuk at 9:30 AM on June 11, 2002

He may have avoided the drugs & booze, but he's severely afflicted with the most common of rock star maladies: terminal egomania. He could very well be the next messiah, but he still comes off as 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.
posted by groundhog at 9:49 AM on June 11, 2002

The Nuge is my hero.
posted by brand-gnu at 9:57 AM on June 11, 2002

Okay -- I used to be a vegetarian and my husband still is one, but "I got your whole foods right here!" reads the caption under a photo of a beaming Ted holding up the carcass of what looks like a rather large buffalo" cracked me up. But he needs to lay off "The Osbournes." He's just jealous he didn't think of that first. Hmpf.
posted by Insomniac at 10:17 AM on June 11, 2002

"the quality of your enjoyment, your quality of life overall is going to be based upon a desire to maximize your level of awareness, to be aware of the honest cause and effect of your daily activities."

Well said.
posted by homunculus at 10:24 AM on June 11, 2002

Ah, his Whiplash Bash concerts on New Years Eve at Joe Louis Arena were a blast. Right wing nut or not, you gotta love a guy who shoots deer and feeds venison stew to the homeless. On the PTA, too!
posted by adampsyche at 10:24 AM on June 11, 2002

Growing up, Ted Nugent was THE fantasy man for me. I beg, borrowed, and stole to see him play his guitar time after time. His concerts were legendary. I lusted after him for many years.

Then one day after I was all grown up I heard him speak.

All my Ted illusions were shattered. You see Ted never spoke much back then...just played his guitar. I should have been a little suspicious when he shot flaming arrows over the crowd's heads into a target but I was naive. Plus it was just about the greatest thing I'd ever seen.

But I must admit I still get tingly hearing "Stranglehold".

Come on , come on , come on , come on baby.......
posted by oh posey at 10:43 AM on June 11, 2002

A great interview! Sounds like an idiosyncratic, enigmatic, pretty wonderful person. Don't agree with him, but I admire his convictions and his kindness.
posted by Marquis at 10:46 AM on June 11, 2002

Okay. "Wonderful" is overkill.
posted by Marquis at 11:15 AM on June 11, 2002

What the hell does I breed my own wife mean?
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:46 AM on June 11, 2002

Ted's is always good for an entertaining quote. My fave: back in the 80's there was an MTV feature on him, and, of course, he was hunting, this time with a shotgun. Quoth the Nuge: "This shotgun and my guitar have quite a bit in common. A little wood, a little metal, an element of twang [cocks gun], explosively loud, and I'll be damned if I can't get my dinner with either of them." You gotta admit, the guy's got a pretty sharp mind. He makes his own connections. That said, he does harbor "I'm right, you're wrong. Period." syndrome. His mind is made up. Totally and fully. Arguments are futile. I'd hate to be his book editor.
posted by shecky57 at 11:59 AM on June 11, 2002

You have to say this for the guy -- he's completely consistent, even if he's a bit of a nut who seems to pay an inordinate amount of attention to Ozzy & Co. Great interview, but no better than you'd expect from the man who gave us "Wango Tango," one of the funniest songs of all time. "Pretend your face is a Maserati," indeed.
posted by diddlegnome at 11:59 AM on June 11, 2002

Ted's great moment in life was the guitar break in "Journey to the Center of Your Mind", especially the way it launches off that little pause. The guy never did anything smoother.
posted by Faze at 12:59 PM on June 11, 2002

I do like how, whenever Ted goes off about what a straight arrow he is with drugs, tobacco and alcohol, he never mentions all the diddling around he did when he was married the first time. Morality is relative when you're The Nuge, I guess.
posted by RakDaddy at 2:59 PM on June 11, 2002

Hmm, I guess I'm in the minority here because I have agree with Ted about 95% of the time - like his stance or not, he is a true conservationist (like most of us who hunt, camp and love the outdoors.) In fact, I think I'll have to thaw out a nice venison steak from last hunting season to toss on the grill tonight - my neighbors always love it when I decide to grill something at 2am while they're trying to sleep...but, damn, all of Ted's ranting made me hungry!

Sure, he's a bit on the gonzo side of things, but his logic is pretty solid MOST of the time...
posted by RevGreg at 4:22 PM on June 11, 2002

ummmm, hate him.
posted by aacheson at 4:28 PM on June 11, 2002

RevGreg - I can't say I agree with him on everything (or even most things), but I do agree with a few of his points on hunting and conservation. I don't hunt anymore, but you only have to spend time in South Jersey to realize that the deer population is completely out of control. When I was working on a campaign there a few years ago I saw ten road-killed deer in 1.5 miles of highway. Around there, the NJDOT cleans up road kill within three hours or so. Obviously, this also speaks volumes against the suburbanization of formerly rural space - a conservation topic Ted is strangely quiet on.
posted by GriffX at 5:03 PM on June 11, 2002

Griffx: the suburbanization of rural space would happen a lot more slowly without the death tax. Just a thought.
posted by insomnyuk at 5:55 PM on June 11, 2002

Morality is relative when you're The Nuge, I guess.

People make mistakes. Maybe he learned from it. Just sayin'.
posted by adampsyche at 6:44 PM on June 11, 2002

ironically enough, the first time i ever saw a joint was in a friend's garage at a party listening to "dog eat dog".

on a side note, if you ever get a chance to get your hands on Exodus doing "free for all" youre in for a treat.
posted by tsarfan at 7:05 PM on June 11, 2002

i've always thought the guy a total idiot. goes back to around '91 or so when i read an interview with him in eye magazine in which he said drug addicts, homosexuals, and single mothers should be lined up against a wall and shot. why anyone in the press gives this guy space is beyond me.
posted by dobbs at 7:35 PM on June 11, 2002

"Freerange chicken aint [sic] free and that aint no range," writes Nugent. "Chickens are incarcerated; some are more feces-pecking, deathrow toxic than others."

....

Do you know how they test to see if fish are edible? They take the whole, live fish and throw it in a blender. Then you are testing the brains, the eyeballs, the spine, the guts, the backbone. But I don't eat any of those parts! I only eat the meat. If you want to test to see if a fish is fit for human consumption, you should test only the parts that humans consume. The purity of the fish in the Great Lakes has increased dramatically since the 1950s. But then we hear all these scare stories about mercury levels in fish eyeballs. Who gives a shit? I don't eat fish eyeballs!

The guy makes just about the same sense as Ozzy Osbourne without any of the drugs ... you tell me how that's anywhere close to a good deal.
posted by magullo at 4:53 AM on June 12, 2002

Courtesy of The Onion:

Ted Nugent Talks That Way Even When Buying Socks
SAGINAW, MI—According to JC Penney men's-department sources, rocker Ted Nugent talks that way even when buying socks. "What color socks do I want? I want every damn color, plus a whole bunch of colors that don't even exist," Nugent told sales associate Jonathan Alexander. "Life is too short, man. Whether it's socks or shoes or whatever, you gotta bite into life like it's a great big ol' hunk of bison. Otherwise, you wake up and suddenly—poof—you're fat and old, and you never had any friggin' fun. And if you're not having fun, you may as well move to Iraq or Cuba or some other hellhole where there ain't no good times to be had." Nugent added that that's the way he sees it, and that if you don't like it, you can kiss his lily-white ass.
posted by homunculus at 12:32 PM on June 12, 2002