Uncle Ted

OL' UNCLE TED'S STILL UNLEASHING MOTORCITY MAYHEM!

by Tom Lounges

     Never in the annals of the rock ‘n’ roll pantheon has there ever been a
character quite so colorful, quite so outspoken, quite so passionate, quite
so opinionated, quite so educated and quite so much fun to chat with than –
TED NUGENT!

     Whether you like him or dislike him, you have to respect the man for
standing up for his beliefs, following his heart and speaking his mind about
things. And there are LOTS of things ol’ Uncle Ted freely speaks his mind
about these days!

      It had been about two years since I last heard from the Motorcity
Madman, (unless you count the cheery “Live It Up!” Christmas greeting he
left on my answering machine last December), and in that time the seemingly
impossible has happened. He’s gotten even busier and more passionate about
making every minute of his day count.

     “I’m just running around like a mad dog,” apologizes Ted for having
postponed our interview a few times. “Life is a shin and I’ve got it humped
to the ground. I’m all over the place...but I’m here and you’ve got me Mr.
Tom...so let’s get down to it!”

    At get down we did. The noble rock ‘n’ roll savage spoke of shooting
off 10,000 rounds of machine gun ammo with the FBI in St. Louis, crying at
a campfire along with a dying child, being a proud papa, a youth counselor,
and a hard working journalist, and oh yeah...we even spoke some about his
music!

     The last time we featured Nugent on our cove and in these pages (July
‘99), we focused primarily on his civic and charitable work as a drug and
alcohol counselor; a D.A.R.E. counselor; and his work with terminally ill
children through his Ted Nugent Kamp for Kids; among other things. So while
Ted continues to fight the good fight for America’s youth, this time out the
focus will be on his music, which the gonzo guitarist himself feels has gone
into the stratosphere.

     “I’m in my 50s and I feel like a damn teenager again,” shouts the
Wizard of Wango. “I can’t believe it! There I was talking about retiring a
couple years ago and now I can’t believe the thought ever crossed my mind.
I have a great band that I’m out kicking ass with and I’m out on the road
having the time of my life!”

     The renewed vitality of which Nugent speaks is more than rock ‘n’ roll
rhetoric. It comes screaming through on every note and every chord of his new
live CD – Full Bluntal Nugity – a collection of mostly classic Nugent songs
taped live on New Year’s Eve in his hometown of Detroit and released in June
on Spitfire Records. Performing with Nugent are bassist Marco Mendoza and
drummer Tommy Aldridge. (Spitfire has also just re-issued all of Nugent’s
former Atlantic titles – Penetrator, Nugent, Little Miss Dangerous and If You
Can’t Lick ‘Em, Lick ‘Em.)

     “This new live album makes what we did on ‘Live Gonzo’ sound like a
lullaby,” mused Nugent. “The reason [so many older songs are included] is
that we played them with so much energy and injected them with so much fire
on this last tour that they are completely updated. They make such a strong
statement about who we are now, that we felt we had to release them.”

     Nugent has spent most of this summer on a package tour with Lynyrd
Skynyrd and Deep Purple. “Purple’s already gone home. They ran naked to the
airport screaming something about some loud guitar player from Detroit who
put them in their place,” he laughed. “No, just kidding. They were great
to be out with and they’ve never sounded better. They’ve got Steve Morse on
guitar and the guy’s just a monster.”

     By the time you are reading these words, Nuge will have kissed the
family goodbye and returned to the road with Skynyrd (who will continue to
tour despite the recent death of member Leon Wilkenson). Along the way are a
few one off solo dates, including his August 23 gig at the Star Plaza Theatre.

    “We’ll be on our own when Skynyrd has days off,” he said. “I don’t know
what they want days off for, because that’s f*ckin’ weird where I come from.
I don’t allow days off for my band. I threaten my booking agent’s family –
‘I tell him, if you give me a day off and I’ll barbeque your children!’,”
he jokes. “But seriously, I don’t want to sit in a hotel room somewhere
watching cable, I want to be out playing my ass off every night. We’re on
tour through September and then hunting season starts and the whole world can
kiss my ass!”

        Nugent is in great spirits, having spent the day fishing (on one of
the lakes that inhabit his 2,000-acre Michigan spread) with a horde of tykes
whose bellys he filled with wild boar meat. “Rocco has a bunch of his friends
up here today and we barbequed a wild boar and then went fishin’ up a storm.
We just finished filleting all the fish so the kids can package them up and
take ‘em home. It’s been a blast!”

     Very much the family man these days, Nugent happily sings the praises of
his kids – Star, Sasha, Toby and Rocco – respectively by age.   “They’re a
lot like the old man,” he said proudly. “The whole family is in absolute
harmony with this conservation/stewardship lifestyle of hunting and fishing.”
For the last seven years, Sasha has been at the helm of the Ted Nugent
United Sportsmen of America organization, maintaining Ted’s website, handling
his e-commerce and designing the layout of his magazine, Ted Nugent Adventure
Outdoors.   Toby is part of his dad’s road crew. Rocco, as anyone who saw
Ted during his tour with KISS last year knows, is a budding young guitarist
in his own right.

     “I can’t wait to get him in the band,” mused Ted. “He’s one hell of a
little player.” Rocco has jammed “Peter Gunn” alongside his dad and when he
travels with him, Rocco often brings out Ted’s guitars on stage. “I love
having my family so involved in what I do. It means the world to me.”

     Nugent had a similar relationship with his own mother, the late Ma
Nugent, who wrote an advice column in The Illinois Entertainer during the
early ‘80s. “My entire passion and fire for life comes from Ma Nuge,” he
said. “She was the ‘live it up saint’ and I got all my fire, my
determination and my strong will from her. And my humor!”

     Like Ma Nugent, young Ted has long been a practicing journalist – he
currently has bylines running in 48 national publications – and for a number
of years now has published Ted Nugent Adventure Outdoors, a bi-monthly
glossy.

     And amidst all that, he somehow finds the time to write full-length
books – “Blood Trails: The Truth About Bow Hunting” and “God, Guns & Rock
‘N’ Roll!” – and produce an award-winning weekly television show, “The
Spirit Of The Wild,” which airs Tuesday nights at 11:30 p.m. on the Outdoor
Channel.   “[My wife] Shamane is in editing hell today on our TV show. She’s
involved in all of this crazy sh*t right along with me. God bless her,” said
Ted.

    “Yeah, I’m a regular multi-media mogul,” he laughs. “I like to run on
all cylinders. There’s so much energy coursing through my veins and there’s
so much that I like to do, I tend to just jump in and do it!”

     Nugent was shocked that “God, Guns & Rock ‘N’ Roll!” topped the New
York Times Best Sellers list the very week it came out. Although a year old
this month, it remains a top selling item both in stores and through
“Tedquarters,” his online merchandise site. “Hey, I’m just a guitar
player,” he says, “who’d have thought people would care what I had to say.
But I write from the heart, I’m a pretty smart guy and don’t bullsh*t
people.”

      Between his live tour dates and his seemingly endless string of book
signing appearances, Nugent has been busy putting the final touches on his
latest book – “I Kill It, I Grill It: Spiritual Barbeque” – targeted for a
fall release.   “It’s gonna be a combination of recipes and hunting stories
on how I got the meat I’m gonna tell you how to cook and why. The
conservation history, the conservation future and the spirituality of killing
your own food,” he said of his forthcoming tome about the woodsman ways and
means that he lives and breaths.

       With so much going on in his life, it’s a wonder Nugent has found time
to even think of a new studio album, let alone write a body of songs for it.
“My twin passions are hunting and playing guitar,” he said of his creative
process. “When I kill something, I go and play the hell out of my guitar and
I usually come up with song ideas.” After a particular bloody wild boar
hunt, he co-wrote some great songs with Jack Blades, a fellow alumni of Damn
Yankees. “There’s a song we wrote together that will probably be the title
track of the next album. It’s called ‘Crave,’” he said. Ted teases that
album may feature the raucous live version of “Kiss My Ass,” which was
originally intended for Full Bluntal Nugity.

     “It’s hard to say for sure what will be on it right now though,” he
said. “I’ve been writing my ass off lately. There’s a song I wrote called
‘I Won’t Go Away’ and one I wrote for my wife called ‘Only Forever’ that is
so damn beautiful I want to puke. I have more than enough songs written [for
an album] and for the most part they are grunting, snarling grinders. The
other night I wrote a pounding song called ‘My Baby Likes My Butter on Her
Grits,’ that I think surpasses the infectiousness of ‘Cat Scratch Fever’.”

     Nugent proceeds to vocalize the riffs and then after the melody is
swirling around my head, proceeds to sing the lyrics – “You know my baby
likes my butter on her grits/she can’t get enough of my jam/And when my
baby’s lookin’ for double trouble/she knows damn well where I am/You know my
baby likes my frostin’ on her cake/I put the caffeine back in her beans/And
when my baby lookin’ for double trouble I know damn well what she means.”

     “We’re gonna do that song in the show when we get to the Star Plaza
Theatre, so listen up for it and tell me what you think,” he invites. “It’s
a real mother f*#ker!”
     Sadly, Tommy Aldridge will be absent from the stage when Uncle Ted comes
to town this month. “A week before we were supposed to start rehearsals for
this tour, I got a call from Tommy and he was almost in tears,” explained
Nugent. “Following the 160 dates he did with me last year, Tommy immediately
went to Europe with Marco and played his ass off with Thin Lizzy. Tommy
Aldridge gives 100% every time he plays and he never stopped. He went from
one tour to another with no down time and he wound up ripping his rotator
cuff (in his shoulder). The guy can not play drums for the rest of the year.”

    Sitting in for Aldridge and doing an amazing job is 21-year-old Tommy
Coufetos Jr., the son of one of Detroit’s classic Motown sax blowers who also
used to play with Junior Walker & The All-Stars.   Nugent had met the dynamic
young talent only a few days before learning of Aldridge’s injury when he was
cloistered with him in an Ann Arbor recording studio recording a song for a
film project.

     “I’d gotten a call from Alto Reed (from Bob Seger’s band) who is now a
music director for Jeff Daniels the actor,” explained Ted. “Daniels wanted
a bone-crushing Detroit rock ‘n’ roll song for a soundtrack, so naturally
the Bat phone rang in Ted’s cave. Tommy and Marco weren’t around to play,
so I called up (former Brownsville Station bassist) Michael Lutes and Alto
said he’d call in a kid who had been playing for the last two years with
Mitch Ryder.”   The kid turned out to be Tommy Coufetos.   “We did a song
called ‘Comin’ Down Hard’ for the soundtrack that’s just a stone cold
motherf*cker,” he added.

      “Anyway, this kid is just f*cking amazing. The dynamics of his
playing, his chops, the cornucopia of licks he uses. I told him that he has
no business being that amazing and only being 21-years-old,” said Nugent.
“I’m very concerned about Tommy Aldridge and I hate him not being able to be
here with us, but I know that God must love me, because He sent me this kid
and bailed my ass out.   In fact, I think I heard Him say – ‘You’ve managed
my deer herd so well, I’m giving you another break you asshole!’   Can you
believe it, Coufetos learned our whole set in a week’s time. He mastered
twenty songs in just seven f*ckin’ days. Every fill and every accent. It
was as if he had played those song for ten years. Even ‘Stranglehold’ which
has a bunch of spontaneous and uncharted accents, he had them all down to a
‘T’.”

      Coufetos and Mendoza melded perfectly and Nugent chatters on about how
every show on this tour has been electrifying. “Before every show we are
giddy. We run around making animal noises and sh*t. We’re like teenagers
getting their first piece of ass ,” laughed Ted. “That energy spills out all
over the stage.” Those Nuge fans unable to catch Coufetos on this tour, will
be able to see the magic Ted speaks of on the Full Bluntal Nugity: The Video
which was taped during the course of this summer’s tour, which will feature
most of the songs on the live album, plus plenty of others.

      The audiences feed off of the band’s energy in some weird and wild
kinetic sense. “My audiences have always been good to me,” said Ted, “but
lately they are responding in an almost spiritual way to more than just the
‘Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang’ and ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ stuff. They are
suddenly reacting that same way to a song like ‘Fred Bear’, which means so
much to me. I can’t tell you how wonderful that makes me feel!”   Ted said
he chats with his fans for a minimum of 15-minutes every day on the “Talkback
Board” on his website (www.TedNugent.com). It’s a ritual he does even when
on the road via his laptop.

     A primal force drives Ted Nugent and that is readily reflected in his
music. It’s that force that has enabled him to remain an original and unique
entity in a business filled with so many wooden decoys (to use a hunting
analogy) and what has allowed him to survive and thrive amid ever changing
trends and styles for four decades.

      “I don’t ever think about image,” he concludes. “I don’t wear loin
cloths or shoot my guitar with a flaming arrow or ride a live buffalo on
stage because I think that is the image I should have. I do that because
that is who I am. I do that because that is what Ted Nugent is all about –
on stage, off stage, on the road or at home. There’s no smoke and mirrors
with me. You’ve heard of reality TV, well f*ck that, I’m reality rock ‘n’
roll!   Brutal, raw and wild baby...it’s Uncle Ted at your service!”