TED NUGENT SHOOTS UP!

TED: .. .but if I don't I can usually., .as soon as they run, I can get a bead on "em. It's kinda tough with a pistol, ya know.

CREEM: I usually just sit there and let the dog run "em back to me...

TED: Right, do the big cottontail circle. CREEM: 1 guess you're something of an outdoorsman, then...

Totally..Rock & roll and outdoors, period.

There was something in Rolling Stone about a squirrel-shooting contest. ..

Yeah, that was a little blown out of proportion. They put in there that I hit a squirrel at a hundred yards with a bow and arrow. That was garbage! I got more squirrels than anybody else did, and I'm really good with a bow and arrow, but not a fuckin" squirrel at a hundred yards. I can shoot a squirrel maybe 50 percent of the time at 25 yards, but I prefer big game. Deer, and elk...

There's an apocryphal story in the town I went to high school in — Loogootee, Indiana. Seems there's aplace outside of town where they cut into the hillside so the road could go through, and there on the rock face it says —

In white letters...

"Amboy Dukes," and a peace sign...

/ did it, in, 1968. We were probably en route somewhere.. .we had a limousine, and we used to stop and, paint our name every where we went. I was only 17, at the most 18.

We saw something in Record World \ about an attempt on your life in Spokane...

The press has a tendency to take an interesting fact because...I lead an exposed life. I'm on the road all the time, and even when I'm home I do out-of-the-ordinary things. I hunt with bow and arrow, I've got a big farm, and I spend my time in the outdoors. So the little incidents that occur in my life get to the press and they overreact to them. For instance, they said that I don't believe in drugs, booze, and sex before marriage. Well, for my own personal preferences, I don't drink and I don't smoke dope. And as far as fucking goes, I'll fuck everything this side of a nun. As far as that being assassinated, I don't think there is any equation between his presence with a weapon and my presence on stage. I think it was just an individual human on the prowl, and he happened to have a gun with him. Then he exposed it in the audience — not directly at me, I think directly at. ..at just somebody in the audience.

Ted's do-it-yourself billboard: Mary Wells couldn't have said It better.

And after all that, we read that you had hired a Sherman tank for your next

gig-

That I did. It got around to the Epic people, and they jumped on that, and they rented me a fuckin'tank. And I just drove it around the parking lot and offended people.

I could see how, in a place like this [the Indy Convention Center) you could just drive it in next to the stage and climb out...

And for an encore, just floor it into the fuckin" audience.

That would be heavy-metal.

That's what it would boil down to...

We could tie that in with something I read a while back which said that Michigan heavy metal music was measured in "megadeath capability" instead of decibels...

Yeah, thanks to me.

I'd have to say that tonight's set, if not the loudest I've ever heard, was damn close. The only band I've seen that works even close to this volume is Grand Funk.

I would hate to be compared to Grand Funk. Not that I think they're bad — I think they've progressed immensely and are a pretty good band now. But their heaviest song would make a nice down for our set. It would make a nice groovin" spot for our set. I think that when we get up, there's no

I'd rape a nun if she got in my way.

bands, no songs, that can fuckin" get up there with us.

How was tonight's set? Was it a good set, an average set for you?

It was an average set, because it was, "Ted, go up on the stage and do thirty minutes." It was like rape...I mean, you don't fuckin'work on it, you don't whisper in nobody's ear, you just jump up there and stab "em. But that's cool too — for thirty minutes I just drop the fuckin" hammer. I prefer doing like sixty minutes and getting a real nice communication thing going. Because that's what the music is, it's an ultimate communication, sex being the other ultimate communication.

If you were to stretch your set out, would you just play more of the same or would you find time for a little quieter spot?

There's nothing in the set that's quiet. You might have noticed that within the structure of a lot of our songs there's ups and there's somewhat mellow spots. Now mellow — when I think of mellow, I think of sleep. Call "em churning spots, the somewhat calm water before the next rapids. I believe in extremes. In fact, we do a couple songs that really portray my feeling for extremes. I mean, the song is up, but then it comes down to a point where...the groove is still there, but I swear to God you could probably whisper sweet nothings to each other.

I was thinking in terms of, say, Blue Oyster Cult, who'll do "ME 262" and then a "Last Days Of May."

TURN TO PAGE 67.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 36.

I like stuff like that, but we don't do nothing like that now. I've got a bunch of songs that are like that, but unfortunately — and I think it's a part of the whole fervor of the organization — we don't pursue those tunes as much as we pursue the rock & roll type stuff.

If that's the kind of mood you're trying to get...

If someone wants to stay home and be mellow, they can turn on a record. But if they want to go out and do it, they come to my concerts.

That's what I'd always heard. This is the first time I've ever seen your set, and people said, like, "You're going to see him? He's gonna go shit-crazy, he's gonna destroy the place!"

There's a void in peoples" lives nowadays. What do people do? Cruise around — they don't walk, they drive — they don't have to get their own food, they just go down to the store and yank it off the counters...don't even have to cook it if they don't wanna, they just pick up the fuckin" phone. They don't have to go out and see what's goin" on, they just turn on the goddamn radio.,, and you know, they're not doin" nothin"! And they don't plan on doin " nothin "! There is no legitimate avenue for displaying the necessary aggression and necessary violence in the world today. I display it by hunting, and by being on stage and force-feeding this stuff. And people want it, they need it...it's a mandatory substance.

Especially in this part of the country.

That's why there's so many fuckin" murderers and rapists and burglars and c' iff like that runnin" around. Because there is no avenue for exercising positive violence. It is violent for a cougar to go out and catch a young fawn and eat it. It's violent, but it's not wrong. It's totally right. There's an air of violence to me going out with a bow and sneaking up on an elk and sticking him through the heart, but it's not wrong. It's necessary, it's part of the human structure, So meanwhile, nobody else has got this release. There's nothing for anybody else to do unless they hunt, or they herd fuckin" Angus down the chute and slug every one of them for 40 days in a row. But then they get a bent personality anyhow, so...we aim to close that gap.

And heavy metal is at its strongest through the Midwest and South probably because of this aggression...for example, there are 14,000people Here tonight, but Genesis came to this very hall and sold 1800.

We're street music. We're city music. There's no violence in the country. Fuckin "farmers don't get it on. They "re out there, they gotta dig the ground, they gotta go slop their hogs, they gotta build a fence, they gotta do things, they gotta work, they gotta strain themselves. City people don't strain. . .they don't know what it fuckin" means to work. They just slop themselves behind their desks and vegetate. And I'm not saying that's wrong...I'm saying it's ultimately wrong, but unfortunately there's not much room for ultimates in this society, because we're out of proportion now. There's too many of us, so there's gotta be people to sit down and try to organize the misevents.

Are there any original Amboy Dukes left in the band?

No. The funny thing is, I've recorded a total of like nine albums, and there's been some change in every one of them. Even from the very beginning, I was just striving for a certain thing, a clean, driving, stronghold music. And if someone didn't want to pursue that same type of thing, I just didn't want "em around. No offense to the guys who didn't want to do it. I just did.

It's definitely a high-energy trip?

I should have coined that fuckin" phrase, should have put a patent on that back in "62.

You were doing this in "62?

Fuck yeah, same thing since puberty. It's just today's version of that. Back then it was Stones music, a little bit faster, a little bit louder. ..the Yardbirds,

some Beatles, Elvis, Duane, Lonnie Mack, stuff like that.

And it all comes down to a carload of high school kids driving along U.S. 50 with a case of beer, hearing that rock and saying, "They must be crazy, we gotta go see "em."

It all kinda ties inr doesn't it?

What makes Detroit bands the way they are?

Dirt...a lot of dirt, a lot of blood, a lot of fun. You wanna see the ultimate rock show? Tomorrow night in Detroit. I don't think I'm biting off too much when I say that every mad, diseased, escaped dog and motherfuckin" curlerswine whore will be there rooting for their hero Ted. They could have fuckin" crocodiles in front of the stage and those fuckers would kill "em, eat "em, and charge the stage. They wouldn't care.

I thought the crowd here was pretty close to the animal level.

These people down here are definitely rock & roll children, they're definitely livin" it up. But compared to Detroit, sorry. Detroit would devour them. Devour them! You ever been to a Detroit concert?No? Forget it.. .hang it fuckin" up. See what we did tonight? Multiply that by ten. That's what we're gonna do tomorrow night. Literally, if the guy at the mixer all of a sudden lost his mind, he could kill people. That's how much power he will have at his disposal. We have something like 15,000 watts per side, not including monitors or anything like that. It's gonna be fun. Those fuckers will be puking blood by midnight. We'll walk onstage, they'll charge that stage, they might lift it up and carry it across the fuckin'river. It's a madhouse. Ask any band, ask the Who, ask Zeppelin... they'll tell you where the madhouse is.

Keith Moon destroyed a Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan...drove a Continental into the pool and did $24,000 worth of damage altogether.

I can dig it. We've leveled a few in our days. Those times are all over though, we won't do that kind of damage anymore. I was never caught ...we burnt down a high school in "69, almost destroyed the whole fuckin" school. I was definitely off the wall in my youth. I'd rape a nun if she got in my way. Livin" it up never hurt nobody, except guys thattried to hurt me.

I killed a couple guys who were tryin'to hurt me.

Are you that much into self-defence that you have your gun or your knife or your bow with you and ready all the time?

I believe in justice. I believe that if someone attempts to take my life and fails, I have the right to take his. And I did one day — I killed two guys. It was

in Detroit., .they had the nerve to pull guns on me and my wife and my little girl. I'm ready...very fast, real fast, don't do any drugs, don't drink, don't load myself dpwn. I could dodge a lightning bolt if Iso desired. That's what I believe life is about, right there. Not to the point where you have to beat your head against the wall just to go to sleep, but. ..you've got to be quick. When I'm on stage, if I see something coming at me — BOOM, I dodge that motherfucker. Like that gun out there, that sumbitch was lookin" right at me, and when I saw it leveled toward me, arid knew what it was. I knew the gun, the caliber, the length of the barrel I had everything but the serial number. Smith & Wesson Model 29, four-inch barrel, 44 magnum. And it was loaded. A nasty gun.

You didn't break your glass ball tonight...

That was a little trick I had back when Ted needed all the help he could get. There were like eight years when I didn't have any albums on the charts, and... '

And then there was the Heavy Metal Guitar Battle tour...

Did you see that? That was fun! It wasn't a battle, it was just jam sessions, y "know? And that's all it was, music and comm unication.

It seems that the new album is the first time that the stage act has begun to be captured on a studio record...

It's close. ..that will never happen. But it's a reasonable facsimile. It's like trying to...I don't know, it'd be like imitation sex or something. You can't get the same thing on record as...you can't get the same communication on phone as you can face to face. Live you can touch "em. Live you can turn "em way the fuck up or come way the fuck down...preferably way the fuck up. That's about it.

(Reprinted from Gulcher.)