Everybody knows that Ted Nugent is a madman. To suggest that his attitudes about race are complex is putting it mildly. And generously. Way back in 2003, we liberated a hilarious 1994 interview Bob Mack conducted with the Nuge for Grand Royal magazine.
Recently, the Nuge talked to the Detroit Free Press about some career milestones, including his time in Chicago during the winter of 1965:
“When my family moved to Chicago, I was heartbroken, but it helped create a fire in me. The Cellar was where everybody played, and the Shadows of Knight were the big bad dudes of town. The Chicago bands played well, but really white. It was too ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’; it lacked Detroit attack. Within weeks, my first edition of the Amboy Dukes owned that scene. We wiped the stage with the Shadows of Knight, because we played with the power drive so prevalent at the battles of the bands and BMF dances back in Michigan. That competitive spirit was in my blood.”
The Chicago bands were too white? Apparently, he’s changed his tune a little. Back in 1994, he waxed lyrically about “a REAL America with workin’ hard, playin’ hard WHITE motherfuckin’ shitkickers.”
Then again, in the next breath he defended his statement that he was “a bigger n—– than Russell Simmons will ever be” by claiming: “I meant that I’ve got SOUL, that I don’t resort to fuckin’ electronic drumbeats. And I listen to James Brown and Wilson Pickett and Sam and Dave. THOSE are n—–s! Those are fuckin’ GENUINE, SPIRITED African Americans.” So who knows how Ted really feels.
Speaking of White, did the Nuge ever bag that fabled White Buffalo? (It was a buffalo, wasn’t it, that he’s been after all these years?)
I do a lot of fishing–mostly catch and release. I don’t hunt but I’ve been watching the killing channel lately where they show the animals actually being shot. There are some assholes on there who shoot an elk with a bow and arrow,go to the bar for 4 hours and come back to get it after it slowly bleeds to death. And they openly admit this. But Ted’s show is just one kill after another. They don’t even bother to show him retrieving the harvest. It’s just Ted and his wife slaughtering one of God’s creatures after another.