Nuggets from Nugent '05
There was a minor flare-up from Ted Nugent’s appearance at Gov. Rick Perry’s inaugural ball last week, because that rock-and-roll maniac wore a confederate-flag T-shirt and had fake weapons on stage.
Right or wrong? Not our call.
But surprised? Not us.
I found an old interview with him - largely unpublished, for some insane reason - in my many thousands of bandwidth-(or something)-hogging files. A victory for pack rats everywhere. I'm lookin at you, Choppe. There's a method to the madness.
Lemmetellya. The phone interview was like drinking out of a fire hydrant.
(and actually, the reason is probably that it wasn't as relevant two years ago. Just guessing.)
More below:
Ted Nugent is and always has been over-the-top rabble-rouser who delights in shocking people. And he told reporters he was restraining himself this time.
His 2005 tour set featured a bunker, air horns, automatic weapons on stage, and the Nuge himself screaming out the Pledge of Allegiance, and then shooting a 12-foot Saddam Hussein (rising up behind the amps) through the heart with a crossbow.
I interviewed him on the phone in January 2005 for a story about how he was playing a benefit in Crawford, where he lives, to help pay for the high school students there to go to Gov. Bush’s ' inauguration that month.
The Motor City Madman was going to play Gov. Rick Perry’s party there, along with ZZ Top, but cancelled at the last minute for health reasons. Even in 2005 he was vowing to get Perry re-elected. It’s on the transcript.
Choice cuts from the transcript, which I dug up today for nostalgia’s sake:
Describing his 2005 stage show (in a cackling, growling, laughing voice):
- He says that the introduction to the stage show, featuring Ray Charles’ recording of “America the Beautiful” is so powerful, that anyone who isn’t truly moved by its performance should "go back to Guatemala and re-learn to wipe your a** with your hand.”
- As Ray’s voice is slowly “decaying” in the last stanza, he comes “exploding” onto the stage with his Gibson guitar, howling, screaming “like an angry pterydactyl flying up the *** of some gay picnickers.”
- “We’re only five seconds into the show. I’m screaming the Pledge of Allegiance, challenging people to take off their hats, take the **** out of their lips and say it with me like they mean it. The stage is aglow with machine guns and bows and arrows and elk skulls and buffalo skulls, the air-raid sirens are going berserk.”
- “Our stage set is all sandbags, two dozens machine guns on stage … it’s a wonderful set but particularly in New York and Chicago, where my stage is a felony.”
On politics:
- “We’ll sell it out and raise the money they need, and they can go to Washington and say, ‘Hey, we’re the president’s neighbors and we’re putting our heart and soul into music. There’s a number of statements being made here… Number one, we have great local pride _ contrary to the hippie statement of the iconoclast editor and local (liberals) who wish that Japan would have taken over the world. … They’re one-flew-over-the-Michael-Moore-is-Cuckoo’s-Nest rejects. War isn’t the answer?! Yeah maybe we can tell the Jews that. Do you realize how retarded that is? So I’m here to say, pay close attention, it’s (that) war is the answer. It’s how we stop evil, ya ****in’ idiots.”
-“I’m just a guitar player… I am political every day because politics must be exposed and embraced and celebrated as the function of the We-the-People experiment in self government! Duh! Of course you’ve got to be political. Political is voting, political is caring, political is going to school and say, you know, the children who are graduating from this building should probably be able to speak. You might want to teach them how to write. That’s being political.”
Getting the picture?
Comments
"War isn't the answer? Yeah, maybe we can tell the jews that". The man is right in so many ways. He's just not "P.C." and that's like a breath of fresh air in this day. He tells it like it is and some just cant handle the truth anymore. Everyone's just too scared, soft, and spoiled. Which is exactly what's putting our country danger. Nuge for President! or at least Secretary of Defense. I dont think anyone with half a brain (course that leaves out militant islams) would screw with us then.
Posted by: Bruce | January 25, 2007 11:03 AM
I've never loved James McMurtry more.
Posted by: lush | January 25, 2007 1:45 PM
Okay,okay. Sometimes I gently remind our resident pack rat that her shoes, coats, yellowed papers, empty cups and other priceless possessions are spreading into the extra territorial jurisdiction of the office next door and that she should, just perhaps, rake them back in. Take a visual of our mad genius: Her desk was the inspiration for Akia. It has the homey feeling of a landfill, and I'm afraid the state will soon require us to get an environmental permit. If you needed to find something on it -- save for a spent Coke can -- you'd have to send in an expedition, and make sure the waist ropes are securely fastened. Now, I'm not coming at this as a white-gloved, nondesperate housewife. My desk is frequently a scattered mess, understood only by me. But I'm nowhere close -- not in the same league, not in the same zip code, not in the same continent where Brooks rules with her paper wad septer and empty box crown. Her desk is truly breath-taking, but then again, that might be last week's lunch item.
Posted by: choppe | January 25, 2007 3:51 PM
And the brawl begins.
I'm glad I'm still on the boss' good side -- I've got a soft spot for rides in her Miata.
Posted by: Em | January 25, 2007 4:43 PM
Yeah, well. I'm rubber, and you're glue. Everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.
Most everything else sticks to my desk.
- Signed, the Mad Genius
Posted by: Brooks | January 25, 2007 5:56 PM
Choppe,
Don’t forget about the cups in the break room and the miscellaneous glasses from home!
Posted by: Amy | January 26, 2007 2:58 PM