Ted Nugent Blames Hippies for Divorce, Abortion, Drugs and Crime

The Rolling Stone ^ | July 3, 2007 | Zachary Weiss

[DogByte6RER]

Ted Nugent Blames Hippies for Divorce, Abortion, Drugs and Crime

7/3/07, 2:22 pm EST

It was only a matter of time before Ted Nugent decided to rain on the Summer of Love’s anniversary parade. In an article from today’s Wall Street Journal titled “The * Summer of Drugs,” the notoriously opinionated guitar god took some time off his busy hunting schedule to blame “stoned, dirty, stinky hippies” for “rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes.”

* Highlights (including some choice words for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) after the jump:

* On the Summer Of Love: “Honest and intelligent people will remember it for what it really was: the Summer of Drugs.”

* On Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Mama Cass: “I often wonder what musical peaks they could have climbed had they not gagged to death on their own vomit.”

* On the hippie movement: “Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.”

* On life as the Nuge: “Clean and sober for 59 years, I am still rocking my brains out and approaching my 6,000th concert. Clean and sober is the real party.”

-- Zachary Weiss

[Walt Starr]

Nugent is a perverted pig. He should be on DEMOCRATunderground, not Free Republic.

[ConservativeMan55]

That’s awesome!

[budwiesest]

Ted Nugent couldn’t tune Jimi’s guitar.

[Mr. Blonde]

Just imagine what Jimi would have been able to do if he had Ted's view of drugs. We'd be discussing how great his latest record is instead of his tragic early death 37 years ago.

Maybe, or we could be mourning the serious downturn in the quality of his output. How many artists still going from that era are still putting out high quality work? Dylan? Even his is merely better than much of what else is out there today rather than equal to his records from those days.

Sometimes death has kept the artists from tarnishing their own record. How much different would the opinion of Zeppelin be if they had been touring and putting out records for the last 27 years? They were already headed way downhill.

[Little Bill]

You have that right Brother, if Uncle Sugar wasn't engaged in a plot to kill me at the time, he failed, I could have joined a commune, smoked some really bad dope and voted democratic.

[Riverman94610]

Exactly!I went to many of the early concerts circa 1966-1967.Souless they were NOT.
Try a billing of The Jefferson Airplane,Big Brother and The Doors all on one show,two sets each,for the grand sum of THREE whole dollars!
Sorry,Ted,I agree with you on the gun issue,anti-abortion,etc. but you can KEEP Cat Scratch Fever!

[RightOnline]

Ummmmmm.........not so fast. To say that Hendrix was “a far better guitarist than Nugent” is a purely subjective statement.

Their styles are/were vastly different, although both were strongly based in the blues (and gospel, on Hendrix’s account). Different paths. Hendrix went the psychedelic route, at least initially. Ted was always more of a powerhouse player; more in your face. Both wanted to shock, but in different ways.

Ted’s one hell of a guitar player, and that’s indisputable. He also has a lot more ‘taste’ as a guitarist than many give him credit for. Much of that is his own fault, courting the image of the loin-cloth-clad wildman with a bow and a Gibson ES-335. Still, to look down your nose at him when comparing him to Hendrix doesn’t hold up.

Truth is, I never really ‘got’ all the buzz about Hendrix until I finally listened to “Band of Gypsies”, IMHO his absolute finest recorded work. I was blown away by his work on that album, but never any of his prior work. He was heavy into effects, etc. and used them very effectively....but he just didn’t ‘speak’ to me.

Ted did. He was fun to listen to, you could shake your ass off and stomp your feet to his music, and have one hell of a good time. The boy can flat play.

By the way, I’m in my early 50’s and I’ve been slinging rock guitar since 1969, so I’ll say that I’m kinda qualified to comment.

[Riverman94610]

A lot of what you say about the black family and its demise is true but don’t idealize the so called good old days.
Read James Baldwin,Claude Brown,Malcolm X.etc.The black family was very unstable in the Forties and Fifties also.True,on paper the stats were much better than now.But listen to the old timers tell stories on hot summer nights on Southern porches.
Most defintely NOT a black Donna Reed world.

[ronnie raygun]

The summer of live and the hippie movement equals the homeless of today. Oh how fads come and go!

[Riverman94610]

I go back to 1966 when the dead used to rock the house with jams like Barefootin’,In The Midnight Hour and Spoonfull.
Hardly souless tunes.

[MarkL]

I used to get his magazine where he said they would drink African wine while on safari.

I suppose that it depends on what your definition of "sober" is...

IMHO, one CAN be sober, and have a drink. Certainly, one can have wine with dinner, or a cocktail, or a beer, without becoming drunk.

The other night, I had an ale with dinner, while watching a football game. Does this mean I wasn't sober?

Mark

[MarkL]

Ted Nugent couldn’t tune Jimi’s guitar.

I think that Ted would agree with the statement that Jimi Hendrix was in a different class as a guitarist than Ted. On the other hand, Ted CAN tune Jimi's guitar while Jimi can't, since both Ted and Jimi's guitar are still around, while Jimi's been in the ground for a couple of decades directly due to his abuse of drugs.

Mark

[dforest]

Probably true, but who is dead?

[Cymbaline]

Maybe, or we could be mourning the serious downturn in the quality of his output. How many artists still going from that era are still putting out high quality work? Dylan? Even his is merely better than much of what else is out there today rather than equal to his records from those days.

Sometimes death has kept the artists from tarnishing their own record. How much different would the opinion of Zeppelin be if they had been touring and putting out records for the last 27 years? They were already headed way downhill.

So it's better that they're dead then they survived to make bad music? I HOPE that's not what you're advocating...

[MarkL]

Gibson ES-335

Actually, it was a Gibson Byrdland, not an ES-335.

For what it's worth, that's normally seen as a "jazz guitar." Terribly prone to feedback at high volumes. For anyone who thinks that Ted's not an extremely talented guitarist, take a listen to some of his live solos. He actually uses the guitar's feedback as an effect, and you can even hear it on the studio version of Stranglehold.

The fact that he could control that guitar on stage, out in front of 8 Fender SuperTwin Reverbs (and extension cabinets) says a lot about his technical mastery of the guitar, even if you hate his music.

Mark

[Mr. Blonde]

I'm not advocating that it is a good thing they died. Just that our opinion of their body of work might be different if they had continued to make music.

Or as Barry puts it in High Fidelity, "is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?"

[Cymbaline]

I wish we’d had the opportinity to criticize Jimi, Bon Scott, John Bonham, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc, etc....

And I’m glad Pete Townshend didn’t die before he got old.

[Mr. Blonde]

I wish they had all stuck around longer, although to be fair to SRV his wasn't from drug abuse. And he is notably one of the few artists who got better after kicking his habit.

I would very much like to hear what they would be coming out with today had they survived, but the output of those who did has very much lowered my expectations.

I remember when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant released a CD in the 90's one reviewer declared it would sell well with little more than the two of them snoring for 45 minutes. And most of these other artists are in the same boat and I'm one of the ones who would be buying.

[upsdriver]

>>>>Cat Scratch Fever”

I thought he was singing Catch that Streaker.<<<<<

LOL! A friend of mine told me of a guy who called up a radio station and requested “Slow Talkin’ Walter” (Smoke On the Water) The dj couldn’t figure out what he was talking about until the guy sang those words.

[RightOnline]

Byrdland it is/was.....you are correct.