What was wrong with his music when you were a teen?
The same thing that was wrong with a lot of music that was around when I was a teen, and which is still around today: it's nursery-rhyme simple being treated as if it's literature. When it's angry adolescent driven, it's boring and ugly. Kind of like rap. Sorry if that offends you -- it's just always the way I've felt about mindless guitar-grinding three-chord "rock" where volume must serve as the major value.
Sorry, and I am a music snob -- complex music is something I admire and respect. The stuff that Nugent did, as I remember it, was the musical equivalent of making chocolate chip cookies. Not a lot of skill required or admiration earned other than general kudos for playing. On the other hand, the stuff that Santana, Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, to mention a few, were doing, was more like the musical equivalent of preparing a five-course meal. A lot more interesting, a lot more skill involved, and a lot more admiration from me, musically speaking.
I admire the heck out of Nugent and value him. In spite of the very bad 70s, and they were worse than we remember, if you want to know the truth! That's what his "success" as a rock musician indicates to me now, is that it was his ability to lead. Nugent is a born, inspiring leader with a message of God-fearing and just rebellion that I embrace and my family's traditions have embraced for as long as I can see back. It doesn't get much smarter, wiser, or better than advising open-eyed:
Be prepared to defy stupid laws and regulations wherever you find them.
Music snob me -- for all those seemingly long hours where I had to put up with his sh*t music blasting in late workhours because the guys I worked with thought he was so great, all those long minutes I cursed him under my breath when we could have been listening to something inspiring and cool ... well, with four words that follow he has COMPLETELY REDEEMED himself. I could kiss him:
Raise hell. Vote smart
That is our battle cry! God bless Ted Nugent and thanks God for blessing us with him. See my new tagline.