The Legendary Ted Nugent by Robert Holland US 1982 PB

	£		20
	$		27

The Legendary Ted Nugent by Robert Holland US 1982 PB

Published by Omnibus Press/Savoy Editions

25.5 cm (10 inches) Tall by 18 cm (7 inches) Wide

96pp. Illustrated with black & white photographs

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Scarce hard to find book

Traces the career of the controversial rock guitarist who started with the Amboy Dukes to his outrageous solo career, and includes his outspoken opinions on music and life.

It gives the background and/or inspiration to a few of his songs, and includes an interview from the "High Times" five years earlier. There is also a fair amount of personal biography, including - of course - the Gonzo's opinions on various subjects. There is not a lot more to say about it, except that if you are offended by profanity, best read something else!

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Period Review

""The first mistake, according to Holland, is to file Nugent Heavy Metal. To see him in context he should be relocated to the more respectable pantheon of Bo Diddley, Little Richard, the Stones, Hendrix, and Iggy Pop. To Holland he is that very special artist, that very rare phenomenon, a true Rock'n'Roll star. An original, a one-off, a gargantuan elemental force that refuses to be bound by the vagaries of fashion. To hang an academic critique on him is as pointless as trying to "open an umbrella in the face of a 90 mph gale". Holland's vision of Nugent moves into Guy Peelaert's Rock Dreams territory where personalities are exaggerations. A screen onto which the collective wills of journalists, publicists, and fans, project their most lurid fantasies. How far or how accurately these fantasies actually reflect any real qualities in the music is open to question. Everything about Nugent is blown up to epic proportions—from his sexual rapaciousness and his appetite for raw meat killed by his own hand, to the raucous decibel-level intensity of his amplification. A volume as huge as his ego. "I am," he boasts, "totally the product of my own desires." As if Rock can only be defined by mock-heroic excess, can only be experienced through the senses, must totally by-pass reason. "If you can't take a bite out of it—it doesn't exist."

Neither Nugent nor Holland see any possibility of evolution beyond that crude caricature. They see the fault with New Wave as "too many of the Punk Rockers THINK about what they're doing." To declare "No more heroes" is sacrilege. Rock'n'Roll to Nugent/Holland IS heroes. They allow no place for subtlety, objectivity, analysis, or lyricism. The only permitted language is the no-quarter, over-the-top speed-freak hyperbole. Yet Holland states his case remarkably well, albeit in twelve foot neon lettering. He commandeers allusions from every-which-where. Nugent represents himself as an all-purpose, larger-than-life traditional electronic frontiersman hero. He owes a debt too, to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan.

Not that this 'tooth fang and claw' legend is without substance, far from it. Nugent lives wide screen. He's played in bands since age ten, and stories are legion; urinating over a Nun, jacking-off in a prison cell, massacring elk with bow and arrow, hanging out in the Motor City Madness of the Detroit Hard Rock bands MC5, Stooges, Mitch Ryder and Shadow of Knight. He played support for Beau Brummell's and the Supremes as part of the psychedelic Amboy Dukes (promoting their hit Journey To The Centre Of The Mind); and made his come-back solo set with Zappa producing."

SOUNDMAKER

Used but not abused condition

P&P UK £3.40 Overseas at cost