Q&A: Ted ahead

Kimberley McGee

Sunday, March 12, 2000 | 9:09 a.m.

Ted Nugent hit it big in 1977 with his top-10 hit "Cat Scratch Fever" and continues to perform his wild brand of rock to audiences more than two decades later.

On Friday Nugent opens for fellow '70s over-the-top rockers Kiss on their farewell tour at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

In 1989 Nugent found success with Damn Yankees, comprised of other aging rock stars Tommy Shaw from Styx and Jack Blades of Night Ranger.

These days Nugent is a dedicated family man to wife Shemane and their four children, Starr, Sasha, Toby and Rocco, who sometimes accompany him on tour and definitely hunt alongside their outdoor-activist father.

Recently the gonzo rocker spoke with the Sun from his car phone as he drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and into the winding streets of San Francisco -- which may explain the conversation's wacky turns:

Sun: What do you think of Las Vegas?

Ted Nugent: I usually like to run amok, like a city boy on a double dose of high, hard hornage. My wife and I like to indulge, stay up late and offend people.

Sun: What do you indulge in?

TN: Caviar (laughs).

Sun: How do you offend?

TN: Because I'm so damn cocksure that I'm a free American, and the inbred (wimps) of the world, they cower at the shadow of such a presence.

Sun: What makes you an upright citizen?

TN: My badge doesn't hurt (he's been a sheriff's deputy in Michigan since 1980). I'm upright because I not only acknowledge the existence of the Ten Commandments, which are posted in my home and posted on my soul, that's how I raise my children. So ... I salute working-hard, playing-hard Americans, who also live by these self-evident truths. What we see in the media on a daily basis gives cause for pause and reflection of the epidemic of inbreeding that has happened to our wonderful human species. I'm being facetious to some degree when I say the inbreeders cower in my presence. Probably 90 percent of the people in Las Vegas are working-hard, playing-hard Americans but they are out there wasting it on gambling adventure, or should I say a gambling misadventure?

(He laughs at his own joke, a high tittering guffaw.)

I live such a rural, a naturalistic life that the big city represents a quagmire of intensities that doesn't necessarily often enough represent the spirit, but more often than not represents the toxic underbelly of man.

With the prostitution or the gambling I just don't believe in any of that so I just go out there to celebrate the middle finger of defiance and rock 'n' roll to my heart's wildest dreams and then walk the streets and just check out the subhuman element.

Sun: Some have disagreed with your over-the-top political views.

TN: I invented the middle finger and I've never been afraid to use it, especially against hippies and dope addicts and Grateful Dead fans. That's pretty self-explanatory. No, I've always been a defiant son of a ----- with all the punks who thought I was unhip because I carried a gun and wouldn't take their poisons. Meanwhile Jimmy got high and Jimmy is dead, I went huntin' and I'm still Ted.

I'm on the board of directors for the NRA (National Rifle Association) for the sixth year. I've been a D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officer since the inception of that program. I represent, nationally, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Students Against Destructive Decisions, Big Brothers and Sisters. I've got a Ted Nugent camp for kids. I recently got a recording from a minister in Louisiana who used my life as an archer, a bow hunter, to identify how one's soul will go as does the mystical flight of one's arrow. Who is in charge of your life? Who is in charge of your arrow? And if Ted Nugent can defy the status quo of both camps, the far left and far right, somebody makes me king for a day.

I am, after all, just a big dumb guitar player. If I can figure it out ...

Sun: Why do you still perform?

TN: I crave it. It's way beyond the rock 'n' roll fantasy. It's the creative juice, white-water rafting, it's a celebration. And not only that, but I think the intense elements to my career that I've always, especially today, surrounded myself with are the world's greatest, dedicated, heart-and-soul virtuosos. I've got Tommy Aldridge on drums and the guy is just stupefying in his talent and spiritual dedication to his craft. It absolutely throws rocket fuel on the embers of Ted Nugent music. We play and it's the most primeval, primal scream, sonic-bombast fest you've ever dreamed of in your life. I just can't get enough of it. It's exactly today as it was in 1960. No difference at all except that I can do it loud and I can do it better.

Sun: Do you gamble?

TN: Getting up in the morning is gamble enough for me. I don't have any bad habits except scaring white people because I'm so damn alive. I've never touched cigarettes, alcohol, drugs. I used to chase women a lot, or rather let them catch me, and I've been a married man for 11 years now so I'm almost like Mother Theresa with a middle finger and a guitar.

Sun: Any words for your fans?

TN: Tell Las Vegas that they keep encouraging me. Every time I play there they give me such a wonderful, heart-slamming time. As long as they keep doing that I'm going to keep coming back because I really feel a spirit there, I feel a real attitude. All I've got to tell you in the year 2000: God bless the attitude.