Great Moments on Video №12: Ted Nugent - Stranglehold

(DTE Energy Centre, Detroit, July 4, 2008)

Ted Nugent – Stranglehold

(DTE Energy Centre, Detroit, July 4, 2008)

Yes, this is most definitely a genuine Great Moment on Video as much as any other I’ve written about, but I think it should really work in tandem with the Roger Waters performance (#11) — as two diametrical opposites that are also two sides of the same coin. Although I have little time, and even less respect, for both extreme leftist nuts like Roger and ultra-conservative braggarts like the Nuge when they start propagating their views, I do have plenty of time for both of them when they get carried away by their music. In fact, isn’t it rather delightful that Animals and Cat Scratch Fever were both released in 1977? They work pretty damn well next to each other. (Heck, they complement each other - the way I remember, Mr. Waters just plain forgot all about cats on his album!)

The one thing I really find odd about «Uncle Ted» is that, by all means, I should have liked him more when he was young and had a full mane of jungle hair on his head, not to mention was just a little more concerned about simply playing his guitar than opening his big mouth. Of course, his views on life had always been more or less the same — he didn’t grow up in a strict military family for nothing, after all — but it wasn’t really until the Obama years, I believe, that his fame as a self-appointed spokesman for the Tea Party began truly eclipsing his status as a musician. Ironically, it might have been those very years when he actually reached his peak as a musician, or, at least, a certain type of middle-aged peak. Submitted for your approval: this particular performance of ‘Stranglehold’ from a very special Independence Day show (held on my 32nd birthday, incidentally, though I do not draw any direct correlations here).

I probably would not recommend getting the entire Motor City Mayhem DVD from which this performance is taken. It is predictably filled with cheesy, extravagant excesses (such as Uncle Ted ripping through ‘Star Spangled Banner’ with a buxom bikini-clad dancer breaking through a birthday cake, etc.) very much in the vulgar style of Uncle Ted’s orange-haired friend, as well as lots of occasionally funny (it has to be admitted that Ted does have a genuine sense of humor), but far more often obnoxious banter and braggadocio. But snippity-snippity-snap, and it is perfectly possible to cut the whole thing into ribbons and fish out quite a few moments of utter brilliance, the most memorable of which is predictably ‘Stranglehold’, the song that launched Ted’s solo career and still remains his primary visit card when it comes to assessing his sheer talent as a guitar player.

It is easy as heck to snicker at that opening "FREEDOOOOOOM!" which was never part of the original song and, in Uncle Ted’s mind, probably has more to do with the buxom bikini-clad dancer than any truly noble purpose. But ‘Stranglehold’ is indeed about freedom, and not just lyrically — its guitar melodies take a bit of everything, from blues to jazz to Indian ragas to heavy metal, and when I hear and watch Ted ripping through all those idioms, I cannot help but forget about Ted Nugent, the alt-right asshole, and get inspired by Ted Nugent, the unique master of mind-blowing guitar soundscapes. I wish I could get this precise kind of inspiration from somebody nicer — but it looks like this precise kind just has to come from assholes.

In a way, Uncle Ted’s entire essence is expressed in that marvelous sustained note he holds from about 2:07 to 2:20 into the performance — capping it off with a dashing, Errol Flynn-worthy resolution and that pose he assumes at the end in a WORSHIP THIS, MOTHERFUCKERS! gesture. It is some very cheap, very American rock’n’roll showmanship, for sure, one thing the guy has in common with both Prince and Eddie Van Halen. But one thing you cannot deny is that he did sustain that note, and he sustained it perfectly — and it was not merely to show-off, because this is that precise little bit in which ‘Stranglehold’ implants its very soul, and if you hunt for various live versions of the song, you shall find out soon enough that it is not on every night, not at all, that the Nuge is able to carry it off so well.

Most people who do not find it below their level of dignity to listen to Ted would probably pinpoint that the right way to enjoy the guitar fireworks of ‘Stranglehold’ would be to hear them the way they were sent off at the time when the song was written — way back when Ted had longer hair, fewer clothes, far more caveman-ish stage behavior, and far less political bullshit on his back. His guitar tones and manner of picking also used to be rawer, scratchier, and nastier, as on this 1976 performance from Rockpalast, or this one from a 1978 broadcast of the Midnight Special. But while I can appreciate the oh-so-Seventies’ raw grit of that guitar, my biggest problem with «classic live Ted» is precisely the theatrical emphasis on his wild, disheveled appearance, which cannot help but interfere with his playing. There’s a bit too much running, jumping around, and pulling crazyman faces to properly give his best songs what they deserve, music-wise.

Compare, then, this particular delivery of ‘Stranglehold’, which is about 90% pure music-making and only about 10% showmanship. Once he’s done accepting praise and wagging his tail (literally!) around 2:33, it’s all about delivering the goods on one of the most melodic and exciting solos to come out of the entire hard rock genre. I don’t think he makes even one mistake there, with perfect pitch and tone all around and a truly loving attitude to them old "bends and wobbles" (I think it was Robert Fripp who once eulogized Robin Trower as "one of the very few English guitarists that have mastered bends and wobbles... the rare English guitarist who has been able to stand alongside American guitarists and play with an equal authority to someone grounded in a fundamentally American tradition..." — well, here you actually have somebody grounded in a fundamentally American tradition!). One notable feature of Ted’s playing has always been the smooth flow of his melodies — he is a great master of seamlessly stringing together melodic phrases, in sequences that make perfect aesthetic sense, much more so than Eric Clapton, for instance, who usually has to stop and pause every once in a while (actually, I think Ted’s only worthy competitor in that respect is Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers); and I’ve rarely heard him play smoother than he does here, on this particular version.

In keeping with this «music-over-wildman-image» preference, the camera people spend much more time on Nugent’s fingers than they ever did in the 1970s, when they were so much more naturally attracted to his pants (or, occasionally, lack thereof). Now we can actually appreciate the mechanics behind all those marvelously melodic bends and wobbles, or little bits of almost spidery texture-weaving (around 3:05, for instance), or the effortless and slightly startling temporary transition into Eighties hair-metal mode around 4:22 (I think he picked that bit up relatively recently — it obviously was not part of the song in the 1970s) which only lasts for about twelve seconds before giving way to more traditional patterns. Most of these bits sound and look classy — almost bewilderingly classy for a guy who, just an hour ago, was slobbering over a near-naked girl dancing inside a birthday cake. But whaddaya know? This is America, the land of Ted Nugent-approved contrasts.

And each time I marvel at the nimbleness of these fingers, at the creative bluesy juiciness of all that controlled feedback, I can’t help but remind myself that it is the same combination of the ideas of freedom restrained with discipline that creates these colorful, inspired lines and all the confident bullshit that Uncle Ted is regularly unleashing on the world through various forms of public media (and we haven’t even mentioned most of the lyrics on his LPs from the past thirty years or so, which make both of AC/DC’s lyricists sound like St. Augustine in comparison). In the proverbial words of Frank Zappa, "shut up ’n play yer guitar", Uncle Ted, which, luckily, he mostly does on this performance, leaving his old pal Derek St. Holmes to deliver the verses (Derek does a decent job, by the way, but he always tends to be eclipsed by the Nuge to an even greater extent than the late James Dewar was eclipsed by Robin Trower).

I cannot even say that ‘Stranglehold’ is a particularly great song; its much-lauded main riff feels like pretty standard early-to-mid-1970s hard rock fare (I think that Mountain’s Leslie West already played in the same style around 1969), its vocal melody has no hooks (not even a chorus!), and essentially it’s just an excuse for a funky groove and that extended solo. But whoever, upon watching this (or, in fact, any other) performance of the song, would insist that there is absolutely nothing special about the Nuge sweating out that solo over that funky groove, probably does not at all get hard rock as an art form, which it can very well be in the hands of a true master — or, alternately, is every bit as much of a liar as Uncle Ted himself in one of his Covid-related rants.