THE BEAST

Legendary rock veteran Ted Nugent spoke in a recent appearance on ‘Behind the Vinyl’ and recalled the early days of his career to talk about his songwriting process.

While discussing his effect and ability on the bass guitar, Ted gave an example to praise himself and revealed that the musical effect is just like watching the last days of the late Humble Pie guitarist, Steve Marriott.

Ted also claimed that Steven was such a talented musician that he could even do the things that even legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen could not.

Here’s the statement:

“Yeah, that’s a phenomenal old classic Fender Bass VI. It’s a Fender six-stringed bass from 1962, I have a ’62 and a ’64 that I got from a great man named Tony Dukes, and you should pursue who Tony Dukes was because he got [ZZ Top guitarist] Billy Gibbons’ first ’59 Les Paul, and he got me my first ’58, ’59 Les Paul.

Tony Dukes, God rest his soul, he got into the drugs and the alcohol, and he died too young, just like Steve Farmer, you know Steve Farmer, from the Amboy Dukes, died [on April 7 this year at the age of 71].

And there was a time when he was such a brilliant, nice man, but the more stoned and high you get, you lose that humanity. People who get pissed off when I say that, that’s tough shit, but the reason they get pissed off is that they’ve lost their humanity.”

He continued:

“The brain will never work as good after getting high as it did before you got high, and if anybody wants to argue with that, I’ll see if I can get [Aerosmith guitarist] Joe Perry to form a sentence for you.

And I love Joe, and I don’t mean to be mean-spirited, but nobody brings a quality of life to their family or friends when they’re high, period. Point being that I’ve always focused on the soulfulness of the music.”

He added:

“When I play the bass guitar on a song, it’s because as awesome the best players in the world have been at my side from, certainly, Rob Grange and certainly Marco Mendoza and Michael Lutz, and Jack Blades, I mean, they’re all phenomenal, more pure-musical than I am.

But I think that’s my gold card – I‘m effectively musical, but I’m also reasonably dissonant, you know what I mean? You can play perfectly, like, watch the last days of [Huimble Pie’s] Steve Marriott, it’s just a three-piece and he was playing that Gibson through a Marshall amp.

And can Eddie Van Halen do what Steve Marriott can do? Yes, but guess what? Steve Marriott did stuff that Eddie can’t do, and I’m not knocking anybody or trying to compare, even though I just did, but there’s an edge-clash thing to not trying to be perfectly musical.”

Click  here  for the source of the statement.