Early Ted Nugent! Good Lord, I hate that slimy shitstain now but I have to admit that this song was the first to turn me on to hard (ish) rock when it came out. That and Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf.
Love the GO-Go girls!
Journey To The Center Of The Mind
And the drummers hair! He was ahead of his time, that’s exactly how I wear my hair* now*!
It’s a shame what became of Ted. But that song is a great one; Ted’s guitar leads that song in the way that Jeff Beck’s guitar led some Yardbird songs.
Whatever became of that lead singer?
Nice. It’s pretty clear that early Nuge was hugely influenced by Beck. I think of that instrumental off Cat Scratch Fever that breaks into a Bolero beat in the style of Beck’s Bolero. I know I have read quotes, too, but can be motivated to find them because, ultimately, we are discussing Ted Nugent. Man, he’s a Red-State Mess.
The song is fun - so time-capsule-y.
I did love those first few Amboy Dukes albums! Especially “Migration”! It seemed SO psychedelic to my 17 year old head!
In fact, in 1969 I saw a concert that was a four-bill (remember those?): The Soft Machine, followed by the Amboy Dukes, followed by Vanilla Fudge, and headlined by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. What a show!
During an extended version of “Baby Please Don’t Go,” Nugent had an extra long cord on his guitar and jumped down into the audience and went eight or ten rows deep into the crowd for pyrotechnics.
Probably why I liked him longer than I should have!
Perhaps to make up for not having a cord at all in the linked video clip!
John Drake was a member of Nugent’s high school band, the Royal High Boys. That band eventually evolved into a band called the Lourds, and Drake was also a part of that.
By 1969, Nugent had fired Drake, replacing him with a guy named Rusty Day (who some of you may remember from his subsequent stint with Cactus).
Drake put together the John Drake Shakedown and played often through the first part of the 1970s. I know he was a part of the group in the late 1990s that re-started Hideout Records, a very influential Detroit label from the 1960s and early 1970s. I know this because I can highly recommend Friday At The Hideout: Boss Detroit Garage 1964-1967; it’s a very good compilation of Detroit garage rock that was originally released by Hideout Records back in 2001. (Some of y’all may not be aware of my love for garage rock; I have an enormous collection of 1960s and 1970s garage band recordings.)
Anyway, apparently being fired didn’t put the kibosh on their friendship: Ted has said in many interviews that they’re still friends and in touch regularly. Mr. Drake was a part of the Amboy Dukes reunion that happened back in 1999 (maybe? not sure of the year) and has since performed with Mr. Nugent fairly regularly; here’s a clip from 2011 of them playing a slightly sloppy but awesomely rousing cover of Baby Please Don’t Go, for example.
Okay, I’ve spent a good portion of the last hour listening to that album and as I read the liner notes realized that I had the record label wrong. Norton Records put out the comp CD, but it’s of bands that played at the Hideout and recorded for the label. Sorry for the error folks; it had been more than a decade since I last popped this one into my CD player.
Thanks Bo!