Ted Nugent Caricature

Ted Nugent Caricature, illustrated here backstage while on tour in 1977 with his 1962 Gibson Byrdland Guitar, age 29.

Nugent is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and political activist. Nugent initially gained fame as the lead guitarist of The Amboy Dukes, a band formed in 1963 that played psychedelic rock and hard rock. After playing with the Amboy Dukes, he embarked on a solo career.

His Gibson Byrdland, designed with the input of guitarists Billy Byrd and Hank Garland (the name is derived from their surnames), was introduced in the mid 1950s as one of the company’s first “thinline” hollowbody models. Nugent’s preferred Byrdland configuration is a spruce-top model with a Florentine cutaway. It’s known as “Number 4” – Nugent numbers his Byrdlands sequentially, and the first three were lost in a fire that destroyed an Amboy Dukes trailer.

The Motor City Madman was born in Redford, Michigan and lived in Illinois during his teen-age years. The first lineup of the Amboy Dukes played at The Cellar, a teen dance club outside of Chicago in Arlington Heights, Illinois, starting in late 1965, while Nugent was a student at St. Viator High School.

After the breakup of the band, Nugent settled down on a ranch in Michigan in 1973 and signed a solo record deal with Frank Zappa’s DiscReet Records label and recorded Call of the Wild.

During the middle 70’s, he recorded three multi-platinum albums: Ted Nugent (1975), Free-for-All (1976) and Cat Scratch Fever (1977).

In 1989, he joined the supergroup Damn Yankees, with Jack Blades (bass/vocals, of Night Ranger), Tommy Shaw (guitar/vocals, of Styx) and Michael Cartellone (drums). Damn Yankees (1990) was a hit, going double platinum in the U.S., thanks to the hit power ballad “High Enough”.

Nugent has starred in his own outdoors television show on the Outdoor Channel, named after his popular song “Spirit of the Wild”, since 2001.

Top Hits: “Journey To The Center Of The Mind”, “Strangehold”, “Cat Scratch Fever”, “Free For All”, “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang”, “Wango Tango”, “Motor City Madhouse”, “Paralyzed”, “Great White Buffalo”, “Fred Bear”, “Storm Troopin”, “Yank Me, Crank Me” and “High Enough”.

He is married to Shemane Deziel, whom he met while a guest on Detroit’s WLLZ-FM, where she was a member of the news staff. They married on January 21, 1989. Together they have one child, son Rocco Winchester Nugent.