Continued from…

Nugent attributes his musical virtuosity and stamina to his drug-free lifestyle and strict hunting regimen.

"What is a great musical experience supposed to be? Is it supposed to be a flashback to a bad LSD night? Is that really what music’s supposed to be? No. Music is to celebrate the soul of man, the dynamic roller coaster that brings to mind the emotional upheaval and spirituality that is our day-by-day existence. How do you do that? By buoying your level of awareness. And how do you do that? By taking good fucking care of yourself. And how do you do that? By killing your own food and knowing where it came from and who blew their nose on it.

"It’s an interesting dichotomy because, even though I have this surplus of energy that is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse, I have to have seven or eight hours of rest every night. I don’t work out, I just rock ’n’ roll and chase shit up mountains and eat fresh flesh. I kill my own shit, gut it, butcher it, hang it, skin it, turn it into family sized portions, and celebrate it with a big burp and a fart."

When Nugent’s conversation shifts from himself and his music into other arenas, his rhetoric gets a little more questionable. In the last decade or so, Nugent has shared the limelight with a host of leaders of conservative political ideology. He has no qualms about hobnobbing with top dogs like Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Rush Limbaugh and others. Asked if his association with these figureheads implies that he is himself a hard-line conservative, Nugent claims that he is actually a liberal, offering up a baffling definition of the term that could cause some head-scratching on either side of the political fence.

"No, I’m not at all [an across-the-board conservative]. In fact, if you really analyze the true meaning of the word liberal, I am one. Quite honestly, if you wanna poison your body, be my guest. If you want to have butt sex, be my fucking guest. But don’t have it around me and don’t you dare try to tell my kids that it’s acceptable. Don’t tell me that homosexuals are normal. It’s plumbing abuse. But I have some good queer friends and we get along fine. But the minute your conduct becomes aberrant, illegal, or dangerous to the security of my family or my neighborhood, fuck you, you’re going down. In a real liberal society, you should be free to do as you choose, till your conduct affects my quality of life."

All of this braggadocio and bluster reveals an underlying morality and an admittedly different sense of spirituality.

"I’m not religious, but I’m extremely spiritual because when you open up a fucking moose and check out the plumbing, that was no accident, baby. That’s some serious, complicated shit going on there. And when you have to place an arrow in a vital organ, you feel the spirit of that animal. The very level of awareness that is essential to penetrate that defense mechanism of that beast teaches you that your footsteps have an effect, that your physical being affects the environment of that animal’s zone.

"The spirituality of the hunting endeavor is indefatigable. It’s intense man, just like my fucking guitar is intense. After I lay in a fucking swamp waiting for a caribou to come by and I’m all wet and wanna sneeze but I can’t or I’ll go hungry that night–after I kill it, I want to get a guitar and dance like a fucking wild man. There’s a real feeding frenzy of extremes in the silence of the hunt and the sonic bombast of the rock ’n’ roll maneuver, and they really enhance each other grandly."

Nugent’s philosophy seems to boil down to basic components of self-reliance, patriotism, and a shoot now, ask questions later approach to outside aggression. Though many may see this as an overly simplistic and excessively brutal approach, others would counter that this attitude hearkens back to the essential building blocks of the American way of life.

"My idea has always been that the whole world sucks, but America sucks a whole lot less," says Nugent. "I’ve traveled the whole wide world and it all sucks. It’s getting worse here, but it’s still the best place to live. But thanks to Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, Sarah Brady etc., we’re catching up.

"If evil enters your life, whether it’s at the playground, at the workplace, at the movie theater, or at home, do not fall victim to the sheeping of America. Do not become a coward and go running and hiding, crawling under your desk. When an evil perpetrator is threatening your life and happiness, shoot the motherfucker. When you run and hide, you’re a target and you’re actually encouraging copycats. Where people are defenseless, they die! You can’t do it–it’s too weird. It sounds like Michael Jackson, man."

Originally Published: August 19, 1999 • Metro Pulse

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