Back in the mid-1960s, there were many bands however, very few could get to the top. And one band that was quite popular back then is The Amboy Dukes and what is really interesting about this band is that they became famous and are known for their only song Journey to the Center of the Mind. And people started recognizing the lead vocalist as well as the guitarist of the band Ted Nugent.
Later, the band broke up, and after that, Ted started his solo music career and which turned out to be quite successful. Now let’s forget the vocal part and just focus on the guitar as Ted is both vocalist and guitarist as mentioned.
In every niche, people get inspiration from others, and similarly, there must be someone Ted looks up to or looked up to when playing guitar, right? As a very good guitarist himself, there are people who look up to him and certainly, he does too. So who inspired him or who is his favorite guitarist ever? This is what we are here to discuss in this article.
Who is Ted Nugent’s favorite guitarist ever?
If you are Ted fan then you must already follow him on his YouTube channel The Nightly Nuge where he comes every night and talks about various news. Furthermore, a few months back on The Nightly Nuge’s 100th episode Ted answered several questions including his number one singer performer and of course his favorite guitarist ever other than him.
Ted was asked, “other than you best guitar player ever you’ve ever seen” and he replied, “there’s so many um I’m gonna go ahead and give it to Eddie Van Halen um because he was so diverse in not only his histrionics but his groove he had an unbelievable organic sense of rhythm in his delivery of not just exciting lead guitar parts but his grind of a grooving rhythm.” He further added, “the times I jammed with him and just listening to their records you can tell he had an unbelievable uncanny superman sense of rhythm beyond just his outrageous athleticism on the guitar.”
Notice how Ted said there’s so many? well, although he thinks Eddie Van Halen is the best guitarist ever, there are still many guitar players who are his favorites from. This other time Sammy Hagar asked Ted in an interview who he thinks is the greatest musician and he said, “I know what that question means, but music is so diverse. If I want a just pure grunt, just a pure sensual grind, I would give it to Keith Richards. He’s the most true musician rock star, he’s 24/7… he must have been drunk on every recording… but he’s in control. It’s a controlled slice [of] nasty primal burp, and I love that stuff!”
And when he was asked about his number one singer performer of all time in both interviews he picked James Brown. He said that he could not meet Brown but he feels like James is within him which reflects in his music. That is not all we also found out that the 73 years old musician can not only play guitar but can also play drum and piano but of course, he can’t play them as well as he plays guitar.
Furthermore, talking about his favorite guitarist Ted was not happy with Rolling Stone’s list of a hundred greatest guitar players. So why was he not happy with their list? well, it was because they did not list Derek St. Holmes’s name on it. You can still watch the video on Ted’s YouTube channel “tednugent” and this video was live-streamed a while back.
He even stated that they are lying he said, “How do you list the top 100 guitar players and not list Derek St. Holmes? How do you do that? You do that by lying,” Ted further added, “The same way you get Grandmaster Flash in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. You do that by lying. You have to be a liar.” Moreover, he even laughed at Rolling Stone’s list because they listed Joan Jett as one of the greatest guitar players but not Tommy Shaw. So we can also see from this video that Ted really loves his former rhythm guitarist Derek as well as Tommy Shaw.
