In early 1977 I got to see Ted Nugent at Newcastle City Hall . This was my third proper gig and despite what Ted eventually turned into it was a damn good rock show with Ted rampaging around the stage and playing songs like Dog Eat Dog and Free-for-all. At the end he left his guitar propped up against the amps feeding back like crazy before running back on and hitting the strings with his hand!
This was before the days of him only wearing a loincloth on stage or giving right wing rants but the crazy warning signs were already there! I remember an interview in the UK music press at the time where he was on the tour bus looking out at a snow covered landscape and banging on about how he could survive if the bus crashed by killing a sheep and wearing its carcass to keep warm!
It was also the first time I tried to take pictures at a gig but using an instamatic camera with a magiflash cube on top from row BB was never going to work – all I got was the backs of the heads of people in front of me!
I took the tour programme into school the following day and my art teacher took it off me to have a look and read a passage out to one of the other teachers – the one where Nugent described his music as “dripping with pussy juice” before asking the other teacher if he had any idea what it meant!!!!
Steve Gibbons band were the support act.
Setlist was probably something like
Stranglehold
Just What the Doctor Ordered
Free-For-All
Snakeskin Cowboys
Cat Scratch Fever
Wang Dang Sweet Poontang
Dog Eat Dog
Stormtroopin’
Hibernation
Motor City Madhouse
Hey Baby
Sweet Sally
Turn It Up
As the badge says “If it’s too loud, you’re too old!”
I was there, clearly remember the ‘ if it too loud you’re too old ‘ badges.
Thought it was 76 but I now to your knowledge and ticket stub!
I had a look on setlist.fm to see if he had toured the UK in 76 – he did but there wasn’t a Newcastle gig listed but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one! I also found out though that the Amboy Dukes played at the Club a Go Go twice. I then went off on a tangent and looked at who else had played at the Go Go and it’s not often I wish I was older but…
(thanks for your kind words btw)
I was there as a 14 year old. Didn’t even know who he was. My older sister got tickets and just told me he was a singer & guitarist. Having seen Alex Harvey, Rainbow Rising and lots of other great rock bands there I wasn’t really looking forward to sitting thru a couple of hours of some crappy Ralph McTell type folk singer. How wrong I was. Several days of partial deafness later my mother took me to the doctors convinced he had ruined my hearing for life. Can’t believe its been 45 years & still remains one of my favourite gigs.
I believe the Amboy Dukes that played the Club A Go Go was a British band with the same name.
Ted Nugent played Reading Festival in 1976.