In a new interview with Forbes, Ted Nugent revealed that the music industry turned him down simply because he wasn’t a pop artist.
During the chat, the rocker talked about his hits like ‘Stranglehold’ and the time he was turned down. He explained why:
“The industry turned me down. They didn’t want a feedback guitar player from The Amboy Dukes. They wanted pop music with keyboards and all kinds of harmonies, cookie-cutter choruses for radio play. But people every night were loving that groove when we played it. The lyrics, when I finally wrote them down one night, were a defiant statement against the [music] industry. In effect, I was saying, ‘I don’t need you; I’m selling out 3,000-seat places without radio play or album sales.’”
Nugent’s Hit Almost Didn’t Get Recorded
Nugent’s hit song ‘Stranglehold’ has been named as one of his songs with the best solos. Even though it got so popular throughout the years, it almost didn’t get recorded because of the label’s demands for the song.
In another interview with Dr. Music Podcast, Nugent remembered how the label executives weren’t interested in ‘Stranglehold’ during the early recording sessions at first. The executives had said:
“‘Everybody voted to not record ‘Stranglehold’ because it doesn’t have a chorus, and nobody’s gonna play an eight-minute song with all that ‘guitar part’ in it.’”
His reaction was harsh. He explained:
“I said, ‘I love you guys, but that’s insane! Since when is there a rule: ‘A song has to have a chorus’? It doesn’t have to have a chorus. It’s a movement, it’s a song. And by the way, you all signed me and gave me a lot of money because you came to ten of my concerts and you saw how the people love the song ‘Stranglehold.’ And now you want to take it off the record? I was wondering if you guys got the alert, and it sounds like this: ‘F*ck you! Double f*ck you!’ By the way, we have a recording session that starts in one hour. Let’s go to the studio because I have a song to record. The first one’s gonna be f*cking ‘Stranglehold.””
You can hear the song down below.