Aerosmith: Nine Lives (1997)

(As published in the Illinois Entertainer ... )

Aerosmith
Nine Lives
(Columbia)

The other day one of my tenth-grade students stuck her head into my room and announced, "Mr. Orteza, Steven Tyler is forty-nine today!" to which I replied, "Wow! He hardly looks a day over seventy!" Seriously, I fully expected Nine Lives, coming as it would after a four-year layoff during which all manner of mid-life crises could’ve easily distracted the band from why God put them on earth in the first place, to signal the beginning of the end for these grandfathers-to-be.

Then it debuted at number one, indicating that Aerosmith still has what it takes to separate people from their money. It's not hard to see why. With John Kalodner--the band's platinum-savvy guru from their Geffen years--still calling shots, the tunes practically reek with filthy lucre. The title cut explodes with booming drums and colossal guitars. "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)" reprises both the double entendres of "Love in an Elevator" and the heavy-metal horns of "Dude (Looks like a Lady)." "Hole in My Soul" joins the power ballads "Angel," "What It Takes," and "Cryin'" in giving Aerosmith's girl fans something to sway to, and through it all Tyler shrieks and screams as if someone has just held a mirror up to his face. Whether it's dirty-old-man talk about why pink is his favorite color ("Pink") or sensitive-'90s-guy talk about why missing children make him cry ("Crash"), he really puts his rubbery lips into it.

On the other hand, like most hour-long rock albums, Nine Lives overstays its welcome by twenty minutes or so. Even more telling, the fine print reveals that the band needed not only Kalodner but also song doctors like Desmond Child and Glen Ballard to come up with the forty good minutes it eventually came up with. Still, for those forty minutes, Aerosmith sounds as if it knows the difference between merely making millions and having fun while doing it. Those who think these geezers will be calling Dr. Kevorkian any time soon should dream on.

Don't Tread on Ted: An Uncensored Interview with the Damnedest Yankee of 'Em All (1992)

(This is a slightly edited version of a piece that ran as the cover story of CAMM's final issue in December 1992. Perennial thanks to John Everson for giving me the assignment--one of my favorite journalistic memories to this day.)

It’s a chilly October morning, and Ted Nugent, fresh from a pheasant hunt on his southern-Michigan property, has some news he’d like to pass along.

“This new record,” he hisses, “is a motherfucker!”

The record, of course, is Don’t Tread (Warner Bros.), the second long-player from Nugent’s current band Damn Yankees. And, as usual, Nugent is absolutely right.

According to Nugent, however, it could have been even better.

“I believe that this new album has captured what we’re about,” he explains. “But I still would’ve liked to have heard more guitars and a little more shit on the vocals. Tommy and Jack’s real power isn’t necessarily in their melody, though that is incredibly powerful. Their real power is in their sass, and that only surfaces twenty-five percent of what it could and should.”

Tommy and Jack, in case you’d forgotten, are Styx’s Tommy Shaw and Night Ranger’s Jack Blades. Together with Nugent and the former Eddie Jobson drummer Michael Cartellone, they comprise the best of the current crop of arena-rock-veterans supergroups, a crop of which Bad English, the Storm, Hardline, RTZ, Arc Angels, and, technically speaking, even the Traveling Wilburys are merely the first half-dozen that come to mind.

Does Nugent think a live album would capture Damn Yankees’ other seventy-five percent?

“I’d be willing to try it,” admits Nugent, whose two live albums from the ’70s, Double Live Gonzo and Intensities in Ten Cities, set new standards of the wild-and-wooliness that live albums could contain. “But you’ve gotta realize what a ‘live’ album is. A live album is a live basic track. Then you go into the studio and redo everything.”

Surely Gonzo and Intensities weren’t studio recreations?

“No, they weren’t. They were almost pure. I redid the bass track myself on ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go,’ but that’s about it.”

So why would a Damn Yankees live album have to be different?

“Because of the caution factor in the record industry,” Nugent answers matter-of-factly. “Everybody wants to be really cautious.”

Everybody, that is, except Ted Nugent.

For most of his forty-three years, Nugent has been a hunter, and a big-time one at that. Even now, when Damn Yankees business keeps him busy eight months of the year, he stalks and bags game steadily during the other four. And although he belongs to the National Rifle Association and over a dozen other gun-owner associations, his weapon of choice is the bow and arrow. That’s why, during the first Damn Yankees tour, he was able, night after night, to hit the group’s eight-foot effigy of Saddam Hussein smack dab in the oysters.

That’s also why he has founded the Ted Nugent World Bowhunters Organization (“9,206 members and growing!”) and authored the book Blood Trails: The Truth About Bow Hunting, 120 Detailed Kill Stories.

“This kill is interesting because it was a going-away shot right up the butt at thirty yards,” writes Nugent of his killing of a 250-pound black wild boar. “The big, wide broadhead penetrated all the way to the neck, severing lots of good stuff, and he bled out the front, back, nose, and mouth. He ran only fifty yards before dying.”

Sure beats Leonard Nimoy’s I Am Not Spock.

Anyway, with Hussein now out of fashion, whom does Nugent intend on castrating from the stage this time out?

“Oh, probably stoned hippies on the front row,” he laughs. “I know I’m gonna shoot my guitar with my bow and arrows as part of the stage show, but who knows what might happen?

“The point is that it’s your duty to warn people that Ted Nugent will be armed this year.”

As if his guitar weren’t weapon enough. And now as ever, Nugent credits his gift for unleashing the fury of nature from his guitar to the sensual acuteness that comes from his hunting and drug-free lifestyle.

“I’ve never done drugs. I’ve never gotten high. I’ve never smoked a joint. And I’ve never eaten broken-glass sandwiches because I’ve got a fuckin’ brain.

“It was simple,” he explains. “I love me. I love my music, and I love my waking hours. I love to be able to sneak up to a deer with my bow and arrow. I love the smell and the sight and the sound and the sexuality of life, and I didn’t want any fog rolling into my senses to obscure the experiences therein.

“As a young person--and as a forty-three-year-old young person--I am defiant. I am not a wimp-ass, dickless rebel without a cause. I am a rebel with a cause, and the cause is spelled T-E-fuckin’-D. And if it’s good for me, I will ride it into the sunset. If it’s bad for me, I will shoot it, gut it, and stuff it up your ass. Anybody who doesn’t understand that has got shit for brains. And anybody who decided to laugh at me for not taking drugs I merely looked in the eye and said, ‘Oh well, fuck you! And call me just before you die: I wanna watch.

“I was laughed at by Keith Moon for not drinking Jack Daniels. I was laughed at by Bon Scott for not drinking Jack Daniels. I was laughed at by Pete Townshend for not smoking dope and for killing innocent animals. I was laughed at by Jimmy Page for not snorting cocaine and not shooting heroin and for carrying a gun. I was laughed at by Jimi Hendrix for not taking LSD. Fuck them! They’re a bunch of drooling, unclean scum-masters.”

And as if that weren’t poetry enough, Nugent has a genuine rhyme to cap it off.

“Most of them are dead, and I’m still Ted.”

Nugent first got together with Shaw in 1988 for an evening of jamming at the urging of the veteran A&R man John Kalodner. It had nothing, according to Nugent, to do with the fact that both his and Shaw’s ’80s albums weren’t selling all that well.

“I had just finished my If You Can’t Lick ’Em … Lick ’Em tour,” Nugent recalls, “a tour I considered to be the best of my life. It was phenomenal! The music, the fun, the short skirts--oh, the short skirts! It was just too much fun for a white guy.”

But Kalodner prevailed, and Nugent did the unthinkable: He spent a night of hunting season not hunting.

“Tommy and I sat down, and literally within sixty seconds. I knew that we’d been weaned on the same R&B stuff. And I realized that Styx hadn’t tapped into even a spit of his talent. We were honky-tonkin’-boogie-woogiein’-Sam-and-Davein’-Wilson-Pickett-and-Motownin’ up a storm!

“I watched him with Styx,” Nugent remembers, “and I knew that when they unleashed Tommy he went head and shoulders above the soulfulness and energy of what Styx could facilitate. And the same with Jack Blades in Night Ranger. When I first heard ‘You Can Still Rock in America’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,’ I thought, ‘Man! These guys kick fuckin’ ass!’ And I knew that the rockin’ Night Ranger stuff was Jack Blades’ real element.”

Ironically, it’s been Blades’ and Shaw’s knack for coming up with chart-topping ballads like “High Enough” and “Where You Goin’ Now” that has greased the Yanks’ multi-platinum skids.

“Let’s be perfectly honest here,” says Nugent. “You can’t have a successful record nowadays without a ballad. But I don’t even consider those songs ballads. I consider them soul songs. We’re just shit-ass lucky that Tommy and Jack can deliver the foundation of these basic, incredible, soul-ballad songs that are vehicles for their incredibly soulful vocals--and that I can jump in with incredibly soulful guitar embellishments and chord changes.”

The reunited Tommy Shaw-less Styx should be so lucky.

“Yeah,” Nugent chuckles. “In order to be in Styx now you have to check your dick in at the door. I always figured, ’Hell, I could’ve been in Styx--if I’d lost my dick in a terrible accident!”

And speaking of testosterone-fueled rock-and-roll, Nugent isn’t particularly fond of Motorhead’s March or Die version of “Cat Scratch Fever” either.

“It just seems that someone neutered their version somewhere along the line. There’s no soul, no sexuality, no groove, and no short-skirt impact. And if it doesn’t have any of those things, I’d rather listen to a bellowing rhino.”

Well, a bellowing rhino and Jackyl, whom Nugent “personally requested” and who along with Slaughter will open all of the ’92-’93 shows on what will be billed as Damn Yankees’ “Uprizing” tour.

Mention of the “Uprizing” tour leads to a discussion of “Uprising” the song (yes, they’re spelled differently), Don’t Tread’s closing track and Nugent’s only lead vocal on the album. It articulates his disgust with the urban jungle in no uncertain terms, a topic that’s particularly fresh in light of the L.A. riots that followed the Rodney King trial last March. Ask Nugent to describe his emotions at the time--especially regarding the savage beating suffered by the innocent bystander Reginald Denny when he was dragged from his construction truck--and his voice drops to a clenched-teeth whisper.

“They were intense as hell itself! I wish that they would’ve tried to drag me out of my vehicle because those animal scum need to know that scum can die too! I’d have shot every one of them motherfuckers right between the fuckin’ eyes. And I would not have run out of ammo.”

Spoken like the true George Bush-supporting law-and-order-loving, former Michigan County Sheriff Deputy that he is. Spoken also liked the guy who thanked Bernie Goetz, the New York City subway rider who shot four alleged muggers in 1984, in the liner notes to his 1986 LP Little Miss Dangerous.

“I live by an all-encompassing, undeniable, bullet-proof law of the land that still exists in the ’90s,” says Nugent. “regardless of concrete-jungle warfare. And I find that I have no conflict at all with Jack, Tommy, or Michael regarding my passions for hunting, self-defense, independence, and productivity. And although it manifests itself in different ways among the four of us, it manifests itself nonetheless.

“We don’t drool on ourselves. We don’t get high and disrespect our God-given senses. Rather, we respect our senses and use them to our best abilities. We believe in our musical statements, in our musical vision, and in how we can help each other make those statements and expound on the various visions that we bring into the group as individuals.

“The difference between Damn Yankees and the hairspray trendsetters,” he concludes, “is that we don’t have boogers coming out of our noses from being hip to the latest drug.”

Point well taken. And in case that Damn Yankees live album ever does get made, what would Nugent like to call it?

“Up … Your … Ass.”

And the cover art?

“A four-wheel drive,” he laughs, “with a big buck on the hood.”

Fiona: Squeezing Out Sparks (1992)

This article appeared in a spring '92 issue of the Chicago Area Metal Magazine (CAMM) and was one of my first features. Enduring thanks to Fiona Flanagan, who generously gave me more phone time than CAMM's relatively limited readership probably merited....

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“Who do I like to listen to?” muses Fiona Flanagan, the veteran hard-rock siren whose new album, Squeeze, is about to be released by Geffen Records. “I just bought that Sandi Saraya record, When the Blackbird Sings. I listen to old Rod Stewart. And I love the Ozzy Osbourne record that’s out right now.”

She pauses.

“Oh, and I just bought ‘I’m Too Sexy,’” she admits, laughing. “I bought the single last night. I think it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”

Flanagan laughs a lot these days. But while life looks pretty good for her at the moment--new album, new label, new band (named Fiona, by the way)--she hasn’t always had a lot to laugh about.

Take, for instance, 1985, a year that, by all rights, should’ve been a really big one for her. Atlantic Records released her solo debut (the now out-of-print Fiona), she sang all over the No Small Affair soundtrack, and she opened for the ever-hot Bryan Adams on the U.S. leg of his megabucks Reckless tour.

But by year’s end both her album and the film were in the bargain basements, and Bryan Adams’ predominantly teenage female audience had apparently decided not to turn Flanagan into their latest role model.

1986 was better--for awhile. Not only was she slated for some big-time top billing opposite Bob Dylan and Rupert Everett (of Dance with a Stranger fame) in Richard Marquand’s Hearts of Fire (Marquand’s follow-up to Jagged Edge), but the release of her second album (the still-in-print Beyond the Pale) was also scheduled to capitalize on the interest that the film would no doubt generate.

And, just in case Plans A and B should somehow fail, Flanagan landed the role of a “kinky hooker” who kills herself on what was then TV’s highest-rated show, Miami Vice.
But her character’s suicide proved uncannily symbolic: For the second time in as many opportunities, her promisingly multi-faceted career bit the dust.

First off, during the editing of Hearts of Fire, Marquand died of a stroke. “It kind of freaked everybody out,” Flanagan recalls. “I think the film was problematic before that, but once he died, the film was orphaned. It was really his baby.”

More problematic than Hearts of Fire’s failure, however--at least from the standpoint of Flanagan’s music career--was the debacle that Beyond the Pale turned into before it was done, especially considering how well it could’ve turned out.

“I ended up marrying the producer, Beau Hill, so the recording of it was enjoyable,” she says. “It’s just that the record was pretty bad. There were too many cooks, not enough communication, not enough pre-production, not enough rehearsal with the band.”

It didn’t help either that the “band” was really just an assortment of studio pros coming and going through a revolving door. “It was a mish-mosh. People were getting fired. And that’s what the record sounds like.

“But,” she wants to know, “why is that record what we’re talking about?”

Indeed.

It’s easy to understand why Flanagan wants to talk about Squeeze. Ten songs packed with walloping hooks and juiced to life by Marc Tanner’s metallic echo-chamber production, it sounds like what you might hear if that guy in Roxette were to ditch his current partner for Lita Ford.

In other words, if Squeeze doesn’t ring the bell at the top of the strongman pole that is the pop-music business, then maybe the world’s just plain unworthy of it and Fiona should pack it all in for a career in modeling.

“I took my time with this one,” she explains. And how much time exactly did she take? “Eighteen months. Not eighteen months of actual recording, but I wanted to put a band together. I started out with just me and [A&R man] John Kalodner. Then I solicited players.”

Did she have trouble finding musicians who’d want to play with someone who, despite being born and reared a Flanagan, had been as untouched by the luck of the Irish as she’d been up to that time?

“No,” she laughs. “There are lots of unemployed musicians, believe me. And, anyway, I didn’t exactly try to get Eric Clapton on guitar. I just wanted people that were interested in the same things I was.”

The lineup that solidified about six months into the Squeeze project included guitarist Dave Marshall, ex-Y&T drummer (and Wayne’s World bit player) Jimmy DeGrasso, and bassist (and long-time Flanagan cohort) Laura McDonald. It’s a lineup, according to Flanagan, that feels more like a band everyday.

“It’s more of a democracy now than it was twelve months ago just because everybody’s been in it longer. I mean, Jimmy’s getting the band together now with Laura and Dave while I’m on the road promoting the record. Everybody’s really divvied up the responsibilities. Everybody’s in for equal splits and equal say.

“But,” she adds, “you get out what you put into it. So as more time goes by and the more these guys put in, the more we’re a band. That takes time, but from when we went into rehearsals to the actual recording, and then afterwards and now, it’s just like a train that’s really picking up steam.”

By the time you read this, Flanagan, McDonald, DeGrasso, and Marshall, will have just finished shooting its first video, “Ain’t That Just like Love.” They will also be in the middle of rehearsals for an as-yet-unspecified touring itinerary.

“There are two ways to go with that,” says Flanagan of the concert circuit. “You could play clubs, or you could open for someone”--preferably someone with a large-venue contract and an audience of potential Fiona fans.

But, whichever route Fiona takes, one thing crowds should notice live even more than on record is the added flexibility and resilience that Flanagan’s opera lessons have added to her already remarkable voice. So why did she sign up for lessons in the first place?

“John [Kalodner] suggested that I take them. And once I went to the first one, I realized what a good idea it was. The guy [professional opera singer Ron Anderson] obviously knew what he was doing, and I obviously didn’t know what I was doing. So I thought, ’Bingo! I can learn something here!’”

What did she, a veteran of three solo albums and several soundtracks and live tours, feel she could learn from an opera singer?

“Well, my voice was really stiff. I’d taken it as far as I could personally. This guy knew a lot more about singing than I did. He knew a lot about the human body. He’d been studying all his life, and I just thought it was a brilliant idea.”

But back to the prospects of touring with an already-established act: Whom does Flanagan think Fiona might appropriately warm up for?

“I don’t really know,” she admits. “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to open for Skid Row. I don’t think that audience would like what I do.”

But why not? The music on Squeeze is loud and hooky, like Skid Row at its best, and Flanagan’s cheekbones are more photogenic than Sebastian Bach’s.

I think Skid Row’s a little bit heavier. They’re darker, especially with the second record.”

How about someone a little lighter, then, like Cher?

“If the money was there, sure!" Flanagan says without hesitation. "I think her audience would like this record.

“People have broad tastes,” she continues. “I think it would surprise everybody to go to somebody’s living room and see what records they listen to or what concerts they want to attend. People don’t have to define themselves by one particular strain of music anymore. I think all of this really narrow marketing is a mistake.”

But are there enough broad tastes to help Squeeze turn a profit? After all, Lita Ford’s equally worthy Dangerous Curves recently died an early death.

“I can’t answer that,” Flanagan says. “This business is a mystery to everyone. I mean, who could’ve called Nirvana coming out of nowhere and selling 200,000 records a day?

“It’s a drag about the Lita Ford record because I really liked it. But that’s really got nothing to do with me as far as I’m concerned. If it does, I might as well quit.

“Besides,” she says, “I don’t really think about who’s making records and what’s on the charts when I’m doing my work. Basically, I think about tomorrow and what’s for dinner.”

And what is for dinner?

"Probably McDonald's," she laughs, somewhat interview weary. "I think I need some red meat."