Ted Nugent is no stranger to bigotry. Throughout his career, the rocker has expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and transphobic views. Nugent tends to openly drop his cringe via his podcast, The Nightly Nuge, and when people call him out for his beliefs, he stubbornly defends himself.
So it’s wildly ironic that when it was reported that Jann Wenner got kicked out of the Rock Hall’s board for controversial comments he made about Black and female artists, Nugent vocally called him out for “racist and misogynistic attacks.”
For context, during an interview with The New York Times, Wenner expressed that, regarding an upcoming book of his involving interviews with rock artists, he didn’t interview Black or female artists claiming that neither could “articulate” themselves well enough. Following the interview, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that Wenner was removed from their Board Of Directors.
During a new installment of The Nightly Nuge, while talking to his co-host Keith Mark, Nugent expressed disgust over Wenner’s comments. The rocker notes that, with Wenner being the co-founder of Rolling Stone, the publication is meant to celebrate the history of music, and mentions Black rock legends Chuck Berry, Bo Diddly, and Little Richard.
Speaking about Wenner’s comments, Nugent shares the following (as transcribed by Loudwire):
“I’m merely a humble servant of evidence, truth, logic, and common sense. And Jann Wenner created Rolling Stone magazine to celebrate the greatest soundtrack in the history of the world, as created by Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and Little Richard — an extension of the Black artists who had such an emotional dream of freedom and defied the shackles of slavery and created this soulful, emotional, powerful, defiant, uppity, spirited, work-ethic-oriented soundtrack — the blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, then rock ‘n’ roll.
“Jann Wenner righteously and wonderfully created Rolling Stone magazine to celebrate the artists that are never — we’ve never been given credit except by me, and us here at Nightly Nuge … that the music that touches our soul came from Black heroes who had more soul because they had to get out of the curse of slavery and celebrate freedom musically.”
Nugent goes on to note that Wenner was kicked out of the Rock Hall’s Board Of Directors “because of racist and misogynistic attacks that said that Black and female artists are not articulate enough to reference in his book about rock and roll history — which is so clearly biased and so clearly racist and so clearly misogynistic. And those are the things that he has always accused me of.”
It’s not often you hear Ted Nugent say something that’s morally sound. Given his history and beliefs, there’s a reason Nugent is considered one of the “worst people in metal and hard rock.”