| Tooth Fang & Claw | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | September 1974 | |||
| Recorded | June 1974 at the Sound Pit, Atlanta, GA | |||
| Genre | Hard rock | |||
| Label | DiscReet LP Enigma Retro CD | |||
| Producer | Jon Child, Lew Futterman, Ted Nugent | |||
| Ted Nugent and The Amboy Dukes chronology | ||||
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| Allmusic |   |
Tooth Fang & Claw is the seventh and final album by Ted Nugent and The Amboy Dukes. It is the second offering on the DiscReet label. Re-issued in 1977 by Warner Bros as part of "Two Originals of... Ted Nugent".
Theodore Anthony Nugent is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and political activist. Nugent initially gained fame as the lead guitarist of the Amboy Dukes, a band formed in 1963 that played psychedelic rock and hard rock. After playing with the Amboy Dukes, he embarked on a solo career.
The Amboy Dukes were an American rock band formed in 1964 in Chicago, Illinois, and later based in Detroit, Michigan. They are known for their one hit single "Journey to the Center of the Mind". The band's name comes from the title of a novel by Irving Shulman. In the UK the group's records were released under the name of The American Amboy Dukes because of the existence of a British group with the same name.
DiscReet Records, self-identified simply as DiscReet, was a record label founded by Frank Zappa and his then business partner/manager Herb Cohen. The name of the label was a pun derived from disc and the Compatible Discrete 4 process of encoding quadraphonic sound signals into phonograph records.
Contents
The band consists of Nugent, Rob Grange on bass and drummer Vic Mastrianni. The album has the feel of the outdoors (esp. "Hibernation") and Nugent's love for hunting and rock and roll; the backsleeve pictures him playing hard in front of an amplifier stack, next to a wild boar trophy.
Rob Grange, is an American rock bass guitarist, best known for his work with Ted Nugent and his unique phase bass lines in the song "Stranglehold".
Like on the Amboy Dukes' previous three albums, the credits are followed by a short tongue-in-cheek statement. This time, "Fear not the crusted warblers, but be wary of the Mad Cheese Grater for he shall slaw the features from your face. Beware the public carnivores as they inevitably edibly have a soft nosed hollow point magnum behind every bush."
"Great White Buffalo" is one of the mainstays of Nugent's catalog and was generated on this album. In an interview with Classic Rock Revisited he discusses how he and Grange developed the song idea: "This was yet another magical moment like the original musical burst of so many of my songs. This amazing lick/song erupted spontaneously during a recording session around 1972-73," Nugent says. "As I was tuning up my Blonde Byrdland, that pattern leaped forth with a force to reckon with. Killer bass player, Rob Grange, stopped me and asked what the hell that was, and I said "I don't know, just jackin’ around, tuning up." He told me to play it again, but I failed to play the lick the same as I had just done moments before and he kept badgering me to re-discover the lick. I didn't. But after recording some other songs, I again went to tune up my Gibson and the lick burst forth again. Rob Grange yelled 'That's it! That's it!' So I played it a few times, showed the guys where I wanted to stop and start it up again, turned on the tape machine and recorded it in one fell swoop, making up the lyrics as I went along, articulating to the best of my ability my take on the great Indian legend of the spiritual beast of yore. Rob Grange came up with that wonderful fluid bass melody at the end, Vic the thundering double bass drum assault, and history was made. To this day it is one of my and the audiences' and band's all time favorites." [2]
Also featured, a frantic and happily deranged version of "Maybellene", a 1955 classic of Chuck Berry (often quoted by Nugent in the late 70s as a major influence on his playing). Ted Nugent is credited for a one-finger guitar solo under the moniker "Rev Atrocious Theodosius".
The album includes one of very few "calm" Nugent songs of this era, "Sasha", which Nugent dedicated to his newly born daughter.
Due to Warner Bros distributing the album worldwide, Ted Nugent's music eventually began to reach overseas markets, but his royalties were not up to his expectations - DiscReet's manager & owner Frank Zappa reported mediocre sales. In late October 1974, rhythm guitarist Derek St. Holmes joined the band at least for one of the Amboy Dukes' final shows at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.
Derek St. Holmes is an American musician, best known as the vocalist and rhythm guitar player for Ted Nugent's early solo career.
Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) is a public university in Chicago, Illinois. NEIU serves approximately 9,000 students in the region and is a Hispanic Serving Institution. The main campus is located in the community area of North Park with three additional campuses in the metropolitan area. NEIU has one of the longest running free form community radio stations, WZRD Chicago 88.3 FM.
By 1975, Nugent abandoned the troubled DiscReet label and signed with Epic Records. He teamed with producer Tom Werman and Aerosmith’s managers, Leber-Krebs, who organized his live tours into commercially successful operations. The only Amboy Dukes member who continued with Nugent in his solo career is bassist Rob Grange. Nugent's band also included Derek St. Holmes on vocals and guitar, and drummer Clifford Davies; Ted Nugent moved forward to national and worldwide success. [3]
Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc., the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was founded predominantly as a jazz and classical music label in 1953, but later expanded its scope to include a more diverse range of genres, including pop, R&B, rock, and hip hop. Epic has released music by artists including Glenn Miller, Tammy Wynette, George Michael, The Yardbirds, Donovan, Shakin Stevens, Europe, Cheap Trick, Meat Loaf, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ted Nugent, Shakira, Sly & the Family Stone, The Hollies, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, ABBA, Anastacia, Boston, Dave Clark Five, Gloria Estefan, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, and Michael Jackson. Along with Arista, Columbia and RCA Records, Epic is one of Sony Music Entertainment's four flagship record labels.
In the 1993 film Dazed and Confused , the character Wooderson, played by Matthew McConaughey, wears a t-shirt featuring the Tooth Fang & Claw album cover.
Dazed and Confused is a 1993 American coming-of-age comedy film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film features a large ensemble cast of actors who would later become stars, including Jason London, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg, Joey Lauren Adams, Matthew McConaughey, Nicky Katt, and Rory Cochrane. The plot follows various groups of Texas teenagers during the last day of school in 1976.
Matthew David McConaughey is an American actor and producer. He first gained notice for his breakout role in the coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused (1993), before going on to appear in the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994), A Time to Kill (1996), the comedy film Larger than Life (1996), Steven Spielberg's historical drama Amistad (1997), the science fiction drama Contact (1997), the comedy EDtv (1999), and the war film U-571 (2000).
In 1995, "Tooth, Fang & Claw" was a song on the album Spirit of the Wild, which marked Ted Nugent's return to an outdoor lifestyle and his original sound of hard rock.
