POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rock’s Ted Nugent Still Stalking on the Wild Side

At 39, Ted Nugent’s ample store of animal spirits remains undiminished, and unencumbered by the slightest intrusion of wit or taste.

Thursday night at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, the heavy-rock guitarist was the same bounding, cackling, foul-mouthed Visigoth he was at his commercial peak a decade ago, when he was still enough of a draw to headline in arenas.

Hardly a song went by without Nugent whirling about or dropping to his knees or jumping onto the drum platform, where he would solo and pose and eventually descend in a long, athletic leap. That’s animal spirits. When not stalking about the Celebrity’s rotating, circular stage and soloing to egotistical excess, though, Nugent’s behavior was plain beastly.

Between songs, every sentence he uttered--or, more accurately, shrieked--proudly emphasized an expletive or two or three. The Nuge’s discourse, applauded by the near-capacity crowd in proportion to its vulgarity, also included repeated leering nods toward the women in the house, and a casual bit of homophobia. Unlike at least one recent tour of his, Nugent didn’t bring along hired bikinied flesh to serve him a fresh guitar after almost every song--tight budget, no doubt--but several women in the audience tried to compensate by throwing themselves on stage for a wiggle and a pinch.

Nugent’s music was pretty much in character--slam-bam heavy rockers built mostly on predatory riffs. With a little self-control, he could have turned it into a pulsing, if monolithic, evening of crunching rock. But Nugent played as if he were less concerned with revving his rockers along than with meeting a high production quota for notes played.

Undeniably a dexterous guitarist, Nugent sidetracked too many songs trying to show how nimble he could be. His repetitive, predictably speedy soloing often veered into an obnoxious, throaty whine. When he wasn’t trying to make his strings gargle, Nugent did come up with some good ideas, notably during the lean, chunkily rhythmic “Need You Bad.”

Nugent had capable support from a three-man backing band that included rhythm guitarist Derek St. Holmes, who first accompanied him during his heyday in the ‘70s. St. Holmes was especially welcome when he took over the singing, substituting his own leathery but musical voice for Nugent’s raucous, scratchy delivery. Between blathering on about (expletive) this and (expletive) that and overindulging himself on guitar, the sweat-bathed, scraggly maned star never did get around to introducing bassist Dave Kisweney and drummer Pat Marchino, who made sure that Nugent’s heavy stuff rarely slogged.

The only thing worse than Ted Nugent behaving in character proved to be Ted Nugent stepping out of character. On “Spread Your Wings” (from his new album, “If You Can’t Lick ‘Em . . . Lick ‘Em”), Nugent tried to emulate the lyricism of Jimi Hendrix’s sublime “Little Wing.” But barbarians don’t make poets, and men preoccupied with the crotch aren’t likely to weave, as Hendrix did, a vision of love that encompasses the soul. Nugent’s playing on the piece was thick, clumsy and grating. It was as if Caliban had tried to cast himself in the balcony scene of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Nugent’s construction of the show reflected at least some thought. He started with staples from his gravy days (including a good, meaty “Dog Eat Dog”), moved to newer material (unremarkable, including “That’s the Story of Love,” co-written with Jon Bon Jovi and his guitar player, Richie Sambora), and finished with more old standbys.

In the encore, Nugent’s ego got in the way of “Great White Buffalo,” which comes the closest of all his songs to actually conveying a worthwhile idea. But the last two songs in the encore were worth waiting for: first a close-to-the-original run through “Journey to the Center of the Mind,” the 1968 psychedelic hit that Nugent scored with his first band, the Amboy Dukes, then a hot flash through the blues classic “Baby, Please Don’t Go” in which Nugent finally got beyond mere lust and managed to express some of the desperation in the song.

The late ‘80s have turned into prime times for some of the hard rockers who were big in the ‘70s, with the resuscitated Aerosmith perhaps the biggest comeback example. Nugent, whose record sales have fallen after his platinum streak in the late ‘70s, is going to have to come up with more than the same old wildman routine if he expects to walk that way again.

Opening was Leatherwolf, a band from Orange County that emphasizes the symphonic side of heavy metal with operatic vocals and polyphonic lead guitars. The five-man group, which records for Island Records, played under such impossible sonic and visual conditions that it wouldn’t be fair to judge them on Thursday night’s performance. When it wasn’t making crackling sounds, the sound system cast a muffling blanket over the band. And with Nugent’s equipment heaped behind them, Leatherwolf hardly could be seen, except when the stage rotated into optimum position.