Damnocracy: The comical disaster that ended classic rock’s most problematic supergroup
Being in a band with Ted Nugent feels like it might be one of the most hellish propositions any artist can be faced with, but being in a band with him and four other badly-matched rock and roll egotists is perhaps one of the strangest moves any music executive could possibly dream up.
In 2006, someone from music broadcaster VH1 had the hare-brained idea to assemble a supergroup based on this very notion, all in the name of reality television. Given how other programmes of a similar ilk, such as Gene Simmons’ Rock School, had already proven to be hits in this field, it made sense that someone would think that piecing together some star names for the sake of cheap entertainment might also rake in a bit of attention.
Of course, when you’re thinking exclusively about the dollar signs and making car-crash television that you can’t turn away from, then creating a show like Supergroup undoubtedly feels like a stroke of genius. The only problem is, the choice of people that they went for was far from appropriate for a show of this nature, and was destined to be a failure from the moment it was commissioned.
On top of this, when you’re one of the musicians who is foolish enough to be duped into an idea like this, that’s entirely on you and your inflated sense of self-importance for thinking that there might be any mileage in it. VH1 and the producers of Supergroup may be partly to blame for the concept, but the appointed rockstars who were roped into doing the show, presumably for a healthy payoff, have their money-driven naivety to blame as well.
On the show, Nugent found himself working alongside Sebastian Bach, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Biohazard’s Evan Seinfeld and Jason Bonham, with the quintet all being holed up in an LA mansion for just shy of a fortnight to see if they could come up with the goods and play a concert together. It’s safe to say from the outcome of the show that the goods in question were barely even touched upon.
The fact that they were a complete mismatch from the outset should have illustrated to them that this wasn’t going to work, but self-belief got in the way of rational decision-making first, and then the combined lack of chemistry and argumentative nature of five washed-up stars got in the way next.
Posing as Damnocracy, a frankly dreadful name which ended up triumphing over other embarrassing options such as Fist and Rawdog, it was clear from the first episode that their ambition to pull together a set in 12 days was unlikely to go well.
Riddled with problematic behind-the-scenes behaviour, ranging from the incessant tossing around of homophobic slurs to the misogynistic attempts to recruit their personally-appointed chef into Seinfeld’s side-hustles in the porn industry, Supergroup was not just eye-rollingly bad television, but the band they’d assembled were clearly doomed from the beginning.
To add insult to injury, the fact that a bunch of celebrated musicians couldn’t even muster up any good new material in this span of time meant that they were reliant on performing classic rock and metal covers for their one and only show at the Empire Ballroom in Las Vegas – the end goal that they were supposed to be working towards.
The performance, needless to say, was a complete flop, and while Ian proclaimed at the end of the show’s run that he wanted to see the band continue and release an album together, the friction between Bach and Nugent was always going to be an obstacle. In subsequent interviews, neither party wanted to take the blame for the failure, and were unable to see that it was, in fact, the combined pigheadedness of the members that made it such a dismal affair.
Officially deciding to announce to the world that they had separated four years after the broadcast, as though it wasn’t abundantly clear to viewers that this was already the case, Damnocracy produced a pitiful three demos, played one show, and called it a day. For a supposed ‘supergroup’, there arguably shouldn’t be anything more humbling than this. For Damnocracy, it was destiny.
