Joan Jett’s brutal take down of ‘pants shitter’ Ted Nugent: “Not a tough guy”
An unfortunately familiar tale often befalls classic rock: as iconoclasts grow older, they drift towards being defanged cogs in a safe system. Joan Jett has always defied that.
As she told Far Out when we caught up with her earlier in the year, ‘shut up and sing’ has never been the role of a musician. She still thinks music can make a positive change in the world. “I want to believe,” Jett explained, “because what else is there to be?”
Adding, “You know, otherwise you’re just a nihilist and waiting for everything to just be destroyed, and that’s not any fun.”
However, the former Runaways star obviously thinks there are worse things than nihilists, too. As she proved when she hit out at controversial rocker Ted Nugent back in 2022, asserting that he is not as tough as he claims to be.
A few months prior to Jett’s scathing review, Nugent had criticised Rolling Stone for including the leather-clad Runaways rocker in their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, which was first published back in 2003. Not included on the list himself, Nugent bitterly proclaimed: “You have to have shit for brains and you have to be a soulless, soulless prick to put Joan Jett [on the list]”.
It didn’t take long for Jett to hit back. She set the record straight with the following barbed attack, “Is that his implication… that he should be on the list instead of me?” She queried in a new interview with NME.
Adding, “Well, that’s just typical – it’s what I’ve dealt with my whole life, being written off.” And then came one of those rare, beautiful putdowns that will live on in classic rock lore from hereon. “Ted Nugent has to live with being Ted Nugent,” she comically said. “He has to be in that body, so that’s punishment enough.”
She wasn’t done there, either. Jett then rubbished Nugent’s alleged machismo by referring to an infamous interview the former Amboy Dukes man gave with High Times in 1977. Jett said: “He’s not a tough guy. He plays tough guy, but this is the guy who shit his pants – literally – so he didn’t have to go in the Army.”
At this point in the interview, Jett called on her manager, Kenny Laguna, to help, asking him to recall the whole tale of Nugent’s gross Vietnam draft-dodging tactic. Although, to be clear, the Vietnam draft was no laughing matter, and there was nothing dishonourable about wanting to avoid it. What Jett was ridiculing was Nugent’s carefully cultivated image as an all-American hard man, an image made rather difficult to square with a story he himself had enthusiastically shared about shatting his pantaloons.
In the High Times interview, Nugent claimed that he avoided being drafted into the Vietnam war by ditching personal hygiene. “I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water,” Nugent said, adding that he “stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. Poop, piss the whole shot”.
“So this,” Jett appended, “is the tough guy who’s running around America, stirring things up against each other.” The incongruity, in her eyes, made a mockery of the charade.
Years after this notorious admission, Nugent maintained that he’d made the story up, which you would do, given how disgusting it is. As for his comments about Joan Jett being included on Rolling Stone‘s list, at the time, he said there was “no hate” intended, but like with anything Ted Nugent says, you just never know.
