Joan Jett on Ted Nugent: "He s**t his pants so he didn't have to go to the army"

Joan Jett and Ted Nugent
(Image credit: Joan Jett: Roger Erickson | Ted Nugent: Gary Miller)

Joan Jett has hit back at Ted Nugent after he poured scorn on her inclusion on a list of 100 Great Guitarists compiled by Rolling Stone editor David Fricke 12 years ago.

Taking a brief break from railing against all the stuff he traditionally rails against in his frequent video broadcasts, Nugent singles Jett out for particular attention, saying, "So I just mentioned some killer, monster guitar players, huh? Some of the best that ever lived. When you see the Rolling Stone magazine list of greatest guitar players, they list Joan Jett but not Tommy Shaw [of Styx].”

"How do you list the top 100 guitar players and not list Derek St. Holmes?," he drones on, as if his viewers might still be awake. "How do you do that? You do that by lying. The same way you get Grandmaster Flash in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You do that by lying. You have to be a liar.”

As well as being "a liar", someone considering adding Jett to such a list would have to have "shit for brains" and be "a soulless, soulless prick", Nugent continued, apparently still furious about a personal opinion someone held a dozen years ago.

Now Jett has hit back at Nugent, who wasn't included in Fricke's list. In an interview with The NME, she asks, "Is his implication that he should be on the list instead of me? Well, that's just typical – it's what I've dealt with my whole life, being written off. 

"Ted Nugent has to live with being Ted Nugent. He has to be in that body, so that's punishment enough. 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."

In a 1977 interview with High Times, Nugent claimed that in the days leading up to his draft board physical exam he'd taken meth, stopped eating food with any nutritional value, and defecated in his pants.

"I just had chips, Pepsi, beer – stuff I never touched – buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup. I was this side of death. Then, a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants, poop, piss, the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.

"So I went in, and those guys in uniform couldn’t believe the smell. They were ridiculin’ me and pushin’ me around and I was cryin’, but all the time I was laughin’ to myself."

Nugent later distanced himself from his remarks, telling The Independent in 2006, "You've got to realise that these interviewers would arrive with glazed eyes and I would make stories up. I never did crystal meth. And I never pooped my pants."

Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.