Ted Nugent has been around for a long time; he’s paid his dues, he’s seen and played a hell of a lot of rock and roll: “I haven’t been kickin’ ass for twelve years for nothin’, goddammit. I paid enough dues for everybody in this room.” The Amboy Dukes were a mainline suburban draw in the late Sixties, renowned for such hits as “Baby Please Don’t Go” and ' “Journey to the Center of Your Mind,” and he is currently regirding his loins with a new album entitled Call of the Wild and a series of “Guitar Battles” with Mike Pinera, Wayne Kramer, and Frank Marino of Mahogany Rush among others.

So he is hardly reticent about the competition, whether pro or con, since he has in all pragmatism concluded that he is the greatest guitar player on the planet. At least. “If you gave somebody with my talent one tenth of the paper you gave that crust” — referring to our coverage of Iggy Pop in April — “I’d be so big it’s pitiful, because I’m better. You hear me?”