Released in October 1976, a year after Ted Nugent’s self-titled solo debut, Free-for-All is what happens when a guitar player discovers that success is a little like owning a dog: everybody loves you until you start telling them where to sit.
Nugent had assembled a formidable little killing machine around himself — Derek St. Holmes on vocals and rhythm guitar, Rob Grange on bass and Cliff Davies on drums — and the debut had demonstrated that the old Amboy Dukes guitarist could finally make the transition from psychedelic Detroit survivor to full-blown hard-rock lunatic.
But there was a problem. Nugent wanted control. St. Holmes, who had supplied much of the debut’s melodic balance, apparently had opinions of his own. Opinions are dangerous things in rock bands. They start with “I think the chorus should…” and end with either a full-blown fist fight or a one way ticket to Palookaville. Sometimes even both.
St. Holmes walked away during the making of Free-for-All, although he eventually returned to contribute vocals to three songs. Producer Tom Werman then recruited a young singer who, at the time, was still better known for stage work than for the sort of rock stardom that was waiting around the corner. His name was Meat Loaf.
Yes, THAT Meat Loaf.
And suddenly the album had three different vocal personalities fighting for space while Nugent stood in the middle of the room waving a guitar around like a man trying to start a lawnmower with a bolt of lightning.
Nugent sings the title track, St. Holmes handling “Dog Eat Dog,” “Turn It Up” and “Light My Way,” and Meat Loaf attacking five songs with that great, wounded, theatrical bellow that would soon become one of the most recognizable voices in rock.
It’s very messy. It’s very uneven. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.
The title track “Free-for-All” is the first punch in the mouth.
With Nugent singing the track himself, he’s not exactly trying to convince anybody he’s the next Frank Sinatra. His voice is rough, ragged and arrogant. Perfect. The guitar riff comes crawling out of the speakers with its boots already muddy. It’s Ted barking into the microphone while the band lays down a groove with enough horsepower to move a small building.
“Dog Eat Dog” is probably the album’s purest distillation of the classic Nugent sound: muscular rhythm section, huge guitar, and St. Holmes providing the effortless cool.
It’s also historically interesting because the song concerns the 1967 Detroit riots, tying Nugent’s music directly back to the city that had produced him. And the guitar work is vicious……..Then Meat Loaf shows up.
“Writing on the Wall” stretches past seven minutes, and Meat Loaf gives it a huge, theatrical vocal performance while Nugent gets plenty of room to make the guitar behave badly. It’s one of the album’s strongest tracks and one of the clearest examples of the strange accident at the heart of Free-for-All: a singer associated with musical theatre and, soon enough, Bat Out of Hell, fronting one of the loudest guitar bands in America.
It shouldn’t work. However, it is a timely reminder that sometimes rock and roll is nothing more complicated than putting two things together that sensible people would keep apart.
“Turn it up” has your speakers begging for mercy. St. Holmes is back, Nugent is throwing sparks, and the rhythm section is doing what a rhythm section ought to do when confronted by this much guitar: stay out of the way and keep the damn thing moving.
“Together” gives Meat Loaf room to stretch out, and the song provides some contrast to the relentless guitar assault. There’s melody here. There is even something resembling tenderness.
Further into the album brings the St.Holmes voiced “Light My Way” for another dose of the voice that made the original band so effective.
“Hammerdown” is exactly what the title promises: heavy, blunt and propelled by Meat Loaf’s enormous delivery.
“I Love You So I Told You a Lie” closes the original album with another dose of Loaf, and by this point the bizarre vocal architecture has become part of the record’s identity.
Free-for-All isn’t as consistent as the debut. Even sympathetic assessments tend to acknowledge that. The personnel problems left fingerprints all over it, and the combination of St. Holmes and Meat Loaf means the album sometimes feels like a bar fight where nobody remembers whose side they’re on.
However, the great moments are enormous and the whole thing captures a very particular moment: Detroit hard rock in 1976, before punk had kicked the door in, before disco had eaten half the neighbourhood, before Meat Loaf became Meat Loaf, and before Ted Nugent became the larger-than-life character who would eventually eclipse the music itself.
Back then he was simply a guy with a Gibson, an amplifier and the deeply held conviction that the volume knob had been invented for one reason. To turn it clockwise as far as it will go.
Free-for-All sounds like that conviction. It’s loud, imperfect, occasionally ridiculous and frequently magnificent.
Donnie’s Rating: 8/10
