Read Detroit Rock City for Free Online

starting to go down the toilet. I know that he blames the fact that he went through a lot of musicians, but he canned a lot of musicians too. It’s not as if they all quit on him. I think I might have been—me and Dave Palmer might have been the two guys, the only two guys that ever quit the Amboy Dukes. Everybody else he eventually fired. While I played with Ted, starting in about 1970, drugs never really even entered my mind. You know I did a lot of drugs, but there were times when my music was kinda like the main focus, and I kinda got away from that for a while, and I kinda got away from my criminal activities.
    Ted Nugent: When KJ joined that band, that started a great run. He and I shared an apartment on 6th Street in Ann Arbor. I think it was 609 6th Street.
    K. J. Knight: Ted handled everything on his own. He drove the limo he had bought, he drove it, he helped unload the truck. I had two stints with Ted. I started with the Survival of the Fittest album, and things were pretty good at that point. And I got to hear these stories. Ted told me about one when Rusty Day was in the band. The Amboy Dukes were on their way to a gig. Ted was driving, and Rusty was sitting in the back of the limo. During the drive Rusty whipped out a pipe and started smoking some hash. Rusty began passing the pipe around to the other guys in the band. When the pipe got to Ted, he turned and fired it at Rusty and hit himsquare in the head. I believe later, perhaps after the gig and back at the motel, Ted was ready to go up and kick Rusty’s ass. He went charging up a flight of stairs to get to Rusty’s room, but he tripped and fell down the stairway, hurt himself, and retreated to his room. I don’t know if Ted could have kicked Rusty’s ass, because Rusty was a badass too. Rusty and Ted really hated each other. Ted told me that one time Rusty called all of the guys in the band together to meditate and got them to sit in a tight circle and start chanting “Om.” However, Ted thought it was a big joke and began chanting, “Om Om on the Range.” Rusty was really pissed.
    You know what was really weird, it was like afterward when Rusty got in the Cactus. Sometimes we would play on the same bill with them, and then I would have to struggle whether I wanted to go into the Cactus dressing room and hang with those guys because I felt such a tight connection to Rusty or stay in the Amboy Dukes dressing room and stay loyal to Ted, and so, you know. I was friends with Rusty right to the end, when he was murdered in Florida. Certain things about Rusty Day are not known. People don’t realize because he shot his wife, Sharon, and paralyzed her, Rusty had to leave Detroit. Because he was dealing drugs and I guess he felt as though this shooting was going to bring a lot of heat on him. Those were his exact words to me: “I’m feeling the heat and I gotta get out of town.” I think that because of the fact that he was dealing drugs in such a large volume and the fact that this had taken place, that made him believe that he had to get out of Detroit.
    Johnny Badanjek ( Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Detroit, the Rockets, drummer ): We tried to put the Wheels together with Rusty Day for a while. Playing a bunch of the same kind of like ballrooms out in Iowa and that kind of stuff. Rusty was fine at the time. He wasn’t as nuts as he got later, you know. That all happened later with Cactus. He went down the wrong road.
    Ron Cooke: Rusty’s from Garden City, man. West side is tough guys. His was a horrible story. We went down and played the Orange Bowl or something in Miami or some fucking arrangement with the Cactus deal. Rusty got fucking arrested before we went on. He was probably telling some cop to fucking suck his dick. I don’t know.
    Ray Goodman ( SRC, Detroit, Cub Koda, guitarist ): Rusty was a good guy and I loved him, but he was very violent and very prone to addiction. He was as