Best remembered for their 1968 acid rock classic "Journey to the Center of the Mind," Detroit's
Amboy Dukes also introduced the world to
the Motor City Madman, guitarist
Ted Nugent. The group's roots date to 1965, a period when a teenage
Nugent was living in Chicago; there he formed the first incarnation of
the Amboy Dukes, borrowing the moniker from a recently disbanded Detroit band who themselves took the name from an infamous exploitation novel of the period. When
Nugent returned to Southeastern Michigan in 1967, he assembled a new
Dukes lineup including vocalist
John Drake, his former bandmate in
the Lourds, as well as rhythm guitarist
Steve Farmer, bassist
Bill White, keyboardist
Rick Lober, and drummer
Dave Palmer. Famed for its snarling closer, an incendiary cover of
Them's "Baby Please Don't Go," the group emerged as one of the hottest attractions on the Detroit club circuit.
Still, when
the Amboy Dukes' self-titled debut LP appeared on the Mainstream label in 1967, it was the group's originals that became the focus -- while
Nugent handled the music,
Farmer penned the drug-fixated lyrics, adding a psychedelic sensibility to an otherwise proto-metal sound. After a series of lineup shifts that saw
White and
Lober exit in favor of bassist
Greg Arama and keyboardist
Andy Solomon, in 1968
the Dukes issued
Journey to the Center of the Mind, riding the title track into the U.S. Top 20. Vocalist
Rusty Day replaced
Drake in time for 1969's
Migration, which failed to equal the success of its predecessor;
Marriage on the Rocks, issued later that same year, was also a disappointment, and after 1971's
Survival of the Fittest Nugent dismissed
Day and
Solomon after
Palmer left the group to accept an engineering gig. After recording a handful of albums as
Ted Nugent & the Amboy Dukes, he finally dropped the group's name altogether and mounted a solo career.
–
Jason Ankeny, Rovi