Breathe Like a Bear

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

In the late '60s, when such things mattered, Ted Nugent was quickly gaining a reputation as a young-gun guitar hotshot, largely based on the back-to-back success of two singles issued by his group, the Amboy Dukes. The first, "Baby Please Don't Go," was a hopped-up rendition of the old blues standard, which Nugent and the band had learned off the version by Van Morrison's group, Them. The second was a group original, "Journey to the Center of the Mind," one of those tunes that shows up regularly on TV record ads for "Psychedelic Groovy '60s" collections. Nugent and the group continued to make great, musically interesting albums for the tiny Mainstream label, but had no more hits.