Free Talk by Michael A Smerconish Page B

and I was given a pair of tickets and a pass. I jumped at the opportunity to hear the man who sang “Roundabout” and “All Good People” in a setting of just a few hundred. After the show, I flashed my laminate and expected to be one of 30 or so who would get to shake his hand and maybe grab some audio. Only this time, there was no meet and greet. There was just me, Jon, and his beautiful wife, Jane. So we sat and talked, and somehow the conversation turned to politics and the c-word. Yes. That c-word. It’s probably the only word even I will not say, much less put in print. He launched into a dialogue about how the word was beautiful, and how it had been defiled by men around the world and how I needed to play a role in bringing it back.
    Oddly enough what set him off was a controversy over whether American politicians should hold the hand of the Saudi King. Of all things, a photograph of President George W. Bush holding the king’s hand had really riled up the usually sedate singer. The Saudis, Anderson said, had a “serious damn problem on women. They don’t treat women with any respect at all, for God’s sake. No, they don’t treat women well. And woman is the earth mother, for God’s sake. Come on, we’ve got to wake up!”
    I tried to change the subject. But before I could, Anderson blurted out:
    â€œThere’s a great book called C-nt . Everybody’s got to buy it.”
    Thank God this was taped. I didn’t need George Carlin to tell me that word should not be broadcast.
    â€œYou know, ‘c-nt’ was a beautiful African word for the divine, the flower of the woman, the vagina. C-nt!” he continued. “It’s an African word and it’s a beautiful word. But you know, men fucked it up. They changed it into something misogynistic and derogative.”
    Well, the following day that aired on Buxom FM—all beeped, of course. Even so, it was huge. In fact, I think the beeps added to the rebellious nature of the conversation. My interview even got a brief mention in Rolling Stone ! And even after all this time, I found myself wondering whether Susan might have read or heard about it. Sober, I was not.
    Another night, Ted Nugent came to town and I was offered the opportunity to go to his hotel room and interview him before he left to do a local show. I took a buddy of mine with me who couldn’t believe that we were about to encounter the Motor City Madman in his suite. He thought I was pranking him right up until the minute that Uncle Ted greeted us in his doorway in stocking feet and welcomed us in.
    Now I’ve never been too good with electronics—I have a clock/DVD player at home that still blinks “12:00” 24/7—and that night, I had some crappy old tape recorder that actually recorded on cassettes.
    We were all sitting around a dining table in Nuge’s suite and he was on a roll talking both politics and rock. The man was both insane and an interviewer’s dream, sounding off on everything from music to hunting to politics. We seemed to hit it off and I remember him telling me that I was his “blood brother” and so forth.
    Then all of a sudden I felt something on my foot and looked down to see that the cassette tape had spooled out of the machine and was now running onto the floor. Nugent didn’t notice. Now I had a real dilemma. Should I tell him and acknowledge that the 15 minutes he’d given me was for nothing, or just try to finish up the interview and scoop up the tape without him noticing? I grew worried. They didn’t call him the Motor City “Madman” for nothing.
    I sat there deliberating and ultimately figured it was in my best interest to fess up. When I did, he had a surprise for me. He reached into an ankle holster and pulled out a cannon the size of the one Dirty Harry wielded. Nuge pointed it at the cassette recorder and asked my permission to “blow it the fuck