“I must admit, it looked and sounded phenomenal, but the poor girl was crushed to smithereens… I was totally heartbroken”: How Ted Nugent accidentally destroyed his first Gibson Byrdland

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16-year-old Ted Nugent was on top of the world. In 1965, his band, the Lourds, had won the Michigan Battle of the Bands, beating out 60 other Detroit-area combos. To seal their win, Nugent jumped on the judges’ table to play his guitar solo. As the winning band, the Lourds got to open for the Supremes and the Beau Brummels at Detroit’s Cobo Hall on June 13, 1965. They played a medley of High Heel Sneakers, Walking the Dog and Shake Your Tail Feather.”

“I was smokin’ in Detroit,” Nugent says today. “The Lourds were just kickin’ ass... We were getting ready to open up some shows for the Stones.”