Jack Blades told a funny story about Ted Nugent’s focus on playing guitar during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Speaking on Nugent’s YouTube channel, Blades said the Damn Yankees were rehearsing at his ranch when the earthquake hit.
While everyone else was rushing to find safety, Nugent kept playing without looking up. When the shaking stopped, he calmly said, “Earthquake, huh?” and went right back to playing. Nugent joked that his guitar playing could cause “a sexy controlled earthquake,” and Blades teased that he might have caused the quake himself.
“Remember that time the earthquake hit and we were rehearsing the Damn Yankees before we made our first record in 1989? The earthquake hit in San Francisco and all of a sudden the producers running around like get in the middle of a doorway and the whole pool is going like this,” Blades said.
“We’re downstairs in my at my ranch and it’s all going and through and Tommy and I are like going like, ‘What the f***?’ And you’re sitting there. You just kept playing with your head down. And all of a sudden it just stopped. The whole thing just stopped and it stopped,” Blades recalled.
The Loma Prieta earthquake happened on October 17, 1989, with a magnitude of 6.9. It lasted about 15 seconds but caused major destruction in the San Francisco Bay Area. The epicenter was in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 60 miles south of San Francisco, but the shaking was felt across the region. The quake killed 63 people, injured nearly 3,800, and caused about $6 billion in damage.
The earthquake is also famous for stopping Game 3 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics at Candlestick Park. The moment was caught on live TV, making it one of the most widely seen earthquakes in history. It also caused serious infrastructure damage, including part of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge collapsing and the deadly failure of the Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland, which caused most of the deaths. The disaster left a lasting mark on the Bay Area.
