True story. I wasn't really supposed to do this interview. It had been offered to one of the staff writers, someone who has such a deep and abiding interest in Wayne Kramer and the MC5 that he owns solo singles that Kramer released in the eighties, music most people wouldn't even know existed.
But he wouldn't even talk to Wayne Kramer on the telephone. "They sold out," he insists, still angry over a licensing deal in 2003 with Levis that ultimately resulted in Jennifer Aniston sporting an MC5 T-shirt on an episode of Friends.
Kramer, the band's original guitarist and self-appointed Keeper of the Flame, is not surprised by this. Speaking from his in-laws' home somewhere in Ohio, Kramer admits that "some of us have obviously hung on to our old ideals. I think it's charming that he [the reporter]took a stand and refused to do it. But that's the same criticism that we got 35 years ago, that we were not revolutionary enough for the revolution. "
Interestingly, though, my compatriot's passion is not all that uncommon. Kramer has heard these kind of stories before, and to understand where this passion comes from, one needs to understand the band's era, and their role in it.
The revolution in question was the counterculture movement of the mid-to-late sixties that was spawned by the hippies and fuelled and mutated by Vietnam, LSD and free love. Kramer was a Detroit-area guitarist who, along with vocalist Rob Tyner and guitarist Fred (Sonic) Smith (plus two others who would eventually be replaced by the rhythm section of Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis), formed in 1964 a rock band known as The MC5.
Throughout 1965 and 1966, The MC5 refined their sound, cranking up the volume, employing feedback for its own sake, and displaying a rabble-rousing spirit that was tremendously, well, revolutionary for its time. Securing a virtual residency at Detroit's legendary Grande Ballroom, the band built up a huge local following, and spearheaded a thriving local scene that also included the likes of Iggy and The Stooges, Frijid Pink, The Frost, The Bob Seger System and SRC.
The band's sky-rocketing profile understandably caught the attention of John Sinclair, a former high school teacher who had quit the profession to become immersed in the counterculture. Sinclair had formed a pseudo-corporation called Trans-love Energies in 1968 to oversee his burgeoning empire, one that included concert promotion, band management and the newly formed White Panther Party, the Detroit street-kid response to the Black Panther Party. By 1967, Sinclair became the MC5's manager, and the band thus became inexorably linked to the revolution. "John was the only guy that we knew who was really and truly a collaborator with us," Kramer recalls. "We had tried to work with music business-type people, but they were generally so condescending and so manipulative that we just wouldn't tolerate them.."
The marriage to Sinclair fuelled the band's political activism and countercultural rhetoric became a fundamental aspect of their performances. The band became "persons of interest" to the FBI and the CIA. The MC5 were even on hand in Chicago in 1968 at the time of the notorious Democratic National Convention, performing at the Yippies' Festival of Life anti-establishment concert.
The MC5 were still a largely unknown local phenomenon, but that would change with the release of the incendiary Kick Out The Jams album in October of 1968. Recorded live at the Grande Ballroom, that album still stands as one of the most galvanizing passionate rock albums of all time, and also undoubtedly one of the most influential. It is hard to imagine the emergence of the punk scene several years later, or the growth of heavy metal without the tempestuous influence of this album.
It was an honest attempt to be the call-to-arms of its day, and controversey followed. Because the lyrics of its title track contained the screamed battle cry "Kick out the Jams, motherfuckers," (this is 1968, remember), many national retailers, including the Detroit-based giant Hudson's, refused to stock the album. The band responded by taking out a full page ad in a Detroit underground newspaper simply stating "Fuck Hudson's," but the controversy didn't stop the album from hitting Billboard's national Top 30 charts. However, things began to unravel soon after. Elektra Records, shying away from the controversy, dropped the band. Sinclair, meanwhile, was arrested and jailed for marijuana possession, prompting a lengthy Free John Sinclair political campaign, but effectively leaving the MC5 without a label or a manager.
The band signed on with Atlantic and the resulting 1970 album Back In The USA was given a pop sheen, and the cries of "sellout" could be heard. By the time a third album, High Time, was released in 1971, the revolution was on the wane, and nobody really cared any more. In early 1972, beset by management, financial and drug problems, the band broke up.
For his part, Kramer descended into drug addiction and alcoholism. "I was so bitter and jaded and cynical at the end of the MC5 that I lost my way. And it was a long walk into the woods and out of the woods," Kramer unashamedly recalls. "It's only through some greater power than Wayne Kramer that I managed to survive. Why Rob Tyner [who passed away in 1991]and Fred Smith [1994]are six feet under and I'm not, I don't know, because I'd done more drugs and booze than both of them. But I got help. Today, I have a full and good life. "
It's been 35 years since The MC5's star burned brightly, but interest in the band and its music has been rekindled. A new generation of rockers, including Detroit's Jack White and his band The White Stripes, cite The MC5 as an influence. A documentary film entitled MC5: A True Testimonial by David C. Thomas and Laurel Legler included some rare concert footage of the original band, and was screened to notable acclaim in a number of cities including New York and Toronto. And a series of live performances based around a sort-of reformed line-up of Kramer, Davis and Thompson has attracted the interest of volunteer sidemen, including Lemmy from Motorhead, Marshall Crenshaw, and Evan Dando.
With bands as widespread as The White Stripes, The Hives, The Strokes, The Hellacopters and dozens more going through the process of re-inventing uses for a few simple chords and a volume knob, interest in pioneers such as Kramer and company is certainly peaking. The summer tour schedule for the DKT (Davis, Kramer, Thompson)/MC5 finds the band ranging across the entire breadth of the United States, a few dates in Canada and a handful in Europe in August. A DVD of the band's March, 2003 London performance, entitled Sonic Revolution is to be released in early July. Interest in the band is as strong as it's been since the late sixties.
To Kramer, all the attention is nothing short of miraculous. "When does this ever happen?" he asks. "This is a band that never had hit records in its prime, who have virtually been erased from the history of the sixties. I mean, you see these compilations of music from the Sixties that includes Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, but they never mention the MC5. It's beyond anything I could have imagined. "This is really a gift to me."
DKT/MC5 perform tonight at 8 p.m. at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, as part of the NXNE Festival. They play Vancouver, July 4; Edmonton, July 5.