Pictures of Matchstick Men

You�d think that when a Beatle visited the home of high energy, he�d have the minimal courtesy to ROCK; especially if the visit was made in order to play at a benefit for the High Priest of Heavy, John Sinclair. Especially if it were the Beatle who prided himself most on his ability to rock. Well...

You blew it, John.

It was quite an event, though. December tenth saw 15,000 people — mostly Ann Arbor street freaks and college kids — fill Crisler Arena, nominally the home of the University of Michigan�s basketball team, to . . . well, one of the things still up in the air is just what they were there for.

Half the seats had been sold out before John and Yoko announced the imminence of their eminence. This, one hopes, goes a little way toward destroying the principle shibboleth of the minions of Consciousness III: the alternative culture may not be quite so apolitical as you think, fellas.

Nonetheless, it was a singularly desultory audience. They seemed united upon only two things: a common desire to see John and Yoko rock for John and an equally mutual distaste for David Peel.

It�s no surprise, really that they were so wiped out and tired. Eight or ten hours of Yippie! after pacifist after Panther after Rainbow making speeches tends to do that to you.

The highpoint of the speechifyin� was unquestionably Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party. Supremely self-assured, surrounded by a phalanx of burly bodyguards, Seale was quite consciously a Main Event all by himself. And yet, of all the �political� (i.e., non-rock) speakers Seale was the most coherent, and least condescending. In contrast to the later exhprtations of (especially) Rennie Davis (�Next time we do this we gotta do it in the STREET!� Back to college) and Jerry Rubin (�Goodnight Bemadine whereever you are,� his best line, is two years old: back to court), Seale really got it on.

It was the standard BPP �revolutionary intercommunalism� rap, but it worked. It worked, for the most part, because Seale tailored his speech to the audience; he�s talking about Free, about the idea of payment as thoroughly nonvirtuous, and these are things the counter-culture can hear. And, while making it clear that he realizes their foibles (�Marijuana doesn�t feed people,� perhaps the most daring statement all mght) Seale was also able to convey the fact, quite clearly, that John Sinclair, not John Lennon was the reason he was there. Nobody else managed to convince anyone of that.

Seale was followed by the evening�s first rock act — well, Allan Ginsberg had been on earlier but . . . Bob Seger, along with Teagarden and Van Winkle had never been better. They opened with Chuck Berry�s tune-of-the-hour �Let It Rock� and didn�t let up for the full twenty minutes they were on. Unfortunately, it was one of the few respites from speeches we were to have for the rest of the evening.

Several other bands performed, all of them excellently. Archie Shepp, with Roswell Rudd and several members of the Motor City�s own DC4, was superb, blowing �em back to the rafters, and a fitting reminder that this was, after all, a benefit to Free John Sinclair, an idea which always seemed about to get lost in the anticipation for John and Yoko. The Up, the present-day Rainbow People�s Party rock and rollers, were as usual musically excellent, vocally weak. Commander Cody rocked just as steady as ever.

Unfortunately and despite all the claims for this being a true amalgam of rock and politics, rock was what the people wanted and it got truly shortchanged. Not one group played for more than a half-hour; Joy of Cooking couldn�t go on because their equipment and Toni Brown arrived an hour late even though John and Yoko didn�t go on until four a.m. because of their own manipulation and a dozen speakers were apparently thrown in as filler.

In contrast to the copious amounts of rock spread throughout any purely local Sinclair benefit, and there have been many, in the last two years, music was at a premium here. It�s sad, too, because it killed the audience, literally slaughtered it in its seats: you can�t expect people to be wide awake at four a.m.; especially when the sonorous drone of speech after speech has washed over them with only intermittent blasts of cool, clean rock and roll to wake them.

And now for the stars of the show:

RICHARD PINKSTON: �Stevie Wonder at the John Sinclair rally? Well, when I got wind of it, I was a bit wary. I know about Motown�s �Sound of Young America� image, but no matter how relevant Mr. Gordy�s boys have become on record, they�ve never (publicly) been an action group. It�s okay for the Jackson Five or Diana Ross to play an NAACP dinner or two, but that is indeed a far cry from a real political rally. A rally to get a man out of prison because he was a threat to the �establishment� (if you will) conglomerate, simply because he was the loudest (or most irritating) voice in . what was, after all, then a more obviously and flagrantly Counter-culture.

�It seemed to me, at any rate, that having the (key words) youthful, dynamic, and - exceptionally hip Stevie Wonder at a rally for John would be just the right thing to round out Motown�s new geared-to-the-middle class 11-15, 18-34 image. It was the perfect opportunity to get an artist before an audience that was both white and hip (the latter being, incidentally, less an adjective than a classification).

�So anyway. Here I am. Black and eighteen at a rally for some cat whose politics I don�t much agree with, wondering what the hell Stevie Wonder was there for. I know why I�m there: I dig the music. Like a growing number of black people who dig rock and roll enormously (which is a whole other story) I came to dig the tunes. And found it extremely easy to relate to Stevie Wonder,, who came and kicked ass all night long. I realized later that that was what it was all about.�

David Peel came on at 3 a.m. The show had begun at eight p.m.

It would be misleading to say that David Peel is an arhythmic nonentity .. . what he REALLY is beggers description. Loud, boorish and ultimately repellant in his monomaniac zeal to create revolutionary dope smoking (cf. beer-drinking music) Peel got the best audience response in hours. Or at least the most. He�s lucky he left with his skin. To add obvious insult to literal injury, Peel was obviously at least in part another delaying tactic. He sang his insulting ode to Bob Dylan, clowned a bit, sang some more songs (did you know the Pope smokes dope?) and in general acted cheapo cheapo while waiting, looking over his shoulder for John and Yoko to appear.

The event was beginning to dim. If John was really so interested in rehumanizing himself, what was he coming on like such a pop star for? Nothing was delivered.

When they did finally appear, they were anti-climax personified. Peel had at least been attempting to play electric instruments, even though he hasn�t the least notion of how to rock. When John, Yoko, Jerry Rubin, Leslie Bacon and a few others took the stage to join him, they brought acoustic guitars. Is this what he thinks Bob Dylan was about.

Four songs and that was it, and they weren�t four killer songs either, which might have been redeeming. Here�s what you got: �Attica State,� �Luck of the Irish,� Yoko�s song for �her sisters in Ann Arbor,� and the finale �Free John Sinclair.� Lennon�s lyrics were dismal — �We�re all mates with Attica State,� �It�s not fair, free John Sinclair.� His playing was just as bad — acoustic! What the fuck? Only �Luck of the Irish,� his I.R.A. song, came across. And that, as �With God On Our Side,� had lifted its music from Dominic Behan�s �The Patriot Game� which is about the IRA in the first place.

All of a sudden we were presented with a minstrel wag who looked like he�s just walked out of Vidal Sasson�s salon into an Ann Arbor coffee house. Where was the Teddy Boy we used to love? �Apathy won�t get us anywhere. So flower power failed, so what, let�s start again.� Primal, John, primal.

People walked out on them. It was a rational act. In a word, they were awful. The music was boring. And it was four a.m. Most of us other revolutionaries didn�t" have chaufeurred Bentlies to drive home in. And we couldn�t see anyhow, except on the fucking thirty foot television screen that loomed over head all night.

JERRY RUBIN: �The Free Sinclair rally publicized his case on the front pages of every paper in Michigan. The vibrations reached the judges because in an incredible tribute to the power of the people, on Monday morning, 55 hours after the rally ended, they voted 6-1 to release John from jail on appeal bond.�

(From an article circulated by the Underground Press Syndicate)

A lot of people don�t see it that way, Jerry. A lot of people think that it took two years hard work on the part of a whole lot of people in Michigan to get John Sinclair out of jail on bond. A lot of people think that it had a whole lot to do with the fact that the real power of the people was exercised by smoking dope despite the laws. And so the Michigan legislature was forced to change the law, making possession only a one-year offense; which gave the Supreme Court the necessary shove in the right direction to send John home.

Despite the truly incredible historical juxtaposition — what Rubin ignores is that on that Friday, the day of the benefit, the Michigan legislature had passed the change in the state�s marijuana law — here, Beatles don�t get people out of jail. They help but they don�t do it by flying into town for the evening. That helps, sure, but it isn�t the whole game.

If, one might ask Rubin, John and Yoko and the Sinclair Rally were what got Sinclair out of jail, why wasn�t he granted amnesty? Nobody at the benefit asked for bond; they wanted John free.

DAVE MARSH: �It occurs to me, that this whole thing is about personality. The personality of John Sinclair and the personality of John Lennon. Lennon exercised his in the most bogus pop star manner possible: not only wasn�t he good at what he did do, he didn�t really do anything the people wanted to hear. They were bored and they did walk but.

�And Sinclair . . . well, there are all sorts of unfortunate overtones. He, for one thing, almost got lost. The point of this thing was supposed to be John Sinclair but it only was that for a few minutes. After that phone call, I don�t think it occured to anyone in the audience that this thing was about that John until Lennon did his song. If it did then.

And that phone call...�

Around ten p.m., Sinclair was allowed to place" his monthly phone call from the work-farm where he was incarcerated, about fifty miles away, to his wife, Leni. Leni was at the benefit and that was where John called. Technology snafued it, the feedback was nearly unbearable, but through it all you could still make out the fact that it was John Sinclair speaking. Some of us thought it was a tape. Some, that it was a gag. But it finally dawned on everyone that this was John: not in the flesh, but as close to it as we could get.

MARSH: �It was frightening, in a way. I mean, I was in tears, I really flipped out and started crying and I know I wasn�t the only one. Everyone thought John was too, after he said �I wanna come home.� And he says he was laughing but you know . . .

But then, after awhile, when they put Sunny (his daughter) on and everything, I got freaked. I mean, this was an incredibly crass act, with his picture thirty feet high on the tv screen and his voice electronically zooming around the room. It had to do with a whole series of things, a lot of ideas, a lot of fears, about building personality cults and this ... I don�t know, it just smacked of personality cultism and I don�t think that that can be afforded right now.�

Nonetheless, it is undeniable that having John Sinclair out on the street again is the most joyous Christmas present the Michigan youth community could have received. John Lennon didn�t do this alone, and it wasn�t just this one event that did it.

Maybe, though, with a little luck and little time, and a few more events like this . . . but without the television screens and the ego-tripping On all sides . . . maybe we can bring a whole lot of people home. Like Pun Plamondon and Angela Davis, for a start. And then maybe Tim Leary or Eldridge Cleaver.

Leary got asylum in Switzerland that week. Huey Newton�s murder charge was dropped. And John Sinclair came home. Maybe more stars than just Lennon were on our side.