Given all the havoc the MC5 left in their dazzling but troubled wake, it’s astonishing to look back and realize that it all occurred within such a compressed period of time. It was slightly more than four years from plugging in their Vox amps into Detroit’s Grande Ballroom’s decrepit electrical outlets and recording Kick Out the Jams to imploding on that same stage, downcast, disheartened, unrehearsed, with four of the five members drug-addicted for their final show on Dec. 31, 1972. It felt like a blurry spedup movie without the happy ending.

With their twin-guitar Chuck Berry garage-band savagery, fierce primitive drumming, practical approach to songwriting—like naming a song “Black to Comm” to remember how to hook up the amps (the “comm” was the common connection on an amp, where the black wire went)—and a fondness for sticking Sun Ra jazz wank into a tune and calling it avant-rock, they had a genius for combining high and low culture to mostly great effect. The whole point of the MCS’s ethos was to be fearless, a little arrogant, but not necessarily perfect. They didn’t mind getting things wrong, just so it ended up being original. Doing that, they changed the aesthetic of ’60s music with that free noise ambition, inventing an early form of proto-punk and inspiring almost as many bands as the Velvet Underground did.

Their manager and White Panther Party major domo John Sinclair was fond of calling them “the people’s band,” while Wayne Kramer claimed, “We are all MC5,” with more than a touch of cosmic kumbaya given the times. Although by no stretch of the imagination could you have ever called the MC5 hippies, with their black leather jackets and fondness of guns. They were more akin to London’s teddy boys with better hair and bigger dreams.

The real tragedy in their ascent was that they didn’t tumble from a great height. They were a band that deserved to be on Valhalla, a psychically dangerous, high-energy hard-rock juggernaut that wanted to raise both consciousness and the roof. Original CREEM editor Dave Marsh said, “In Detroit, they were the Beatles!” They even outsold the Fabs in their hometown, landing on the cover of Rolling Stone before they had even recorded their first album, and were championed in The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Village Voice. But a cascade of catastrophes seemed to conspire to keep them from that lofty perch. To paraphrase the French essayist and politician Victor Hugo, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” But what about one that arrives a little too early?

CREEM talked to the MCS’s fiery guitarist and founding member Wayne Kramer to attempt to unravel a conundrum that has stumped poets, big thinkers, philosophers, and statesmen since time began. But Kramer had come up with the answer: You wait for time to catch up and do it all again. So, five decades later—a lifetime, really—Kramer, the spiritual curator of the band’s formidable legacy, put the MC5 back together and recorded Heavy Lifting, the first album under the MC5 rubric since 1971’s High Time. Produced by Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, KISS, Alice Cooper), it features original MC5 drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, vocalist Brad Brooks, and Tom Morello. In what turned out to be Kramer’s final interview—he unexpectedly passed away from pancreatic cancer 10 days after we talked—he holds very little back as he tells CREEM about being immortalized in the lyrics of the Clash’s 1977 song “Jail Guitar Doors,” his sometimes tumultuous relationship with Johnny Thunders and why he got in a band with him, what the legacy of the MC5 really is, what people get wrong about him, and what he can’t live without.

As for me, I’m going to have a hard time in a world that doesn’t include Wayne Kramer. A folk hero, a philosopher, a visionary artist, a survivor, an activist, and mostly a friend, we have careened through the years together, beginning when I first saw the MC5 in the days before their revolutionary fervor was lit when they played at the teen stage at the Michigan State Fair when I was 14.1 remember that hot September day well; they were all wearing matching corduroy suits and vests. While their outfits were a little fey and precious, they still managed to pull off a fierce, defiant, unhinged set. I got to know him better two years later at the Grande Ballroom, where I worked behind the bar and they were the house band. So many times I overheard Wayne hissing from the side of the stage, “Kick out the jams, motherfucker,” to visiting headliners who he thought were delivering a weak performance. Usually they were bands from California, and most famously Janis Joplin and then Eric Clapton’s power trio Cream. (Jack Bruce complained to the ballroom owner about the Five’s behavior toward them.)

Despite all the ferocity and explosive performances, what always stuck with me was how people would come up to Wayne and say to him, “The MC5 changed my life.” Wayne always had the same answer: “I’m sorry, I wish I could change it back.”

I’m glad you couldn’t.

***

How did a guy from Lincoln Park, Michigan, manage to make his mark in this world? What was the dream?

Well, it was all in my head because it didn’t exist in the world. I saw parts of it here and there, but I had to invent much of it. It was like building the airplane while you’re flying it.

What made the MC5 so ascendant among the bands that were cropping up in post-Summer of Love Detroit? You opened for Jimi Hendrix, for Led Zeppelin, and very early on you opened for the Dave Clark Five. Did that have anything to do with why you called yourselves the MC5?

No, that was just a coincidence.

Dave Clark Five were the alternative to Beatlemania, what was it like to perform in front of 20,000 screaming girl fans so early in your career?

It was a massive moment for me and the fellows. It was a taste of what it’s like at the upper levels of what we were trying to do. I mean, you could literally wave at one side of the sports arena and it would erupt in cheers. It was like being Mussolini.

Do you think that early taste of such mass adoration—even reflected adoration—had something do with your pursuing your dreams?

Yes. Powering them, fueling them. It was an experience unlike anything that ever came out of Lincoln Park. I mean, there was no way you’re going to get that kind of an experience. It was a taste of raw power—with a nod to the Stooges with the use of the phrase. I’m sure it’s the same thing that Donald Trump experiences, that’s why he does all these goddamn appearances and rallies and all that crap. Because he can’t get enough of that feeling that these people will all do whatever he tells them to do. I mean, it’s raw power.

Was coming from Detroit a detriment or a superpower?

It was a secret superpower, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. At the time it felt like we were just barbarians at the gates. We were banging away at a system and a country and a culture that was asking us, “Who in the hell do you think you are?” And we had developed the skills to move forward in what we were trying to do. We learned how to put on a show, and we learned how to write songs, and that carried a message.

The interesting thing was, the MC5 never felt inferior. We felt more advanced than the rock musicians coming out of New York or Los Angeles. The fact that our heroes were jazz musicians like Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor, not George Harrison or the Beatles, said volumes. Of course, that turned out to be a problem later when we discovered that we had all the wrong idols to make any money.

The MC5’s roots were solidly in Detroit, a hardworking blue-collar town. People worked hard and they expected to see their bands play hard. Did you consider what you did work?

Absolutely. After the MC5 broke up, and I started Gang War with Johnny Thunders, whenever we’d rehearse or play a gig and I’d say, “Come on, man, it’s time to go to work,” and Johnny would say, “I don’t go to work. I go to play.” I thought, yeah, there it is, you know? He viewed music as an escape from responsibility, and I looked at it as the joy in taking responsibility. I thought then, and I still think today, that one should work as hard as one can on the art. To be authentic, you have to go full measure. You can’t do the half measures; you can’t do it stoned.

What was the evolution of the new MC5 album?

Alice Cooper asked me to work on his album Detroit Stories, which was produced by the great producer Bob Ezrin. Bob asked what I was doing, and I told him I was writing a new record with this wonderful vocalist named Brad Brooks from Oakland. I played him a couple of tracks and he flipped out. He said, “Holy shit, that stuff is great! You ought to think about calling this the MC5 and making a new MC5 album.” I hadn’t thought of that. I really hadn’t. And then—I did. Then I realized a bunch of the songs that I had written had to go because they didn’t fit the [aesthetic of the MC5]. The album I was writing went in a specific literary direction. So we had to throw out a bunch of songs, and I had to write a bunch of new ones. When Bob expressed interest in producing, we decided that we needed to tap into our network of friends and musicians who would be excited to play on the new MC5 album. I started thinking, who do I know whose writing I like that would work on an MC5 album? I had just had dinner with Tom Morello and I hadn’t seen him for a couple years—since before COVID. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “I sit down every day and I write a riff, and I send it out all over the world. I send it to anybody that wants a riff.” I thought, well, that’s cool. That keeps him in the game creatively.

So, the next day the wheels in my decrepit old brain started turning and I called Tom up and I asked him to send me a couple of his riffs, because I needed some inspiration and some new material. He was excited and that afternoon he sent over a couple of tracks, and I had a ball with them, slicing and dicing and putting them into a song form. Then Brad and I wrote some lyrics for it. Actually, Brad wrote most of the lyrics for it, and it became “Heavy Lifting,” which is going to be the name of the album.

Why did you call this new MC5 album Heavy Lifting?

It’s an expression that means “hard work,” and I wanted it to be true. If I’m the curator of the MC5 legacy, then I want to be true to it. I want to put in effort.

I think this record and the material follows in the path that the MC5 set out on that last album, High Time [the band’s final album, released July 6, 1971]. We were never afraid of a fight and in fact probably instigated a few. I always try to let the music be the guide, and the song itself seemed like that’s the one that we should build this on.

Did you have any reservations about calling it an MC5 album?

We’ve done everything to preserve the original intent and spirt of the band. Dennis [Thompson] came and played on the record. He played on two tracks, and he played his ass off, too.

The MC5 ended in 1971, and you had said in 2004 that like many institutions when something has fulfilled its promise or its function, then it falls away. But now, it will live again. Was something not finished, or is it something viable for people again? What was the thinking behind that?

Well, one way of looking at it is that I find myself the curator of the legacy of the MC5. I started the band, and I was in it to the bitter end, and I do mean bitter, but yeah, that’s not unusual. That happens to almost all bands. Bands are psychological, emotional messes. They’re just crippled. So much happens when you’re young, and it takes time to figure out how this business works of living in the world. It turns out it’s more complicated than you thought it was. Another part of it is that you spend your youth acquiring skills. You could call them job skills, but you could also call them life skills. You’re learning how to function successfully in the world, how to get along with people.

I always felt once I had discovered sobriety that drugs and alcohol weren’t my problem, they were my solution. My problem was I couldn’t get along with people. My problem was everybody pissed me off. The mailman pissed me off. Clerks pissed me off. Policemen really pissed me off. The government pissed me off, because none of them would do things the way I want them to do it. My wife pissed me off, my friends pissed me off, my band pissed me off... because none of them played the way I wanted them to play. So that’s what my problem was, I couldn’t control anybody. My problem was lack of power. That was my dilemma.

A dilemma. But the truth is, you shouldn’t have that kind of power over another person.

Correct. Absolutely. That was not a power I should’ve had. And I had to learn that. I’d like to say I’m not reinventing the MC5 because you can’t do that. I don’t have the power to do that. So, what can I do? I can be true to the values, ethics, and spirit of the MC5. Not all of them— because some of them were damaging and mean-spirited—but I can be true to much of what the MC5 represented. The idea that art is important, art matters, art holds up the stories of who we are—especially the story that we’re not alone.

So, I’ve got wonderful musicians who are just a joy to spend time with, and I’m really looking forward to what we can do. We will pour gasoline on this fire. That’s what you can do when you have musicians who know what they’re doing and know their craft, know their instrument, know music, know politics, know how all this stuff fits together, what it means to carry a message. So that’s something I can do.

Can you talk about the original MC5, what was the secret of its success?

I think the MC5 represented something eternal. We live in a world of symbols, everything represents something else, and the MC5 represented a kind of uncompromising vision of the future. We were searching for a new kind of politics and a new lifestyle, and that’s something every new generation of kids goes through and has to find for themselves. We embodied that quest.

When you started the band, what was your vision?

I wanted to be recognized for what I was doing. I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, that I had something to say, that I could contribute as a guitar player, that I could play in a way that would open some doors. I looked at Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page as my contemporaries, except I thought I knew more than they did. I knew about the free jazz movement, and I kept looking for signs that maybe the others did as well, and I never really saw much evidence of it. But I did hear it every now and then. Every so often I’d hear another guitarist play something that would make me think that they were listening to people like John Coltrane. I don’t know if they were or not, but that was my hope—that they were listening to this music that the free jazz guys were playing.

You were looking for the mentality that went with free jazz—the idea that you could go out further and further. You weren’t content with the way things were. That music demanded some kind of action. The MC5 seemed to have encouraged that kind of thinking—leading by example, and not constrained by anything.

Exactly. We weren’t constrained by anything. Not the key, not the chord changes, none of that. If you were going to be an artist, you had something to say. And we thought, well, look, musicians like Sun Ra and Coltrane are saying it. And shit, we’re gonna say it too. We’re going to say what we have to say. And that will continue long after we’re gone, and the next generation will pick up on that and run with the ball.

After the MC5 imploded, you did time in prison after you were convicted, among other charges, of selling drugs to undercover federal agents and were sentenced to four years in federal prison. You seem to be one of the very few people that prison changed for the better.

It did, but not in the way that anyone might think that it did. Because when I got out of prison all I had was willpower. And willpower, like talent, is not enough. And so I came out of prison swearing I was going to clean up. I wasn’t going to use anymore, and I wasn’t going to put any more needles in my arm. I was going to get serious about my career, and I was going to get something going while I was still young. And what’s the first thing I do? Get a habit. I connect with a woman who’s a dyed-in-the-wool dope fiend bitch. And then I get in a band with Johnny Thunders, who had a habit. So, clearly, I still hadn’t learned the lessons I needed to learn. I didn’t make the necessary changes for decades to come. The change I needed to make was a change of character.

I had to finally face the facts that I was a liar, and a bullshitter, and a cheat, and a thief, and I’ve hurt people and I’ve been hurt, and I had to gain a more realistic perspective on who the hell I was.

The missing ingredient was the belief that I wasn’t all that. That the world would get along fine without me. I had to create a code and a set of principles I could live by. I had to learn that if I wanted people to think of me as an honest man, then I’d have to be an honest man. Simple shit like that.

Speaking of Johnny Thunders, how did you end up forming Gang War with him?

It looked good on paper. I had just come home from prison, and I understood that he had a relatively high profile, and that the Heartbreakers were “a thing.” I was looking for a quick way to raise my profile in the music world and get a career going again. When he broached the idea of starting a band together, I said, “Listen, we’ll use my rhythm section,” because these guys, they were wicked; they laid it down and it stayed laid down. Their knife cut the butter. That was important to me because a bunch of the guys in the New York punk rock world could barely play.

Gang War worked on the level that I knew I could control the music and that the music would be slammin’. And it was, but then Johnny would just fall over the stage and knock shit over and abuse the audience. But apparently that’s what they liked. In the MC5 we honored the audience. We referred to them as our brothers and sisters and we went out to play. With Johnny, I was shocked at how abusive he was, and it was an eye-opener for me. And I’d just come from federal prison, and I thought, fuck, man!

I remember a story you told, that when you were in prison the one thing you were glad to miss was the rise of punk rock and how fans would show their favor by gobbing all over the band.

I did say that, and that I was almost glad that I was in prison during the gobbing era. I don’t think I could’ve hung with that. I mean, how is that a sign that somebody likes me? But of course I heard about it. When I went to prison, a couple of my friends bought me subscriptions to Billboard, Cashbox, Rolling Stone, and CREEM. All the music publications of the day. So I kinda had a feel for what was going on. Then [NME writer and Pink Fairies founder] Mick Farren started sending me the NME from London. I saw this trend emerging that they were calling punk rock, and of course I would flush the paper down the toilet after I read them because the bands would refer to the MC5 as being their inspiration behind punk rock. I didn’t want to be associated with this punk music thing because punk has a different meaning in prison. At least it did back then, doesn’t anymore. It stands on its own two feet today, and it’s fine, but back then it was still touch and go.

What did punk mean in prison?

Well, a punk was usually a passive gay person who predatory homosexuals would force to have sex and clean up their cell and wash their socks and be their slave, basically. And it wasn’t widespread, but it was happening, and I just, I’m not a punk. I’m not going to be washing anyone’s socks.

You worked as a carpenter making high-end furniture and cabinets for a number of years. When did the light bulb go off that you should go back to being an artist?

In therapy. I had a therapist that was very hip. I was living in Nashville, and the woman I was married to at the time was a student at Vanderbilt and had health care. Since I was married to her, I had access to that mental health care too. I met this therapist, and he was a very smooth African American man. He knew I was a musician, and while we were talking, he asked about my career and the MC5. I said, “Well, you probably wouldn’t know any of our songs because we were effectively banned from the music business.” He said, “Yeah, but gimme a name.” I said, “The song that we’re most well-known for was called ‘Kick Out the Jams.’ He said, “Would that be ‘Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers’?”

Then he shocked me by saying, “Wayne, I know all about who you are. I was the Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party in Newark, New Jersey. And we knew all about the White Panthers and we knew all about the MC5.” So, at a certain point I was grappling with all my issues and he said, “Wayne, maybe you’re not really a carpenter. Maybe you’re really an artist, maybe you’re really a musician. Maybe you’re really a songwriter and a performer.” And I said, “Wow, maybe you’re right.” He was a great therapist. I loved the man. That started my road back.

When the Clash wrote “Jail House Guitars” about you when you were in prison, was that a wakeup call? Did you know people still cared about you?

No. Hell, no. I was deeply moved by that. I took it for what it was and then I never thought about it much again until probably a decade later. This is a bit of a winding story.

After I got out of jail, I became a fan of prison stories. When I would read a newspaper and there would be something about a prison, zoom, I'm going to read that story, so I started becoming very aware of national prison statistics.

When I went down there were 50,000 people in prison in America in the federal system and another 300,000 in all the state systems across the country. So, there were about 350,000 people under lock and key in 1975. After a few years I noticed the numbers are going faster and faster, until suddenly a million people are locked up. Then, after the drug wars, we hit 2 million people. I started pulling my hair and wondered if anybody else saw what was going on.

It really got to me, this business of a million, then 2 million, then 3 million people behind bars. It just lit a fire under me. Billy Bragg and I were putting on a concert at Sing Sing in New York, and while we were warming up, he took his guitar out, and it said “Jail Guitar Doors” on his guitar. I thought, that’s interesting. What’s up with that? And he said, “Oh, it’s the old Clash B-side. You ever heard it?” And I said, “Heard it? Billy, the song is about me.”

[Wayne recites in a British accent:]

Let me tell you ’bout Wayne and his deals of cocaine
A little more every day
Holding for a friend till the band do well
Then the DEA locked him away

Then Billy said, “Oh, bloody fucking hell, it is about you!!!” He started telling me that it was on his guitar because he had started this independent initiative in England to provide instruments to prisoners to use as tools for rehabilitation. And I said that sounds like exactly what I’m looking for, because just doing concerts in prisons isn’t enough. So that day Billy, me, and my wife, Margaret Saadi Kramer, founded Jail Guitar Doors USA. That was 15 years ago. Today our guitars are in over 250 American prisons. We run songwriting workshop programs in prisons across the country. We do a great deal of programming here in California where I live, and we’re building satellite programs all around the nation. We’re at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, we’re at Rikers Island in New York. We’re in it, trying to make a difference.

What is the MC5’s place in musical history?

Well, we are perceived as being uncompromising. We were the band that took a stand, and we paid the price for it.

One thing you’d change about yourself.

I’m pretty content with myself these days. I worked very hard to change this time. I love music. I love everything that’s connected to it. I love being in a band even though it’s the biggest pain in the ass in the world. I love making something out of nothing. I love that I can sit in a prison, put a guitar in someone’s hand, and say, “Here, write a song about what betrayal means to you. Write a song to yourself.” Because what happens in that creative process is people change. They can see themselves in a new light, and that they are not just a prison number— they’re an artist. That they’re a songwriter. They wrote that today and the prison system can’t take that away from them.

What do people get wrong about you?

I don’t know. My wife tells me that people are afraid of me and I can see no reason why one would be fearful of me. I just, I can’t.

You’ve said you were selfish and narcissistic when you were younger.

Yeah. I was ruthless in the early days and the MC5 days—I had no idea, I had no consciousness of it. It was just the way I saw the world, and it was like a chemical reaction; I just reacted. That was the plan.

A major flaw in your character.

Impatience.

What happened to all the spangly costumes?

They all went in a little hole in Wayne’s arm.

What are you afraid of?

Pain.

What can’t you live without?

Love.

Do you still think you can change the world?

No, I don’t. But I do. I can change me. And I can do whatever it is I can do. Whatever it is I have to offer on that day, I can do that. And in a way, that changes the world.