Detroit Rock City
Authors: Steve Miller
BOOKS BY STEVE MILLER
A Slaying in the Suburbs:
The Tara Grant Murder
Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore
Punk Zine '79â'83, editor
Girl, Wanted:
The Chase for Sarah Pender
Commando: The Johnny Ramone Autobiography
, co-editor
Nobody's Women: The Crimes and Victims of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Serial Killer
DETROIT
ROCK
CITY
The Uncensored History
of Rock 'n' Roll in
America's Loudest City
Steve Miller
DA CAPO PRESS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Copyright © 2013 by Steve Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.
Designed by Timm Bryson
Set in 10.75 point Adobe Jenson Pro by The Perseus Books Group
Thanks to the following publishers and writers for granting permission to use original interviews and material previously published for this book:
Â
â¢
   Â
Ron and Scott Asheton interviews by Brian Bowe, pages 42â55, used by permission of Brian Bowe.
Â
â¢
   Â
Ron Asheton, page 49, courtesy of Long Gone John, Sympathy For The Record Industry,
Sympathyrecords.com
, SFTRI 163.
Â
â¢
   Â
Bob Seger interview, page 77, by John Morthland, July 1977, courtesy of
Creem
magazine.
Â
â¢
   Â
Bob Seger interview, page 124, by Lowell Cauffiel, August 1976, courtesy of
Creem
magazine.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Steve
Detroit rock city : the uncensored history of rock 'n' roll in America's loudest city / Steve Miller.âFirst Da Capo Press edition.
  Â
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-306-82184-4 (e-book) 1. Rock musicâMichiganâDetroitâHistory and criticism. 2. Rock musiciansâMichiganâDetroit. I. Title.
ML3534.3.M59 2013
781.6609774'34âdc23
2013004433
Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail
[email protected]
.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ACT I: BLACK SHEEP (1965â1972)
“You Can't Be a Leader on LSD”
“I'm No Statesman, I'm No General”
“They Didn't Call Them the Stooges for Nothing”
America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine
“What Happens in Detroit Stays in Detroit”
In Detroit, Woodstock Was the Weak Shit
“We Weren't Musicians, We Were Like an Outlaw Bike Club”
ACT II: GIMME SOME ACTION (1973â1981)
New York: “None of These People Have Seen Shit”
Creem:
“They're No Good Since Lester Bangs Left”
The Voice Box and First in Line
ACT III: THE BIG THREE KILLED MY BABY (1981â2000)
MC5: Are They from Detroit? Fresh Blood and Garage Innocence
“Warm Beer and Bestiality Go Together”
The Same Boy You've Always Known
“It Was Raining Faggots on Me”
Aspiring and Achieving Lowly Dreams
Photos follow
page 154
This book, like so many others, starts in a bar. In winter 2002 a musician I knew in Lansing, Michigan, approached me as I sat at a table alone.
“Hey, you're a journalist or something, right?” he asked.
Yes, I nodded; few of my friends knew what I did for a living. I lived at the time in Washington, DC, a world away. I was a national reporter, covering things and events that would affect their lives in ways they couldn't perceive. But they didn't care. I was still the guy who liked good music and drank with them and went to the after-parties and had some good stories about early hardcore and touring the states before there was a network of clubs and crash palaces.
“So why hasn't anyone ever written a book about Detroit's rock scene and the influence it's had on rock and roll?” my pal asked.
I had no answer. Detroit was just part of growing up. Did I take it for granted?
My dad was a copy editor at the
Detroit News
in 1967, commuting from our apartment in East Lansing, eighty miles west of Detroit, where he was getting his doctorate at Michigan State University. One steamy night that year we drove to Tiger Stadium to catch the White Sox play the Tigers, watching the gun-toting National Guard troops on the rooftops. The riots were two weeks prior.
In the fall of 1968 I was wandering across a park in East Lansing and heard what sounded like a sonic explosion, a cacophony of thud and high-end screech coming from a small, brick community center. I ran to the doors to check into what was causing this heavenly noise. Locked. I went around to the rear of the building, where an open window was giving everyone a free listen to the soundcheck of the MC5. Looking insideâthe amps draped with the American flags, the buckskin jackets, and the wild hairâfor an eleven-year-old, it was a life-giving experience I have never forgotten.
We started going to big shows in Detroit, national acts that hit Detroit at every chanceâAerosmith, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed, and Roxy Musicâat great venues like the Michigan Palace, Cobo Center, and Masonic Auditorium. Detroit was The Show.
We all read
Creem
magazin
e
in high school, learning about the real deal in a way that effete bullshit like
Rolling Stone
could never conceive of.
Creem
was Detroit; the rest were from, well, somewhere else.
Creem
wrote about the Stooges more than anyone else. When it came down to Mick Jagger vs. Iggy Pop in the rock-star idolatry sweepstakes, Iggy came out on top every time. He was Detroit. I would puff furiously on my Newport at the notion that anyone outside Iggy could be any more badass. Starting at age fifteen, we listened to the Stooges as we drove in cars on back roads and cradled bottles of Mad Dog 20â20.
“So why hasn't anyone ever written a book about Detroit's rock scene and the influence it's had on rock and roll?”
The question was a killer. I had no answer, but this is the response, eleven years later. Along the way to making this happen, I confirmed a number of my beliefs about music. Number one is that Detroit is the most influential rock-and-roll city on earthânot New York, not Los Angeles, not London, and not San Francisco. It's incontrovertible.
Another is that Detroit's fade as a city was part of the natural order, an ebbing of power for a city that held half of the US auto-making jobs. Wayne Kramer, his mind finely honed, told me as we sat in his Los Angeles studio in 2011 that the MC5 “were like a barometer for Detroit. Unearths an interesting question, the one of free will. Which I am more and more convinced does not exist. We think we're making decisions, but our options are so affected by our surroundings. If you're born in the wrong family, wrong neighborhood, you're not going to make it. You can't be rich someday. You ain't the kid who found out about computers like Bill Gates. He was in a unique situation. So the decline of the MC5 and the parallel decline of Detroit is not a mystery to me, the things we were going through; we were not alone. A lot of other people were in desperate situations as well. And some of them had guns.”
Man, that's a Darwinian downer.
Detroit pulses with the same energy that captivated me as a kid. Detroit won't change, because that would have happened billions of dollars and many years ago. That's what so good about itâthe purity of its character. On a given night you can see some great music and maybe get jacked while you pump gas a few blocks down. Detroit is Alphabet City circa 1977 squared. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame isn't in Detroit because that would taint the city with the greedy mindlessness of the Establishment. Detroit is way past such institutions. It's the Rock City. And that's enough.
Black Sheep
(1965â1972)
