Detroit Rock City (6 page)

Ray Goodman:
Most Michigan bands weren't well received at the time. Scott said to someone, “Well, if California bands and audiences don't like us, if the Five was out there, their name's mud.” Not too much later the phone rings and Scott goes, “Hello.” It was Wayne Kramer. “Mud here.” They'd already been out there. The attitude out there was San Francisco was it and anything else was an invasion.

Scott Richardson:
Gary had a motorcycle accident after we put out
Milestones
, and he didn't really recover from it personality wise. But we were all doing acid, and everybody had their own reaction. I'm talking about the stress of being there the first time through, and we were inventing PAs and inventing pop festivals, and you know all that stuff had never happened on that scale before. The stress of all that combined with all those drugs, making all that money—we were making $2,500 a night at that point, which was pretty good. Living together and the normal stuff that happens because when you go out on stage, you have a closer relationship to your bandmates than you do to any old lady that you'll ever have.

Shaun Murphy:
When SRC broke up, I don't know whether it was just that Scott was not focused or so focused on himself that it just didn't happen.

Scott Richardson:
I was this personality, see? I was the front man. I had all this charisma, all these great looks, and the girls were all coming and that was why. And the band and everybody recognized that. And so I still had that, for a very brief instant I had that cachet of leadership. LSD destroyed us. You can't be a leader or a personality on LSD.

Mitch Ryder:
MC5 said about me, “Mitch Ryder, eat shit.” The reason I know this is that my bodyguard had taken me to Detroit, dropped me off, and was flying back to New York. Guys in the MC5 were on the same flight with him. Everybody was sitting in first class, and they didn't know who he was. He just sat there and listened and heard them dissing me and dissing everybody else and talking about how great they were, you know. They were just insecure because they were groomed as the military arm of the fucking communist fucking organization. And there they are going to Popsville.

John Sinclair:
That's what Ryder always would do. He'd have an opportunity to say something, and then he would say the most outrageous stupid shit to
Rolling Stone
. He's really been good at making enemies. But he's just such a great fucking artist, you know? You gotta work around this dude.

Dennis Thompson:
Communism? No! No! Well, there was this communal paradigm happening across the country. You know, people, especially in 'Frisco, but it was happening in New York, and it was happening, ya know, eventually even in Texas. And people were banding together, living together—people of like minds. And that was fine. But what Sinclair gave was his philosophy. Because our rhetoric was “Screw the establishment. Tear it down. Start over again.” This whole political thing, that was Sinclair's philosophy. That was not Dennis Thompson's philosophy. At all. I'm in college, man. I mean, I'm a regular guy. Ya know, I want to find a pretty girl. I want to play great music. And I want a fast car. We're nineteen years old. Come on. We're getting this Beatnik philosophy pushed onto us.

Wayne Kramer (
MC5, Gang War, solo, guitarist, vocalist
):
Well, when we started, we were communists. And part of that purity was that sense of equality. There were no class distinctions, and that was pretty incorrect and idealistic. And that became clear as we became aware that some people worked more than others. It's hard to be honest without sounding egotistical, but the MC5 really was central to anything in Detroit that had to do with music in that time. All the other bands were satellites swirling around this thing with MC5 at the center. Even Seger and Ted Nugent were minor players in this era. We dominated completely because nobody played like us, no one was on me and Fred's level; we could solo simultaneously. No one was writing songs on the level of Rob Tyner; no lead singer was as dynamic and compelling as Rob.

Becky Tyner (
wife of MC5 vocalist Rob Tyner
):
I was going to Wayne State University, living on Prentice and Second with my friend Donna. We wanted to move to New York, but we were too afraid. So we got an apartment in Detroit. I was working at Hudson's in the Northland Mall, and I got off the bus coming home. I was walking down the street and was approached by this tall person with a British accent asking where the party was. I said, “Oh, it's at Neil and Sandy's”—these were some friends who were actually having a party—“right down stairs in our building.” And we chatted for a minute and I went out with my boyfriend. And later that night I came home and my roommate Donna said, “Well, you know that guy from England that you sent to the party? He's really not from England. But he seemed nice enough so I invited him to our party next week.” It turned out it was Rob. He came by the next week and just kept coming around. I have no idea what was up with the accent. I mean it's a good line to pick up a girl, don't you think? The boyfriend went away. Rob and I were married in 1966.

Wayne Kramer:
You know, youth has certainty. When you're nineteen years old you've got it all figured out. You know what's coming, how it's going to play out; you've got all the answers. And if you've got a few people who agree with you, you're really certain. And that's what MC5 and our community—we were all in total agreement about things like politics, the country was heading in the wrong direction. About art and culture. The music we liked was the most advanced and forward. That our band was the cutting-edge band of all bands; we were doing stuff that was more forward. And if you achieved some recognition, that reinforces it. There's very little self-criticism and looking inward. And very little criticism around us. We weren't good Marxists; we weren't that dogmatic. We smoked a lot of weed,
dropped a lot of acid, and were having a ball doing what we were doing. Everything was hitting as it was supposed to hit. The politicization came as a result of just living in America in those years, the sixties. We just wanted to be a great rock band; I wanted to be a world-class guitar player, song writer, and performer. When I was younger my goal was just to be able to work in nightclubs. Just have this nighttime world, late-night musicians—that was living to me. In those days there were a lot of clubs to play in. The auto factories went 24/7, so there were clubs open seven days a week, five sets a night, forty-five minutes on fifteen off. We quickly came to the conclusion that we wanted to be the band on the radio rather than the bands playing those songs in the clubs. We wanted to write our own songs, and then we realized we could go on tour and play big venues. Once we saw the model—the British band model once they started touring—we realized it was doable.

John Sinclair:
They were just kids. I mean, they were just unorganized. Well, they were fucked up. I loved the band, so I went to see them whenever they played. They had these two little hippie guys working for them; they carried around a box full of wires and stuff. The band showed up for the gigs right about the time when they were supposed to hit the stage. Instead of hitting, these two little guys were up there, wrestling around the spots, pulling all the wires and trying to figure out what went to what while everybody's there waiting for the show to start. Well, that's where I thought I could help with this. This is embarrassing.

Leni Sinclair:
Slowly things started improving because John, being a writer, he started writing a column for the
Fifth Estate
every week. A lot of times he would be late with turning in his copy; the paper was supposed to go to the printer in the morning, and they'd get home from the gig at two or three in the morning. Everybody else would go to bed or have some girl over, something. John would type up what happened. Every week there was something happening with the band that was worth writing about. John, because of writing about them all the time—that helped create interest in the band. Then he got them to be the house band at the Grande Ballroom when the Grande Ballroom started.

Wayne Kramer:
John proposed that he would take over. He was getting this commune concept together, which was still kind of ethereal. Tyner had tried to explain the idea to me. Through that kind of utopian, amorphous structure, John came to the conclusion that the five of us were completely out of control and couldn't even
get to rehearsal. That really was the case—we missed gigs, we were a mess. I'd have to go find Fred, and he wouldn't be ready, and I'd sit in the car, and finally he'd be ready and we'd get there too late and our slot would be gone.

John Sinclair:
I never had a contract with the MC5. Why would I?

Becky Tyner:
We had to make money somehow, because all the money the band made went to Trans-Love Energies, our little collective.

Pete Cavanaugh:
MC5 did not play without pay. They presented this revolution and music for the people, so on one hand, it was free this and steal this and take it, but this was a business.

Billy Goodson:
We would use Gary Grimshaw's first-print posters to soak up water puddles in the basement of Trans-Love. And now they're worth thousands—what did we know? We were all so freakin' high, no one thought about any kind of future after the revolution.

Becky Tyner:
We only had money for groceries and for laundry and cleaning. And we would sew. Wayne's girlfriend, Chris, Fred's wife, Sigrid, and I all got sewing machines. Making clothes for the bands and anyone else. I made a pair of pants for Iggy that was out of a vinyl material. I made those while we were living in Ann Arbor. And you know we would fit the pants to the person and to make them really, really tight. Gotta be tight. And Iggy was really insistent on them being very low. So at the end the top of the pants came right at his hair line. From what I understand, it was that he was playing in those pants and his little thing came out—I guess I shouldn't say “little thing.” His organ kind of slipped out of the top of the pants.

John Sinclair:
The band was always on; they looked good too. They come out an hour after they were supposed to and then they played a great set, you know. It was always just real straight ahead rock and roll, man. And they would end with playing “Black to Comm,” where they just go totally out from the first time I saw them. That was how they ended their show—that was Tyner's concept. Different every night. It was just an incredible thing. Incredible.

Russ Gibb:
MC5 played “Black to Comm” the first time at the Grande Ballroom. I had just had two strobe lights made for me by the guy who made them for Bill
Graham. And so this night the MC5 figured them out, and I walked into the ballroom and they were playing “Black to Comm” using them. It was like some far out, Middle Ages village, with people dancing without shoes in this horrifying stop-motion flicker, and it was almost like no one understood what was going on but just reacting. The room was vibrating and the feedback was screeching, and my audience was reacting.

Wayne Kramer:
It took three seconds to write “Black to Comm.” We were experimenting with this sound, and Fred found a way to play this chord in this big amp—it was just thunderous. This was before Michael and Dennis were in the band, and we had a great rhythm section. They were a package: they had worked together before, and they were terrific; they really powered the MC5. But they were conservative guys—no experimental anything. And we were all taking acid and listening to Sun Ra, and they just weren't down. Fred was a provocateur, and he knew they could really irritate the drummer by playing this riff, and one night on the job Fred played the riff, and eventually the drummer gave in and played along with it; it all came together, and that was the song. We all started improvising our parts; the bass player was just swinging.

John Sinclair:
They'd set up “Black to Comm” with “I Believe to My Soul” by Ray Charles. And then that would end with a huge ending, and then they'd go on to doot doot doot (humming the beginning) and they'd start with that “Watch your world come down,” and then it would just go, and Tyner would make up lyrics and they would make up parts—saxophones would come in, and they would all just get crazy.

Robin Sommers:
The first album on Elektra everyone was really excited to get out there. You know, we had this LP that said, “Kick out the Jams, Motherfuckers.” Gary Grimshaw had done the cover with a pot leaf. That's what we wanted. Elektra hated that as well as the dope smoke that looked like it was in front of the American Flag. But Elektra's cover sucked. I mean, there was a picture of Bruce Botnick in the corner, on the cover. Why? Because he was an executive at Elektra. Then there's another executive, Jac Holzman, with a suit on the front. The faces of all the kids in the audience are blurred because Elektra thought they would have to be paid. Look at that cover. Dennis Thompson has a drumstick up his nose. You can't see Fred's face because of his hair. Michael Davis is always hidden. But part of this thing was that Elektra didn't want the “motherfucker” to be there and had albums that said, “brothers and sisters” instead of “motherfuckers.” They also left the “motherfucker” out of the liner notes John Sinclair had written.