January 29, 2025
This month has marked the 55th anniversary of the release of Back In The USA, the second album by the MC5, released on January 15, 1970 and produced by a fella by the name of Jon Landau. Back In The USA was the hardest-rocking production work that Landau did before he began working with Bruce Springsteen a half-decade later. When Landau was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, the induction program featured an excerpt from MC5 lead guitarist and co-founder Wayne Kramer's 2018 memoir The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities, in which Kramer wrote:
"Atlantic Records commissioned Jon Landau to write them a report on the MC5's strengths and weaknesses. Landau studied the band, and his report was insightful and knowledgeable. He recommended they sign the MC5...
John [Sinclair, the MC5's manager] had been in discussions with all the stakeholders in our sphere, and he concluded that bringing in Landau to produce the [next] album was the best move we could make. After reading his ten-page report and talking with him at length, I liked him. I was impressed with his analysis of the MC5's strengths and weaknesses. He realized that the MC5 was the only group out there to really connect directly with the audience's concerns... He also saw the deficiencies that we needed to address. He saw it all.
Landau would come out [to rehearsals] and listen and make suggestions. He and I would sit up in my bedroom and talk about music for hours on end. We talked about the MC5's problems and strong points... Landau once said that he thought [rhythm guitarist] Fred [Smith] and I should be referred to in the same way that Carlos Santana or Pete Townshend were. That we were every bit as good as our contemporaries, and better than most. I didn't disagree...
We talked through the group's challenges in great depth... He was trying to get us to think for ourselves; to move past the groupthink that we were accustomed to... There were issues that I'd never addressed because of our band's boundless camaraderie... Landau didn't have the constraints that we did. He was hired to produce a record, and he spoke up...
Landau forced me to see the reality of how the MC5 went about the business of creating music... He believed the band could be greatest American hard-rock group of our time, but we needed to face our weaknesses and fix them."
Landau wasn't the only strongly Springsteen-connected person to also serve as an early champion of the MC5. Springsteen biographer and music writer Dave Marsh grew up in the Detroit area, and was among the most passionate of teenage MC5 fans in their late-1960s/early-1970s heyday. (After all, "the MC5" was an abbreviation of "The Motor City Five.") Marsh's 1971 piece for Creem, "The MC5: Back on Shakin' Street," as collected and heavily re-written for his 1985 anthology Fortunate Son: The Best of Dave Marsh, remains an illuminating and insightful read. In his 1985 introduction to the piece, Marsh, who already had invented the term "punk rock" in 1970 while writing in Creem about ? and the Mysterians (also a Michigan-based band,) wrote, "The MC5 helped get me my first full-time job in journalism, their incredible buzz-saw rock (echoes of which can be heard in the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols and every other band that terms itself punk or hard core) illuminated the shadowy corners of my adolescence, their fusion of rock and politics expressed my own early, fumbling attempts to reconcile the two." Later in the anthology, in introducing some of his later writing on Springsteen, Marsh also wrote, "Bruce Springsteen offered not a single song, image or event that galvanized my passion and made me recall my roots, but a whole series of them, which in combination made me (I suppose) a fanatic for the first time since the demise of the MC5." And in his second Springsteen biography, 1987's Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, Marsh described the version of "Adam Raised A Cain" that appears on Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Live/1975-85 as "frothing...with shouts and feedback akin to the MC5." In the latter part of his career, Marsh named his long-running satelite-radio series on music and politics Kick Out The Jams with Dave Marsh, after the MC5's most famous song. The latest Marsh anthology is also entitled Kick Out The Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing.
Then there's the Patti Smith/Fred "Sonic" Smith connection. In 1976, former MC5 rhythm guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith met groundbreaking rocker and poet Patti Smith. They were introduced to each other by Patti Smith Group guitarist and key collaborator Lenny Kaye (also a major MC5 fan,) and were married four years later. (A running joke in their circle at the time was that any potential name-changing didn't even need to be considered.) During the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, then-recording-engineer Jimmy Iovine, who also was in the midst of producing Patti Smith Group's album Easter, asked Bruce Springsteen if he could give Springsteen's partially-completed-and-abandoned song "Because The Night" to Patti Smith to complete and record for her album project.
As Smith herself related in Thom Zimny's 2010 documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, "I was in my apartment, and I was having a long-distance romance with Fred 'Sonic' Smith, who later became my husband. He was supposed to call me up, and I waited for him to call me for hours. I thought, 'Well, I'll listen to that darn song [the demo cassette for the partially completed 'Because The Night.'] It was so accessible. It had such an anthemic tone. It was in my key, and I kept letting it loop and play, and I still tried to resist it, but I filled in the blanks, and in the blanks, it tells the story of me waiting for Fred to call and of my love for Fred. Fred did call about three in the morning, and I wasn't mad at him, though, because by the time he called, I had written my share of the lyrics of my one and only hit song." In the documentary, Springsteen added that Patti Smith "took ['Because The Night'] and she turned it into this really beautiful love song. I have to thank Jimmy [Iovine] for recognizing what was in the song, and then [Smith] for the intensity and the personalness and the deep love that she put into it. Her work on it has been a tremendous gift to me." Decades after the creative completion of "Because The Night," Fred "Sonic" Smith and Patti Smith provided Springsteen - and the rest of the artists on the bill for the 2004 Vote for Change concert-tour spearheaded by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - with yet another musical gift. The Smith/Smith composition "People Have The Power" became the beautifully appropriate closing song performed at the end of each of the Vote for Change concerts.
Last October, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and notable Springsteen collaborator Tom Morello (who also has just been announced as a 2025 Springsteen Archives American Music Honoree,) inducted the MC5 into the Hall at last. Below is a complete transcription of Morello's induction speech:
The MC5 crystallized Sixties counterculture movement at its most volatile and threatening. They were as bold and as musically adventurous as experimental jazz, as militant and as stylish as The Black Panther Party, and as loud and as dangerous as a Detroit riot. But perhaps their greatest accomplishment was that the MC5, in sound and in attitude, laid the cornerstone for one of rock's most exciting and important genres. Before the Ramones, before The Sex Pistols, before The Clash... there was the MC5, inventing the template of raw power and irreverent attitude that became punk rock. Their previously unimagined amalgam of jazz improvisation, garage rock, and James Brown dance moves was forged with raw theory, molten adrenaline, and political purpose. And as a live act, they were without peer.
As the tear-gas began to fly during the massive anti-war riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, every other band on the bill chickened out and cancelled. Only the MC5 stood firm and played a defiant eight-hours set for the protesters. And when they hit the stage and shouted, "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!," the promise of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" was made reality, and the future path of every musician who dreamed of raging against the machine was made clear.
In these few lines, they encapsulated the redemptive power of living, breathing, playing, and believing in the irresistible force of truly revolutionary music: "Let me up on the stand, and let me kick out the jams! Put that mike in my hand, and let me kick out the jams! Let me be who I am, and let me kick out the jams!"
Their visionary poet of a manager, John Sinclair, vocalist Rob Tyner, bassist Michael Davis, drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson, guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and my dear forever friend and forever comrade, Brother Wayne Kramer, have sadly all passed away. But wherever and whenever any of us summon up the guts and the courage to get up on the stand and kick out the motherfuckin' jams, the spirit of the MC5 will be right there with us. MC5, welcome home to where you belong, in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!
Later in the year, Morello organized and performed in two special Los Angeles tribute shows memorializing Wayne Kramer and benefiting Jail Guitar Doors USA, the organization that Kramer founded in partnership with fellow musician Billy Bragg. Below you can watch and listen to Stevie Van Zandt joining Morello and his band at the December 5th Roxy Theatre concert to perform the MC5's classic "Kick Out The Jams:"
Finally, our friend Nick Mead, the filmmaker who directed Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?, is about to premiere at next month's Santa Barbara International Film Festival his latest documentary, which he co-directed with Andre Relis, entitled I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol.
The film is based on Glen Matlock's book of the same title, and it features Wayne Kramer's final filmed interview. Below, Nick was kind enough to share with us his reflections on having gotten to know Wayne Kramer over the years:
Let me set the scene... I had long hair, a black leather motorcycle jacket, and a Triumph motorcycle that worked only occasionally. And I was always with my first girlfriend, Claire, the most beautiful girl in the world. On a Sunday afternoon, the place to be was a gathering of hippies and rockers at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm. The best of the headlining bands then were Hawkwind, The Pink Fairies, and Motorhead. Inside was the space that once housed a railway turntable and it was, and in my opinion still is, the best venue in London. On a Sunday, the hallways were made up of hippie stalls selling their wares, the air was thick with the smell of patchouli and marijuana, and the amplification was loud. There were three songs that always heralded the headlining act: “I'm Waiting For The Man,” “White Punks On Dope,“ and finally “Kick Out The Jams.”
That was my first introduction to Wayne Kramer and the MC5, and I was hooked.
I got into photography and was assisting the great and wonderful Sheila Rock when we photographed Wayne Kramer at her studio in Portland Road, Notting Hill. My job on that day was to arrange Christmas fairy lights around his head. I remember not wanting to be paid for that day because meeting this legend surpassed any thought of money.
I was thrilled when I started making films with Motorhead that the link to Lemmy, Mick Farren and Motorhead with Wayne was a strong one. Mick Farren and Wayne were very close friends, collaborators and revolutionaries, both being part of the White Panther movement. I made my first film, Black Leather Jacket, with Mick, based on his book of the same name.
Cut to years later. I’d made the film on Clarence, and was embarking on a film, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol, with Glen Matlock. A friend introduced me to Wayne at his MC5 HQ, which was above the tailors where I had my wedding suit made. If only I had known...
I started seeing Wayne regularly and was absolutely knocked out by what a lovely amiable, honest, and compassionate gentleman he was. He gave me a copy of his heart-wrenching book, The Hard Stuff, and we started talking about turning this into a narrative feature film.
I’d managed to set up the Glen Matlock film and was delighted that Wayne agreed to sit down with us and give us an on-camera interview (which sadly would be his last.) He was articulate, passionate, genuine, and highly amusing, seeing the comparisons between the way the authorities, in the form of respective governments, tried to demonize and close down the MC5 and The Sex Pistols, and at the same time highlighting Glen’s contribution to the Pistols' legacy.
We were talking more about turning Wayne's book into a film, and I stuck my producer's hat on and reached out to Thom Zimny, whom I’d met in Asbury Park. I had read that Thom was looking into directing narrative features, so I sent him the book (signed by Wayne to Thom!!!) and we were trying to arrange a get together as soon as we were all in town at the same time.
A few weeks later, I was shooting in New York when I got a text from Thom telling me how sorry he was about Wayne. It was then I found out Wayne had passed.
Sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination, and I am so very grateful for spending a little time with Wayne and very happy indeed that he’s a part of our film, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol.
UPDATE - Courtesy of reader Randy Severs (Thanks, Randy!): One more MC5/Springsteen connection... In June of 1970 I had tickets to see the double bill of Grand Funk Railroad and the MC5 in Brick, NJ. I was very disappointed to arrive and see that the MC5 had been replaced by Steel Mill (a group I had never heard of before.) [Apparently travel issues forced the MC5 to cancel, and Steel Mill to replace the MC5 on the bill. The cancellation/switch was so last-minute that all of the tickets still listed "The MC Five" and not "Steel Mill."] Sixty-five years later and I still remember the power of Steel Mill. They played a fairly long set for an opener, and when GFR took the stage the audience continued to yell “Steel Mill.” GFR did not appear to be happy, and played a very abbreviated set. [Click here to hear a bit of archival audio from that night: Steel Mill playing the rarely performed "Black Sun Rising."]
