Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / MC5: Rock's Most Revolutionary Band [Episode 224]

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MC5: Rock's Most Revolutionary Band [Episode 224] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: We're totally booked rock and roll.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading.
0:05
Speaker 1: Little Hans says it's time to rock and roll. Roll
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Speaker 1: out a totally booked Welcome back to book don Rock,
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Speaker 1: the podcast for those about to read and rock online
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Speaker 1: at booked on rock dot com. Find each episode there
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Speaker 1: in video and audio formats, links to all of the
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Speaker 1: social media sites, and the latest rockbook releases. Also check
0:29
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0:31
Speaker 1: If you like what you see, be sure to click
0:33
Speaker 1: the like and subscribe buttons that goes along way to
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Speaker 1: support the podcast. My guests are Brad Tlinsky and Jan
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Speaker 1: you Helski, the authors of MC five, An Oral Biography
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Speaker 1: of Rock's most Revolutionary band. It's an oral biography of
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Speaker 1: the proto punk Detroit rockers MC five, centered around a
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Speaker 1: series of interviews with MC five, their manager, and their
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Speaker 1: inner circle, many of whom are no longer with us.
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Speaker 1: The Tlinsky and you Helski inherited from Cream magazine founding
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Speaker 1: staff uh for In Mojo's US editor Ben Edmonds prior
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Speaker 1: to his death. This book presents a genuinely candid, funny,
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Speaker 1: and moving portrait of rock's most uncompromising and articulate band
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Speaker 1: playlist of MC five can be found in this episode
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Speaker 1: show notes Brad and Jan. Great to have you guys
1:17
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Thanks so much for doing this.
1:19
Speaker 3: Hey, Eric, thanks for having us.
1:21
Speaker 1: Rock's most revolutionary band. Let's start there. MC five important
1:26
Speaker 1: to write this book.
1:27
Speaker 3: Here, yeah, I mean here, here's the thing. So, in
1:31
Speaker 3: addition to recording probably rocks, you know, certainly one of
1:37
Speaker 3: rock's five greatest live records of all time, you know,
1:40
Speaker 3: kick out the Jams, the EMC five were really revolutionary.
1:45
Speaker 3: I mean they were pioneers. They held pioneer the sound
1:48
Speaker 3: of metal, you know, the attitude of punk, and on
1:55
Speaker 3: top of that they mixed in elements of free jazz,
1:59
Speaker 3: and then they had showmanship of like James Brown. I mean,
2:03
Speaker 3: it was an incredible package that these guys had put together.
2:08
Speaker 3: And and then on top of that, you know, culturally
2:14
Speaker 3: important too. They were managed by one of the most
2:21
Speaker 3: important radical voices of the sixties, and they were part
2:26
Speaker 3: of organization called the the White Panthers Party, and sort
2:33
Speaker 3: of the White Panthers stood for everything that everybody is
2:37
Speaker 3: talking about now. They stood for you know, they were
2:41
Speaker 3: anti racism, they were you know, about you know, bring
2:52
Speaker 3: prisoners about, like you know, anti police violence, you know
2:59
Speaker 3: a lot of things that are being talked about in
3:01
Speaker 3: the uh, you know, among the extreme left these days.
3:05
Speaker 3: These guys sort of almost originated that philosophy.
3:10
Speaker 2: Don't forget the invented White Panther Party. It wasn't like
3:14
Speaker 2: they were just wit shoulders. They were the pillars pillars
3:17
Speaker 2: of it. And it was a little you know, it
3:21
Speaker 2: was a little more joking, a little more frivolous, but
3:24
Speaker 2: you know, it was a reflection at the times. I mean,
3:27
Speaker 2: let's not forget the rock and roll dope and bucking
3:29
Speaker 2: in the streets part of the of the tenants, so
3:33
Speaker 2: you know, it was definitely had a rock and roll edge.
3:38
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about this, like, you know, their
3:40
Speaker 2: most radical things happened after they started taking LSD. Of well,
3:50
Speaker 2: you know, it's weird because they're like this yar yardbirds
3:54
Speaker 2: loving hard rock band. And then I thought, well, where
3:57
Speaker 2: did abant jazz come from besides Tyner. It's like the
4:02
Speaker 2: noise and the things they heard, the noise and the
4:05
Speaker 2: sun rot only happened after the LSD. Like, yeah, it's
4:09
Speaker 2: in the book, but it just dawned on me today
4:11
Speaker 2: when I was listening to all of these things getting
4:14
Speaker 2: ready for your podcast.
4:15
Speaker 3: There, well Metal LSD, they had it all all.
4:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the books put together, it's based around interviews
4:25
Speaker 1: with the guys in the band and not just the band.
4:28
Speaker 1: So this is all from interviews he got from Ben Edmonds.
4:35
Speaker 2: You want to take that, Jen, Yeah, I mean he
4:38
Speaker 2: basically it was his passion project that he never finished
4:43
Speaker 2: for various reasons. I mean, one of which that he
4:48
Speaker 2: was he'd gotten so close to everybody in that camp
4:51
Speaker 2: that he was afraid to write it because he didn't
4:54
Speaker 2: know which way to go. Who was he going to
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Speaker 2: piss office? That's how like like it's like psychic violence.
5:01
Speaker 2: It's like secrets, secrets are spilled in this book, and
5:06
Speaker 2: he just couldn't write it. But you know, he had
5:09
Speaker 2: really had really good interviews, and we had to get
5:13
Speaker 2: a few other interviews, like Brad talked to John landaut Brew,
5:17
Speaker 2: Springsteen's now manager, but then the producer of Back in
5:21
Speaker 2: the USA. So we just supplement a little bit, but
5:24
Speaker 2: by and large they were Ben's Ben's interviews that he'd
5:27
Speaker 2: done over a ten year period.
5:29
Speaker 1: While he was with Kareem and Mojo.
5:32
Speaker 2: While he was with Mojo because Cream cremended and well
5:37
Speaker 2: Well began.
5:38
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
5:39
Speaker 2: Ben left in nineteen seventy five, so he worked at
5:43
Speaker 2: Mojo from ninety I think until he passed do it.
5:48
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I think it is important to
5:51
Speaker 3: note because there Jan and I put a lot of
5:55
Speaker 3: work into the book. Ben had done a lot of
6:01
Speaker 3: great interviews with people, but this stuff was, you know,
6:07
Speaker 3: not organized or put into any kind of order.
6:11
Speaker 1: He wasn't a fan of the computer.
6:13
Speaker 3: And it was all and we had that we sort
6:17
Speaker 3: of had to turn it into the story that it
6:21
Speaker 3: that it was, and uh, you know, write sort of
6:26
Speaker 3: all the connecting bits to help because it wasn't He
6:31
Speaker 3: had an idea that he was going to write a
6:33
Speaker 3: pro style piece, and we turned it more into a
6:36
Speaker 3: rock and roll play, if you will.
6:39
Speaker 2: It was exactly like writing a play, you know, like
6:41
Speaker 2: like this went to this and he said, and he said,
6:44
Speaker 2: and then she said, and it was all about balance
6:47
Speaker 2: and letting everybody have their voice. So at the end,
6:52
Speaker 2: that's what it felt like to me too. That we've
6:54
Speaker 2: done some some soap opera really because it's so inflammatory
6:59
Speaker 2: and it's so much once.
7:02
Speaker 3: And people sort of have wondered why we did it
7:05
Speaker 3: as as an oral biography, and a bit of that
7:09
Speaker 3: is a tribute to the members of the band and
7:14
Speaker 3: John Sinclair and all the side players. They were so articulate,
7:19
Speaker 3: they told their stories so well. There are such big
7:22
Speaker 3: personalities that it sort of felt like the best thing
7:27
Speaker 3: for us to do is just organize it and get
7:30
Speaker 3: the hell out of the way. You know, you know,
7:35
Speaker 3: I don't know, uh what we what we could have
7:40
Speaker 3: done to I mean, you know, it's so fun and
7:43
Speaker 3: so interesting in these and these people are so wild,
7:46
Speaker 3: you know, I just wanted we just wanted to get
7:48
Speaker 3: as much of their voice on the page as we could.
7:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said this before we started recording, Brad. They
7:55
Speaker 1: answered a lot of questions that I had about the
7:57
Speaker 1: MC five because it's like, why why do we just
8:01
Speaker 1: know one song kick out the jams? There's gotta be
8:04
Speaker 1: more because you hear so much about it from musicians,
8:07
Speaker 1: how influential they were. Yet it's like it kind of
8:10
Speaker 1: left out of the out of the story when you
8:13
Speaker 1: talk about these influential bands from the sixties, and location
8:16
Speaker 1: is a big part of the story, Detroit. What was
8:18
Speaker 1: life like for the guys growing up in Detroit? In
8:21
Speaker 1: the in the fifties and early sixties.
8:23
Speaker 2: Well, it was like you either went to the auto
8:26
Speaker 2: industry or you or you in the audio industry. We
8:31
Speaker 2: all lived in a company.
8:32
Speaker 3: Town, or you get shot in Vietnam.
8:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So the choices were really slim and none
8:39
Speaker 2: and those who got out tended to get out to
8:43
Speaker 2: the arts. But that was a slim number, and they
8:46
Speaker 2: just took a chance because they weren't going to do
8:49
Speaker 2: any of the other things. They were anti war. If anything,
8:52
Speaker 2: they were anti war, an anti draft, and they were
8:55
Speaker 2: really concerned with that because wanted to support were who
9:00
Speaker 2: wanted to go put yourself in life. And that's a
9:03
Speaker 2: big part of it, Like they talked a lot about
9:05
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure we've even put all of enough book,
9:08
Speaker 2: but you know how heroine it was to have to
9:11
Speaker 2: go to the drought board in the late sixties, you know,
9:14
Speaker 2: and know that your number was up.
9:18
Speaker 3: You know, I was I was sort of thinking about
9:21
Speaker 3: this question, you know, at the root of what their
9:25
Speaker 3: their story is about. And I was thinking, well, you know,
9:29
Speaker 3: it was a bunch of working class kids who were
9:34
Speaker 3: creative and you know, didn't want a straight nine to
9:38
Speaker 3: five job. They didn't want to go to war, they
9:41
Speaker 3: didn't want to go to a factory. You know what
9:45
Speaker 3: else do you do? And it's like the Rolling Stone song,
9:48
Speaker 3: you know what do? What does a poor boy do
9:49
Speaker 3: but play in a rock and roll band. But so
9:54
Speaker 3: that's a that's a common story for in the sixties.
9:58
Speaker 3: But I think the layer that that adds to all
10:00
Speaker 3: of it is sort of they took rock and roll,
10:05
Speaker 3: but then they added there was this whole other, sort
10:08
Speaker 3: of crazy social element added to it, and somehow they
10:14
Speaker 3: became evangelists for the hippie lifestyle for lack of a
10:20
Speaker 3: better term, And I think that that's another thing that
10:25
Speaker 3: separated them. But I dare you go listen to anybody
10:30
Speaker 3: out there. Go listen to Kick Out the Jams, the
10:33
Speaker 3: live record, and put it next to a Stones record
10:38
Speaker 3: from the very same time, and you'll really see, you know,
10:46
Speaker 3: they make the Stones look quaint. I mean, it really
10:49
Speaker 3: is the beginning of hard rock and heavy metal. If
10:53
Speaker 3: you guys want to see where something like Black Sabbath
10:56
Speaker 3: came from, before there was Black Sabbath, this is it.
11:00
Speaker 3: Nobody sounded like the MC five like. You listen to
11:03
Speaker 3: it now and you might think, oh, I've heard that before,
11:06
Speaker 3: but at that time, they were uh, you know, they
11:11
Speaker 3: were sort of uh, you know, life changing. They blew
11:15
Speaker 3: people's minds. I mean, that's why you have musicians saying,
11:18
Speaker 3: oh my god, this band changed my life, turned around
11:21
Speaker 3: the way I thought about music.
11:23
Speaker 1: Maybe a little too ahead of their time to where
11:26
Speaker 1: people just couldn't wrap their heads around it.
11:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
11:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, in many ways, it's.
11:31
Speaker 2: That thing like what happens when would ideas come when
11:34
Speaker 2: it comes to early they were really unhinged. There were
11:38
Speaker 2: such big personalities, every single one of them, so they
11:42
Speaker 2: did things even personally like they see you would see
11:45
Speaker 2: them on the streets or see them at the Grandy
11:48
Speaker 2: Ballroom where they were the young the house band. They
11:52
Speaker 2: were a little scary. They were like psychically scary. They
11:55
Speaker 2: were reckless, they were in your face, and you know,
11:59
Speaker 2: it translated them music. What you see was really what
12:01
Speaker 2: you got all the time. And that adds to it,
12:05
Speaker 2: you know, that whole mystery of rock and roll. Like
12:07
Speaker 2: our famous people or not even famous people, are rock
12:11
Speaker 2: stars different than the rest of us. They were like
12:13
Speaker 2: in this different category than the rest of people. Even
12:16
Speaker 2: played around Detroit or even nationally, although they didn't play
12:21
Speaker 2: too much nationally.
12:23
Speaker 3: I mean, when you think about the Stooges, were in
12:25
Speaker 3: awe of them. Yeah, yeah, you know, that shows you
12:31
Speaker 3: sort of a little bit how extreme they were. But
12:35
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that when I was
12:38
Speaker 3: working on the book that I was, you know, sort
12:44
Speaker 3: of shocked. And what people might find super interesting is,
12:48
Speaker 3: you know, back in the late sixties, especially in Detroit,
12:54
Speaker 3: maybe if you had long hair and you dressed a
12:57
Speaker 3: certain way, you became a target for the police. And
13:02
Speaker 3: these guys were arrested, beaten, thrown into jail. It makes
13:10
Speaker 3: me think, like, I don't know too many rock bands
13:13
Speaker 3: these days that would have gone through that in order
13:17
Speaker 3: just to play music. And that's what they had to do.
13:19
Speaker 3: I mean, the cops regarded them as the enemy of
13:23
Speaker 3: the state. And even though they tried to like stop
13:28
Speaker 3: them in so many of their gigs and like I said,
13:33
Speaker 3: toss them in jail for no good reason at all,
13:36
Speaker 3: these guys just kept on going. And they believed, like
13:39
Speaker 3: in the power of rock and roll, that the rock
13:42
Speaker 3: and roll could destroy the culture and completely rebuild it.
13:46
Speaker 3: That wasn't just you know, sort of cute talk. They
13:52
Speaker 3: really believed that they were going to change.
13:54
Speaker 1: The world looked on podcasts. We'll be back after this.
13:59
Speaker 2: We'll be back with the Magic Owns for the Armada
14:00
Speaker 2: Rooms to our disco swing party after this short break.
14:03
Speaker 2: Till then, don't you go change him?
14:07
Speaker 1: Their lead singer, Rob Teiner. He was He was badass.
14:12
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the only way I can do. Yeah,
14:16
Speaker 1: he wanted to push the boundaries. But it's interesting the
14:18
Speaker 1: band would often feel like they would kind of push back.
14:22
Speaker 1: He talks about being pressured at one point to be
14:25
Speaker 1: one of the guys, but he wasn't going to do that.
14:27
Speaker 1: Just to your point, right, like this is who I am,
14:29
Speaker 1: Take it or leave it. And he talks about being
14:32
Speaker 1: pressured to fit in. Now they they actually thought about
14:35
Speaker 1: getting rid of him.
14:36
Speaker 2: What would many times?
14:38
Speaker 1: They yeah, I mean, how would we be talking about
14:40
Speaker 1: MC five today if that happened?
14:42
Speaker 2: You know, we wouldn't because he was an integral piece.
14:45
Speaker 2: He was he was like the brains, he was the lyricist,
14:50
Speaker 2: he was the unhinged front man. And honestly, they thought
14:54
Speaker 2: about getting rid of home simply because they didn't think
14:57
Speaker 2: he was looking it up where he was too bad,
15:00
Speaker 2: you know, and he wasn't you look at the pictures
15:02
Speaker 2: of the film of tartar Field when they played in
15:05
Speaker 2: Wednesday University in Detroit nineteen seventy, It's like I kept thinking,
15:09
Speaker 2: what too bad? It was really that superficial at times.
15:14
Speaker 2: I mean, they hired a bass player because he was
15:16
Speaker 2: like a babe bang magnet, Michael Davis. So there there
15:21
Speaker 2: was like a frivolous, like commercial side of them as well.
15:25
Speaker 2: I mean, the famous quote is that Johnson Claire says,
15:28
Speaker 2: since they wanted to be bigger than the Beatles, and
15:31
Speaker 2: I wanted bigger than Chairman Mob. So you know, you've
15:36
Speaker 2: got that bad going too. There's there's two strands, because
15:39
Speaker 2: there are this end of that that it's like high
15:41
Speaker 2: end low culture.
15:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they would have probably ended up being like,
15:47
Speaker 3: you know, a well regarded UH garage rock from the
15:54
Speaker 3: era without Rob. But Rob is the one that his
15:59
Speaker 3: personality was so wild. It was like it was Rob
16:03
Speaker 3: that allowed them to perform in the same arena as
16:07
Speaker 3: Jimmy Hendrix, or allowed him to perform in the same
16:11
Speaker 3: arena as Janis Joplet and compete with those wild and
16:17
Speaker 3: extreme characters. But you know what I mean, it's easy
16:21
Speaker 3: to see from hindsight if you were part of the band,
16:24
Speaker 3: you were like, I don't know, is this guy too weird?
16:28
Speaker 3: Is he should the boundaries too much? Like we want
16:32
Speaker 3: to be the Rolling Stones? Like this guy he's just
16:35
Speaker 3: too much of a weirdo. But the truth is is
16:37
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have crawled out of Detroit unless it was
16:41
Speaker 3: for that sort of avant garde experimental thing that Rob
16:46
Speaker 3: brought to the band.
16:47
Speaker 2: I think he's the lynchpin of the book anyway, because
16:51
Speaker 2: when Ben and Edmonds was doing his interviews, he went
16:54
Speaker 2: and moved in with Rob and his wife, and enough
16:58
Speaker 2: time had passed and not not apparently enough, and he
17:03
Speaker 2: decided to just break that code, the M five code
17:07
Speaker 2: of silence, and decided to tell everything. And that was
17:10
Speaker 2: where the book started, was the three months that Ben
17:14
Speaker 2: and lived with the Diners. And then he had that
17:17
Speaker 2: as a base coat. So we go to everybody else
17:20
Speaker 2: and ask them the same events, or tell them what
17:24
Speaker 2: Rob had said. So I think that he had a
17:27
Speaker 2: real strategy, a real Macabellian strategy, if you will, to
17:31
Speaker 2: get everybody talking and to actually loosen their lips and
17:35
Speaker 2: not be precious, like tell the truth of this. And
17:38
Speaker 2: I think, to me, that's why this book to me?
17:41
Speaker 2: I mean I read it like a reader and I go, oh,
17:44
Speaker 2: I can't believe they said that. When we were working
17:46
Speaker 2: on it, there were times I would haste around the
17:49
Speaker 2: room because I couldn't believe some of the things that
17:52
Speaker 2: they the secrets that they would say about each other,
17:54
Speaker 2: the shit talking they would do, or you know, or
17:58
Speaker 2: the fights, the fights that would get and it was like,
18:01
Speaker 2: you know, Oasis, real brothers.
18:04
Speaker 1: The musical influences, there's so many so and we haven't
18:08
Speaker 1: mentioned Wayne Kramer and Fred Smith, fred Sonicsmith and they're
18:12
Speaker 1: important to the sound, and it's a seclectic range of
18:15
Speaker 1: musical influences. You talk about the bands and the artists
18:18
Speaker 1: that they were influenced by and how they would synthesize
18:21
Speaker 1: them to create the unique sound of the MC five.
18:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean early on it was the Stones,
18:33
Speaker 3: the Who, and the Yardbirds. Yeah, those were really you know,
18:39
Speaker 3: it's sort of funny how they talk about the Beatles,
18:42
Speaker 3: you know, is not as being sort of corny. You know,
18:46
Speaker 3: they didn't want to be that. They didn't want to
18:49
Speaker 3: be clean cut. They wanted to be on the edge
18:51
Speaker 3: and they wanted to be dangerous. But then really Rob
18:59
Speaker 3: Tyner again, we're back to him and their manager, John Sinclair.
19:03
Speaker 3: We're serious jazz guys, and they brought into the band
19:10
Speaker 3: this whole idea of you know, you can play something,
19:16
Speaker 3: you can you know, play your rock stuff, but let's
19:19
Speaker 3: let's make it a little bit more wild, let's make
19:21
Speaker 3: it a little bit more strange, like don't be afraid
19:25
Speaker 3: to experiment, don't be afraid to be yourself. I think,
19:30
Speaker 3: you know, I've played in a lot of rock bands,
19:32
Speaker 3: and I think especially rock bands growing, you know, when
19:37
Speaker 3: they're first starting out, they're always thinking like, oh, you know,
19:41
Speaker 3: I want to be led Zeppelin, or I want to
19:44
Speaker 3: be The Stones, or I want to be Oasis or
19:46
Speaker 3: whatever it is that they want to be, and it
19:49
Speaker 3: takes them a minute to figure out, well, I'm really
19:52
Speaker 3: not going to get anywhere by imitating these guys. We
19:55
Speaker 3: have to find out what's unique to us. And so
20:00
Speaker 3: the band just started stirring in all of these other things,
20:03
Speaker 3: you know, which is everything from John Coltrane and to
20:08
Speaker 3: get themselves worked up before their shows, they would always
20:11
Speaker 3: listen to James Brown. I mean, there was this whole
20:14
Speaker 3: uh Detroit R and B black music performance element to
20:20
Speaker 3: what they did too, that you know, separated them from
20:25
Speaker 3: the other guys. Uh. You know, there's so little film
20:29
Speaker 3: of them, but what's out there you can kind of
20:32
Speaker 3: see them just taking a hold of the stage and
20:37
Speaker 3: you know, go to town and dancing and jumping and moving.
20:41
Speaker 3: They had this philosophy that you were going to entertain.
20:45
Speaker 3: They were going to entertain. They were going to make
20:47
Speaker 3: every minute on that stage count, and sometimes it was
20:51
Speaker 3: at the cost of the music they could. They could
20:55
Speaker 3: they could be pretty uh, they could be pretty grungy.
20:59
Speaker 3: I mean they were sort of punk rock in that way,
21:01
Speaker 3: you know, but they definitely wanted to to to They
21:06
Speaker 3: definitely took that sort of entertainment element from Black Detroit
21:11
Speaker 3: and put it into their rock and roll act.
21:15
Speaker 2: Well, look at even like Granby Rose are you talking
21:17
Speaker 2: about before. It's like when Wayne had that particular step
21:21
Speaker 2: that he did into a kind of little mincing steps
21:23
Speaker 2: where he scoot across the stage. I mean there was
21:26
Speaker 2: always this sense of humor underneath it as well. You
21:30
Speaker 2: know that they like a wink wink, like you know,
21:33
Speaker 2: this is funny. I mean, especially when into their choreography.
21:35
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't like kiss doing their back and
21:38
Speaker 2: forth thing, but it was a little bit close to
21:40
Speaker 2: kiss doing that little back back and forth choreography. So
21:45
Speaker 2: you know, you would you would have them doing like
21:47
Speaker 2: Albert Eiler and Son Raw and having a song like
21:51
Speaker 2: Black to Come, but you didn't have this other part.
21:54
Speaker 2: And that's what I always loved about them, is that
21:57
Speaker 2: like high in that low, that element, and you know,
22:00
Speaker 2: you really didn't know where they were coming from. But
22:03
Speaker 2: that's right. It was the entertainment. The people who came
22:06
Speaker 2: to see him worked at factories, and Wayne cran would
22:09
Speaker 2: always say, we have to work as hard as they do.
22:12
Speaker 2: You know, they expect to.
22:13
Speaker 1: Show John Coltrane. You mentioned that, And this is in
22:17
Speaker 1: the book. Rob Tyner's birth name Rob Derminer. I think
22:22
Speaker 1: it's pronounced and he a Dermer so yeah, he yeah,
22:28
Speaker 1: He says, I had a real passion for John Coltrane's pianist,
22:31
Speaker 1: McCoy tyner, so I became Rob Tyner. And he also
22:34
Speaker 1: came up with the name MC five too, which which
22:37
Speaker 1: he thought was cool. Was like Einstein's equals MC square,
22:42
Speaker 1: thought it sounded cool. Yeah, the Men was the other
22:46
Speaker 1: much better choice MT five.
22:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's much better.
22:51
Speaker 1: Booked podcasts. We'll be back after this, you must.
22:54
Speaker 3: Not see anybody, want to talk to anybody, and if
22:56
Speaker 3: you do, could have serious papercus on future events.
23:01
Speaker 1: Some great stories in the book about those early days too.
23:03
Speaker 1: Waynekramer talks about discovering feedback and clearing out rooms while
23:08
Speaker 1: but they brought in new fans as well. But that
23:10
Speaker 1: did include their early drummer. There's the story, do you
23:12
Speaker 1: remember the story Bob Gasper or Gaspar where he's in
23:15
Speaker 1: the band but he's he's like it's too loud.
23:18
Speaker 2: Freaks out. It's like, doesn't he just stop drumming that day?
23:23
Speaker 2: He just yeah, it's like he's had it.
23:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, how many here? How many in here to think
23:27
Speaker 1: this music's too loud and everybody's like, fuck you, it's perfect.
23:34
Speaker 3: Well, that was a problem in the in the early days.
23:36
Speaker 3: They had to weed out the good kids, right.
23:40
Speaker 2: They could go home now.
23:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wayne Kramer. Wayne Premer said he went with his
23:45
Speaker 1: He went back to the drums with his tail between
23:46
Speaker 1: his legs. After he said that, that's when he probably
23:48
Speaker 1: knew his days in the MC five are numbered.
23:51
Speaker 3: So well, that was the other thing. It was sort
23:56
Speaker 3: of fun in this part of the book too, because
24:00
Speaker 3: it not only explores their career, but it also talks
24:03
Speaker 3: about the whole music industry in the music world in
24:06
Speaker 3: the early and late sixties.
24:09
Speaker 2: And.
24:11
Speaker 3: You know, in Detroit there was such a history because
24:17
Speaker 3: of Motown and because of the black music history of
24:20
Speaker 3: being of things being very slick of you know, people singing,
24:29
Speaker 3: you know, incredibly well, you know from Smokey Robinson too,
24:32
Speaker 3: you know, David Ruff and the Temptations, and they were like,
24:37
Speaker 3: there's no way we can compete with that. So we're
24:41
Speaker 3: just gonna come on like the toughest, like you know,
24:46
Speaker 3: baddest biker gang you can imagine, and just scare the
24:50
Speaker 3: shit out of people. You know, We're not even going
24:52
Speaker 3: to try to compete with that. And they would dress
24:54
Speaker 3: in black and leather and have the biggest damps and
24:58
Speaker 3: all that stuff. And it was really interesting in the
25:03
Speaker 3: book to hear those guys talk about those early days
25:07
Speaker 3: and how they ended up, you know, finding the virtues
25:12
Speaker 3: of power chords and the biggest damps and the loudest guitars.
25:17
Speaker 3: You know that we've all since that many bands have
25:20
Speaker 3: since stolen stolen from you know.
25:24
Speaker 2: But I like the charming part where they were opened
25:27
Speaker 2: up for the Dave Park five and there's a not
25:30
Speaker 2: in our book. There's a photo somewhere of them standing
25:34
Speaker 2: in front of the of Dave Park five in their
25:36
Speaker 2: dress exactly the same as prior to the black leather.
25:39
Speaker 2: They were wearing little dark green corduroy vests and beetle
25:43
Speaker 2: boots and still quite pants too, So they did not
25:46
Speaker 2: become dangerous overnight. You know, it was some long journey out.
25:52
Speaker 2: But I love that too. I love the whole transition.
25:56
Speaker 1: We mentioned Johnson Claire, so let's get to him now
25:59
Speaker 1: where he there's the story, which is nineteen sixty six.
26:02
Speaker 1: The band has all the pieces in place, but they're
26:04
Speaker 1: at this point where it's either they go big or
26:07
Speaker 1: they throw in the towels. So they bring in Sinclair.
26:10
Speaker 1: Talk about who John Sinclair is, his importance in the
26:13
Speaker 1: Detroit hipster scene, and then how they end up bringing
26:16
Speaker 1: him in as their manager.
26:18
Speaker 3: John was basically, you know, an intellectual, a poet, a huge,
26:27
Speaker 3: huge fan of jazz and free jazz music. And what
26:34
Speaker 3: made him different was instead of just loving this stuff,
26:38
Speaker 3: he had the soul of an organizer, like he wasn't
26:42
Speaker 3: just content for him to love it. He wanted to
26:45
Speaker 3: share this and knew in order for it to be
26:49
Speaker 3: something that he could share. He would you know, you know,
26:56
Speaker 3: open up you know, places cafes, ever for these bands
27:01
Speaker 3: to play, book them, you know, organized like minded people,
27:07
Speaker 3: collect money. He had all of this sort of thing
27:10
Speaker 3: where he wasn't content just to be a hipster. He
27:13
Speaker 3: wanted to be able to spread the word and that
27:16
Speaker 3: means you know, organizing, putting on concerts. And he wrote
27:23
Speaker 3: for like four or five different magazines. You know, he
27:26
Speaker 3: was always spreading the word of his free jazz and
27:30
Speaker 3: his radical politics. And at first, you know, the band
27:36
Speaker 3: sort of approached him, you know, they wanted him to
27:40
Speaker 3: help them, to manage them, and in the beginning it
27:43
Speaker 3: wasn't he wasn't so sure about it. You know, it
27:47
Speaker 3: took him well.
27:49
Speaker 2: They played, he got out of jail, and they had
27:54
Speaker 2: a big party at a place called the Artist's Workshop
27:57
Speaker 2: where it was kind of like hippie central, and they
28:02
Speaker 2: so many people wanted to welcome him back to Detroit
28:05
Speaker 2: after he'd been incarcerated, that they were going to play
28:09
Speaker 2: two or three in the morning. And John wasn't all
28:13
Speaker 2: that keen, or his wife Letty Sinclair wasn't because he
28:17
Speaker 2: just come out of jail. And they didn't want to
28:19
Speaker 2: have any noise ordinance in attractive police, so they that
28:24
Speaker 2: was their scheme to come to his attention, and he
28:28
Speaker 2: wasn't sure that he was having it. Like I think
28:30
Speaker 2: it was just a series of events that he succumbed
28:33
Speaker 2: to their charms. Because then Rob Tyner wrote a letter
28:37
Speaker 2: to the fit of State the underground newspaper, and it
28:40
Speaker 2: was smart and it was ariane and it was very
28:44
Speaker 2: jazz centric and I think that that kind of farmed
28:48
Speaker 2: the pump for everything else that came after.
28:51
Speaker 3: It excited John, and you know, he helped open up
28:57
Speaker 3: this great concert venue called the Grandy Ballroom, which is
29:01
Speaker 3: the whole story of that is in the book as well,
29:04
Speaker 3: and started helping to book that place and it just
29:09
Speaker 3: started steamrolling from there. And then I think it was
29:13
Speaker 3: John had met the manager of the Grateful Dead, who
29:21
Speaker 3: was also sort of this freaky guy, and the manager
29:27
Speaker 3: of the Grateful Dead said, well, why aren't you managing
29:29
Speaker 3: these guys? You can do it, and Sinclair was like, well,
29:34
Speaker 3: I guess if he can do it, I can do it.
29:36
Speaker 3: But then I think that John started seeing how he
29:38
Speaker 3: could and I don't mean this in a negative way,
29:42
Speaker 3: how he could use the band to help him further
29:45
Speaker 3: his message. I always say John Sinclair used the MC
29:50
Speaker 3: five to weaponize his politics, Like he knew that he
29:57
Speaker 3: wanted to reach these kids and it was easy to
30:01
Speaker 3: reach them using rock and roll than it was by
30:05
Speaker 3: writing a poem or writing something in a uh, you know,
30:10
Speaker 3: in an underground magazine.
30:12
Speaker 1: It wasn't Black to Calm. The song that he loved
30:14
Speaker 1: that was the one that.
30:15
Speaker 2: I love that.
30:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, you first noticed.
30:18
Speaker 3: Because because it was the closest to like heavy metal
30:21
Speaker 3: free jazz, it was close to what John loved. I mean,
30:25
Speaker 3: John loved the craziest, most discordant music you could imagine.
30:31
Speaker 3: The weirder the better for him. So that was the
30:33
Speaker 3: other part that sort of turned him on about the
30:35
Speaker 3: MC five is that the five could go from playing
30:38
Speaker 3: you know, Louie Louie to playing you know, sun Raw,
30:42
Speaker 3: you know, in the style of these free jazz guys.
30:45
Speaker 3: And he was just like, okay, you've got me hooked.
30:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. Black to com was about like the PA setup, Right,
30:52
Speaker 1: this must be like about racial divine or something.
30:55
Speaker 2: No, it's little Wire Ghost, you know. I would remember.
30:59
Speaker 2: I love the bragmatism of that.
31:01
Speaker 1: I love that though Brad Zalinski and Janu Helski, the
31:06
Speaker 1: authors of MC five and Oral Biography of Rock's Most
31:08
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Band, I'm going to get to a concert in
31:11
Speaker 1: Chicago August of sixty eight which helped gain the band
31:15
Speaker 1: national attention, and you talk about how Norman Mailer lionized
31:19
Speaker 1: MC five as true counter culture heroes. And this concert
31:22
Speaker 1: also led to a major labor record deal with Electra.
31:25
Speaker 1: Talk about that Festival of Life concert because Wayne Kramer
31:28
Speaker 1: had a great story about the hash cookies that only
31:32
Speaker 1: take one and they had two urs.
31:35
Speaker 2: I think that the thing was so many bands are
31:38
Speaker 2: supposed to come, like the Jefferson Airplane, and I think
31:41
Speaker 2: Country Joe and the Fish and the Up who was
31:46
Speaker 2: part of the MC five family, but later bands are
31:50
Speaker 2: supposed to come as well. Abby Hoffman was one of
31:52
Speaker 2: the organizers and that day it was a festival that
31:57
Speaker 2: was outside of the Democratic Conventionicago in nineteen sixty eight,
32:02
Speaker 2: and there was there people thought that there could be trouble, riots,
32:08
Speaker 2: you know, but they were going to be the best
32:10
Speaker 2: of all of light and they were going to like
32:13
Speaker 2: mitigate some of that that whole heavy kind of spirit.
32:17
Speaker 2: And when they got there, there was no setup, there
32:20
Speaker 2: was no there was nothing. They had to plug their
32:23
Speaker 2: amps into a hot dog stand, like a little trolley
32:26
Speaker 2: hot dog stand, and there was They were at level
32:30
Speaker 2: with the crowd and they got about three quarters through
32:34
Speaker 2: their set and rocks were being thrown in. Cops with
32:38
Speaker 2: billy sticks were coming out after the crowd. So they
32:43
Speaker 2: stopped playing and I tailed it out of there and
32:45
Speaker 2: got out. But they were the only band guts enough
32:49
Speaker 2: to do it, stupid enough to do it. And Norman
32:52
Speaker 2: Mailer had that great quote, but had the horns, had
32:55
Speaker 2: had the horns of huns ever had noise to compare.
32:59
Speaker 2: You know, it was just terrific, tremendous MC five noise.
33:03
Speaker 2: I mean you can see little clips of that on YouTube,
33:07
Speaker 2: and it's it's so unprofessional, you know, it's like this
33:12
Speaker 2: big media event was just a really small, little little
33:16
Speaker 2: like them standing on blankets pretty much. But you know
33:21
Speaker 2: it was the concert was heard around the world because
33:24
Speaker 2: it really got them a place in history.
33:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
33:28
Speaker 3: So they were at the Democratic National Convention and you know,
33:32
Speaker 3: you have the world's you know, political press there, you know,
33:40
Speaker 3: everybody in the US and the news, and and here
33:44
Speaker 3: they were playing in this park and completely disrupted it.
33:48
Speaker 3: But what's funny is that wasn't really their intention. I mean,
33:55
Speaker 3: Sinclair said, well, we just wanted to show people an
34:00
Speaker 3: alternative way to live life, you know, and and just
34:09
Speaker 3: show them, you know, how kids can have fun, like
34:12
Speaker 3: listening to the music and doing their own thing. But
34:15
Speaker 3: like almost everything else that the MC five did, it
34:19
Speaker 3: just ended up escalating into total chaos. So the police
34:25
Speaker 3: are there with clubs, there's tear gas, zillions of people
34:28
Speaker 3: running in thousands of different directions, you know, all just
34:32
Speaker 3: because these guys wanted to play some rock and roll
34:34
Speaker 3: in the park.
34:35
Speaker 2: But you know, we're forgetting the really important part. I mean,
34:38
Speaker 2: it's not like they're innocent trouble megans. I mean kicking
34:41
Speaker 2: out the jams, motherfucker. It's those five words have created
34:45
Speaker 2: this this domino effect that touched every single part of
34:50
Speaker 2: them from beginning to end. You know, that was their
34:53
Speaker 2: little cackle that they would say to other bands, you know,
34:57
Speaker 2: and that became an organizing them kind of railing cry.
35:02
Speaker 2: I mean so much that people think about that before
35:04
Speaker 2: they think about the band. But you know, because they
35:08
Speaker 2: refused to back down on that, they would get arrested.
35:13
Speaker 2: A lot of the arrest happened because it was a
35:15
Speaker 2: censorship problem. You know, they would not say, motherfucker booked
35:21
Speaker 2: on rock podcasts.
35:22
Speaker 1: We'll be back after this.
35:24
Speaker 3: Come out, come out, wherever you are.
35:28
Speaker 1: The trivia in the book is great how they they
35:31
Speaker 1: submitted a demo to The Beatles when they started the
35:34
Speaker 1: the record label Apple, but they didn't get signed to them.
35:38
Speaker 1: They got signed to Electra. But Rob Tyner was happy
35:41
Speaker 1: knowing that, you know that he the Electures cool man,
35:44
Speaker 1: Paul Butterfield blues band and you know the Doors and
35:46
Speaker 1: all that. But yeah, the Beatles label was like, you know,
35:49
Speaker 1: they were James Taylor right, that was you know they were.
35:52
Speaker 1: They weren't looking for a band like the MC five.
35:55
Speaker 1: But Rob Tyner was like, hey man, that's cool. We
35:57
Speaker 1: we'd rather be with Electra.
35:59
Speaker 2: Well.
36:00
Speaker 3: Well, the interesting thing is, though, and we tell the
36:04
Speaker 3: story in the book and for all the Beatles fans
36:09
Speaker 3: out there, is that, you know, they tried to get
36:12
Speaker 3: on Apple Records. The Beatles A and Are or whoever
36:17
Speaker 3: was in charge of it thought they were too wild
36:20
Speaker 3: and too harsh to put on their label. But interestingly enough,
36:27
Speaker 3: John Sinclair later gets tossed into jail for smoking two
36:31
Speaker 3: joints and John Lennon ended up coming to the rescue
36:38
Speaker 3: in many ways. And you know, we tell the story
36:43
Speaker 3: in the book. You know, John didn't play you know,
36:46
Speaker 3: you only played a handful of shows after the Beatles
36:49
Speaker 3: broke up, and one of them was a benefit concert
36:53
Speaker 3: to get Johnson Clair out of jail. You know, that
36:57
Speaker 3: was that was a huge, huge deal. Like you don't
37:02
Speaker 3: want to minimize what the MC five and what Johnson
37:06
Speaker 3: Claire meant at the time. Maybe it's been lost a
37:09
Speaker 3: little bit, but to have John Lennon, you know, come
37:14
Speaker 3: to come to ann Arbor, Michigan to play a show
37:19
Speaker 3: for you, to help you get out of jail, dude,
37:21
Speaker 3: you're pretty big, pretty important.
37:25
Speaker 2: For a song for him too.
37:27
Speaker 1: Yes, I was gonna say that's the first time I ever,
37:29
Speaker 1: I ever really found out about Johnson Claire. Is the
37:32
Speaker 1: Lennon song which I think it's on John Lennon's box set,
37:35
Speaker 1: so I think that's where I first heard it, and
37:36
Speaker 1: then Blind Mellon covered the.
37:40
Speaker 3: Sometime in New York and it's the best song on
37:42
Speaker 3: the record too.
37:43
Speaker 1: Yeah. Electro would release the debut Kickout the Kickout the
37:49
Speaker 1: Jams album, a live album at the Grande Ballroom in
37:52
Speaker 1: downtown Detroit, October sixty eight. You call one of the
37:55
Speaker 1: most important recordings of the era. Can you expand on
37:57
Speaker 1: that the album's importance.
38:01
Speaker 3: Well, I guess you know, we touched on this before.
38:06
Speaker 3: I mean, it starts out with them yelling pick out
38:09
Speaker 3: the jams, motherfucker. Now you can put on any record
38:16
Speaker 3: these days, you know, and you'll hear the word motherfucker
38:18
Speaker 3: like you know, every other word sometimes, you know, especially
38:24
Speaker 3: like in the hip hop world and stuff. But that
38:31
Speaker 3: that made people lose their minds. I mean, you're starting
38:35
Speaker 3: out your first record with that phrase, It's definitely going
38:40
Speaker 3: to get under some people's skin. And that's definitely what
38:43
Speaker 3: it was. But the record itself is just so uninhibited,
38:49
Speaker 3: like when you talk about you know, we talked about
38:53
Speaker 3: the free jazz influence on their playing. It's not like
38:56
Speaker 3: they're playing like John Coltrane, like with the zillion different
39:00
Speaker 3: in different modes and you know, but they are playing
39:04
Speaker 3: with that sort of complete, uninhibited sort of freedom. And
39:11
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, like I said, like The
39:14
Speaker 3: Stones or The Who at that time were considered maybe
39:17
Speaker 3: the most radical bands. But if you put one of
39:20
Speaker 3: their records next to Kick Out the Jams. Oh, kick
39:24
Speaker 3: Out the Jams just in terms of sheer, raw energy
39:27
Speaker 3: completely blows all of that out of the water.
39:29
Speaker 1: How many bands lead with a live album too, Well,
39:33
Speaker 1: I deb.
39:34
Speaker 2: That's where they shown. I mean they were a live band.
39:38
Speaker 2: Like it made sense for the label because it's cheaper
39:41
Speaker 2: and to the band. They actually wanted to do that
39:43
Speaker 2: because hey, they've never been in a studio except for
39:46
Speaker 2: doing two singles, you know for a little local label,
39:49
Speaker 2: and they were secure in how they could deliver a
39:54
Speaker 2: live show. And they also thought that they were going
39:57
Speaker 2: to get to choose from three or four shows, maybe
39:59
Speaker 2: two or th ratios. But they didn't. That was like
40:02
Speaker 2: in stone, like they only recorded that those two nights,
40:07
Speaker 2: and one night was you know, worse than the other night.
40:11
Speaker 2: I mean it was not a I was there. It
40:13
Speaker 2: was not a perfect performance. It's like one of those
40:15
Speaker 2: where you're going, oh no please, I was I was
40:20
Speaker 2: in the ballroom. Yeah, so it was you know, it
40:25
Speaker 2: was one of those things. Although you know, ultimately it
40:28
Speaker 2: worked out because it's a document of a time, you
40:31
Speaker 2: know what I think for me, it's being like a
40:35
Speaker 2: young teenager. Then it was like it establishing us in
40:38
Speaker 2: them like you were find would pick out the jams. Motherfuckers.
40:42
Speaker 2: You were on that side. You were a bad kid,
40:44
Speaker 2: you know it psych with bradsit before the good kids go,
40:47
Speaker 2: you know, and it was like your parents were going
40:49
Speaker 2: to hate it. Everybody hated it. The record company had
40:53
Speaker 2: you know, we're squirrely about it. Records stores were busted
40:58
Speaker 2: if they carried it. You know. Yeah, really like throwing
41:02
Speaker 2: the gauntlet down in terms of this whole youthquake that
41:07
Speaker 2: was actually happening. So it will pass the youthquake because
41:10
Speaker 2: that was more nineteen sixty six sixty seven Ride in
41:14
Speaker 2: the Streets tingue. But it really is Midwestern teenagers go
41:19
Speaker 2: nuts like wild child, and it really starts that off.
41:24
Speaker 2: It starts off the Detroit version of a hippie movement.
41:28
Speaker 2: And again another famous Wing quote is the Summer of
41:31
Speaker 2: Love never made it to Detroit because really Detroit teenagers
41:36
Speaker 2: weren't hippie kids. You know. It's like the EMPC five
41:39
Speaker 2: like guns. You know, people like guns. Detroit people were violent.
41:43
Speaker 2: It's abusive there. You know, you you are not filled
41:47
Speaker 2: with the milk of human kindness at the rough city,
41:50
Speaker 2: and they were really emblematic of that kind of Detroit energy.
41:55
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm really proud of them. I'm proud of
41:57
Speaker 2: being in Detroit anyway. Brad too, I don't know if
42:00
Speaker 2: he's proud, it's not, but I'm always I don't with
42:04
Speaker 2: it really usually, and to me, they are like my spirit. Man.
42:10
Speaker 1: Are you both from Detroit?
42:12
Speaker 2: We are?
42:13
Speaker 1: Okay? So you're happy the Detroit Lions are playing really
42:16
Speaker 1: good these days. Finally, I'm a Steelers fan. I'm sorry,
42:20
Speaker 1: gotta keeping.
42:22
Speaker 3: My fingers crossed. You know the thing about the Lions,
42:25
Speaker 3: they wouldn't be the Lions if they didn't always just
42:32
Speaker 3: keep you on the edge of your seat. I mean,
42:33
Speaker 3: you're just waiting for them. I don't feel confident with
42:38
Speaker 3: the Detroit line.
42:39
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just gonna say I I've been a Red
42:40
Speaker 1: Sox fan for many, many, many years. So the longest time,
42:43
Speaker 1: we just figured it's never gonna happen. Bill Buckner, the
42:46
Speaker 1: whole thing. And here we are now it's Red Sox
42:48
Speaker 1: haven't found at all. I don't know three four worlds area,
42:51
Speaker 1: so it's it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. I root
42:54
Speaker 1: for the Lions all the time. I love it so
42:57
Speaker 1: by like late sixty eight, MT five contra draw on
43:00
Speaker 1: a major record label. They made the cover of Rolling
43:03
Speaker 1: Stone That's That's Wild before their debut album's even released,
43:07
Speaker 1: but then three years later they disband. So yeah, this
43:11
Speaker 1: all kind of starts, I guess the first of many
43:13
Speaker 1: self hammered nails in the coffin starts with the show
43:15
Speaker 1: at the Fillmore East December twenty sixth, nineteen sixty eight.
43:18
Speaker 1: What happens on that.
43:19
Speaker 2: Night, motherbuckers.
43:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, just one word, one word.
43:26
Speaker 2: This time. They were like another hippy tribe like radicals,
43:33
Speaker 2: and they they had made common cause with Sinclair and
43:39
Speaker 2: the White Panthers, and they wanted tickets into the show.
43:43
Speaker 2: They had already pissed up Phil Graham, who is the
43:48
Speaker 2: provider owner of the film Fillmore, and he wouldn't give
43:51
Speaker 2: them the tickets, so they got chains and you know,
43:56
Speaker 2: created like a riot after the show, right after the show.
44:00
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, so there there was this There was
44:05
Speaker 3: this other group of radicals that were even one upping
44:12
Speaker 3: the MC five and they were literally called the Up
44:15
Speaker 3: against the Wall motherfuckers, that was their names.
44:18
Speaker 2: And.
44:21
Speaker 3: They basically were anarchists and they just wanted to create
44:28
Speaker 3: trouble for the establishment, for the authority, for whatever, and
44:35
Speaker 3: of all people to come and disrupt the MC five
44:39
Speaker 3: who have been promoters of the cause, right and uh,
44:45
Speaker 3: they go to they go to play the show, and
44:48
Speaker 3: the up against the wall motherfuckers decide that they're going
44:51
Speaker 3: to make a hash out of it. You know that
44:53
Speaker 3: they're gonna that they're going to create trouble. And one
44:56
Speaker 3: of the biggest promoters at the time was this guy
45:00
Speaker 3: named Bill Graham. He's from San Francisco and he also
45:06
Speaker 3: ran the Fillmore East in New York and he was
45:09
Speaker 3: there for the show, biggest promoter in the entire United States.
45:15
Speaker 3: And at one point, the motherfuckers take a chain and
45:19
Speaker 3: and hit him in the head and almost blind him. So,
45:23
Speaker 3: even though it wasn't the MC five's fault, Bill Graham
45:29
Speaker 3: hated their guts from that time afterwards, which basically made
45:34
Speaker 3: it difficult for them to play a lot of venues
45:39
Speaker 3: in the United States.
45:40
Speaker 1: It just had a huge influence. Yeah, and so.
45:45
Speaker 3: You have this huge problem broiling. You've got the establishment
45:52
Speaker 3: mad at them and taking their records out of the
45:55
Speaker 3: store because they used the word motherfucker. You have Bill Graham,
46:00
Speaker 3: who's a concert promoter saying like, I don't want to
46:03
Speaker 3: work with these guys. They suck. Then you have Rolling
46:07
Speaker 3: Stone that puts them on the cover, and then a
46:11
Speaker 3: couple of issues later writes a terrible review of their
46:14
Speaker 3: first record, and pretty soon the band starts going into
46:20
Speaker 3: this sort of downward spiral that's also exacerbated by the
46:27
Speaker 3: fact that John Sinclair, their manager, gets busted for smoking
46:32
Speaker 3: two joints and gets thrown in jail. So, I mean,
46:40
Speaker 3: that's the interesting thing about the MC five story. You're
46:43
Speaker 3: reading this thing, you're seeing this trajectory, you're seeing this attention.
46:49
Speaker 3: At first, it looks like they're going to be a
46:51
Speaker 3: massive band, and then all of a sudden, everything crashes
46:55
Speaker 3: in on them and they never really They do two
47:00
Speaker 3: more records, but they never really quite recover from all
47:05
Speaker 3: of that stuff.
47:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the quote from the book. If their
47:09
Speaker 1: climb to the top had been long and hazardous, their
47:11
Speaker 1: downhill slide was shockingly rapid and twice as painful. Yeah,
47:16
Speaker 1: And then is it true the radio stations were dropping
47:21
Speaker 1: the song from the playlists, but also record store clubs
47:23
Speaker 1: were being threatened with jail time for selling the album
47:26
Speaker 1: because the.
47:28
Speaker 3: Because it was obscene.
47:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was.
47:30
Speaker 3: It was breaking the Abscenity Lasso podcast.
47:34
Speaker 1: We'll be back after this, so.
47:37
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean you know where we are.
47:40
Speaker 1: Tell your Brad Electro dropped the bands, but Atlantic signs
47:46
Speaker 1: and which is it's like okay, Atlantic back on track here,
47:51
Speaker 1: but at this point, like well.
47:53
Speaker 2: Then actually, like the timeline is ridiculous. They as they
47:57
Speaker 2: got dropped pull their record was you know, rocketing up
48:01
Speaker 2: charts at number thirty and three weeks later Atlantic signed them,
48:06
Speaker 2: So that part gets a little missing to produce. But
48:10
Speaker 2: the thing is is then they have I mean they're
48:12
Speaker 2: already making plans to record this the follow up to
48:16
Speaker 2: that record which also came too.
48:20
Speaker 1: Which is back in the USA USA, and then High Time.
48:24
Speaker 2: Then the Last Time, the last one both on Atlantic.
48:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and John Sinclair brought in John Lando to produce
48:33
Speaker 1: the first one, but they both barely reached the top
48:36
Speaker 1: two hundred.
48:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the crazy part was as they thought of
48:38
Speaker 2: that as the antidote Lester Banks review, thinking oh, we'll
48:42
Speaker 2: have one of their own work with the MC five
48:47
Speaker 2: and it will mitigate this bad review that Lester Banks growth.
48:52
Speaker 1: Did Lester Bangs express regret about that or I try
48:55
Speaker 1: to remember. Yeah, that's in the book.
48:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rob Tyner's friends and they i mean they died
49:02
Speaker 2: very close together.
49:05
Speaker 3: Yeah. So for listeners that might not know this story
49:11
Speaker 3: very well, uh, Lester Bangs was probably the most influential
49:20
Speaker 3: rock writer of that era. People really listened and responded
49:26
Speaker 3: to what he had to say and and he was
49:31
Speaker 3: a great writer, and he was hilarious and and all
49:34
Speaker 3: these things. And and he wrote a negative review of
49:40
Speaker 3: the band and it really really hurt the band, like
49:44
Speaker 3: with their their cred, you know, with all the with
49:47
Speaker 3: all the kids. Uh. And so to sort of combat
49:54
Speaker 3: that bad record review, they got the probably the other
49:57
Speaker 3: guy that was the most important record review, this guy
50:02
Speaker 3: named John Landau who also worked for Rolling Stone. And
50:06
Speaker 3: they said, well, okay, this this record review guy says
50:10
Speaker 3: he sucks. Well, we're going to get this other great
50:12
Speaker 3: record review guy to say that they're great and produce
50:15
Speaker 3: their records, you know. And John Landau actually went on
50:23
Speaker 3: to produce Bruce Springsteen and Born to Ron.
50:27
Speaker 1: And he's with the famous quote I've seen the future
50:30
Speaker 1: of rock and roll and it's Springsteen. Yeah, you know.
50:33
Speaker 3: And so but Lando's record that he produces for the
50:40
Speaker 3: MC five which was the first record that he ever produced,
50:44
Speaker 3: was something of a disappointment. It became really influential later,
50:49
Speaker 3: but at the time he had sort of tightened up
50:54
Speaker 3: the band sound and a lot of people saw that
50:57
Speaker 3: as the band selling out, and a lot of people
51:01
Speaker 3: see that same record as being like the beginning of
51:04
Speaker 3: punk rock.
51:06
Speaker 2: I been one of the Detroit bands at the time,
51:09
Speaker 2: felt like the rest of Detroit fans really betrayed by that.
51:13
Speaker 2: I mean, open with a cover, It ended with a cover.
51:16
Speaker 2: You know, I that that just broke my heart for
51:22
Speaker 2: you know, for a long time, I thought that they've
51:25
Speaker 2: lost it, and you know there's that other little feel
51:29
Speaker 2: about you know, the just Claire goes to jail and
51:32
Speaker 2: they they you know, there's two sides of that story.
51:37
Speaker 2: But a lot of Michigan glocal bands thought that they
51:40
Speaker 2: abandon them. So that was another one of the fast
51:44
Speaker 2: slide down twice is painful parts of the story.
51:48
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen anything, any story like this with
51:50
Speaker 1: any other band?
51:52
Speaker 3: You know, it's well, I'd say about the about the
51:57
Speaker 3: book and about the story about the MC five and
51:59
Speaker 3: why the story need to be told is you know,
52:02
Speaker 3: I edited Guitar World for twenty five years and heard
52:08
Speaker 3: a lot of great rock and roll stories, you know,
52:10
Speaker 3: and and Jan has been writing for that long and
52:14
Speaker 3: interviewing people and worked at Cream magazine. I think this
52:19
Speaker 3: is the greatest rock and roll story never told. I
52:22
Speaker 3: mean it's it's so crazy and so exciting, and happens
52:28
Speaker 3: in such a condensed time period, and they they ascend
52:34
Speaker 3: so quickly and fall apart so quickly, and I don't know,
52:39
Speaker 3: it's just a crazy, chaotic, disastrous, interesting story.
52:46
Speaker 1: Has there been a proper documentary on them done?
52:49
Speaker 2: There has been, but it was some litigation. Dayne Kramer
52:53
Speaker 2: had sued filmmakers because he had this is what I
52:58
Speaker 2: remember the case. I don't have the court ducts because
53:02
Speaker 2: he wasn't the age as the musical director. So it
53:05
Speaker 2: lives in limbo, and there's a there's a man who's
53:10
Speaker 2: trying to resurrect and raised funds to try and get it.
53:13
Speaker 2: It's really good. I mean, it's really.
53:15
Speaker 1: Good to be part of it.
53:19
Speaker 2: I was asking a part of it with Dave Marsh
53:21
Speaker 2: who was also at Cream with me, and we weren't.
53:25
Speaker 2: Actually they filmed us, and later they said, well, there's
53:28
Speaker 2: a train going by shore. It didn't get your dialogue.
53:31
Speaker 2: But you know, I've always felt like they were my band, Yeah,
53:37
Speaker 2: because I you know, because it was like they worked
53:40
Speaker 2: before I worked, so the grande. But you know what
53:44
Speaker 2: really always strikes me, and more so when Brad and
53:46
Speaker 2: I were working on this before we talked about it,
53:49
Speaker 2: it was like waiting to play. It's like there are
53:51
Speaker 2: times there's pivotal points and you want to go, stop, stop,
53:54
Speaker 2: don't do that about this, like you want to you
53:57
Speaker 2: keep wanting to rewrite the ending because there's something so
54:02
Speaker 2: Endearing's not the right word, but you sympathize with them.
54:05
Speaker 2: It's like Becky Tyner, Rob Tanner's wife has a quote
54:10
Speaker 2: talking about their fatal flaw, like an Aristotle you know,
54:15
Speaker 2: or Shakespearean tragedy, like there's a flaw that creates everything
54:19
Speaker 2: that comes after that their success was never assured because
54:24
Speaker 2: of that. She calls it the sinem pride. But there's
54:27
Speaker 2: a little too much truth in that too.
54:30
Speaker 3: But you know that they're also a perfect Detroit story
54:34
Speaker 3: because Detroit it's all it's all about the.
54:38
Speaker 1: Underdogs, the lines, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:42
Speaker 3: Like it never quite comes together, but you know it's
54:46
Speaker 3: like the bad News Bears.
54:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, Hey, eighty four Tigers. I remember I
54:52
Speaker 1: was twelve. I remember that.
54:55
Speaker 2: Wait, sixty eight Tigers, I saw.
54:58
Speaker 3: I saw Donny McLean when one of thirty games.
55:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a picture.
55:04
Speaker 3: But you're going back to nineteen sixty. It's like a rout.
55:10
Speaker 1: You know, booked on rock podcasts will be back after this.
55:15
Speaker 3: Patience, patience, little deer. Everything has to be in order.
55:20
Speaker 1: Well, I'll say this just to put put it out there.
55:23
Speaker 1: The songs that people really should hear, and I'm going
55:25
Speaker 1: to put them. They're all in the playlist for this episode.
55:28
Speaker 1: I think you can find it in the show notes.
55:29
Speaker 1: But yeah, of course kick out the Jams. I mean,
55:31
Speaker 1: thankfully they have that song that a lot of people
55:33
Speaker 1: are familiar with. But human being lawnmower, Yeah, teenage lost,
55:38
Speaker 1: call me animal looking at you the American ruse? Yeah,
55:44
Speaker 1: let me try. So that's the mellow side of MC
55:47
Speaker 1: five too, like the range.
55:48
Speaker 2: Right, Sister Anne, don't forget sister and yeah.
55:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what was Atlantic part of this too? Like
55:57
Speaker 1: did they just have a lack of interest because I
55:58
Speaker 1: think Wayne Kramer said that he was disappointed that they
56:01
Speaker 1: didn't get behind it either. That what I'm sorry the
56:04
Speaker 1: Atlantic that they didn't get behind those albums and help promote.
56:08
Speaker 2: They didn't. There's quotes I think it's a Danny Gill's
56:12
Speaker 2: quote where they talks about I mean they it was
56:15
Speaker 2: the bottom line, you know. Or mate was John Lando,
56:18
Speaker 2: but they just weren't selling records. It's it's the part
56:21
Speaker 2: where their manager fires them. There they're gonna say it's terrible.
56:28
Speaker 2: I mean the big New York manager d Anthony, Yeah,
56:33
Speaker 2: but won't take their calls, fires them and then sues
56:36
Speaker 2: them were unpaid you know, percentages. So Atlantic was boring there.
56:44
Speaker 2: They were pretty much in the hand and glove.
56:47
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's it's a weird time in the
56:53
Speaker 3: music industry, right because there's a transition. You know, this
56:58
Speaker 3: mike over some of your younger, younger readers' heads. But
57:03
Speaker 3: there was this period in the sixties where you had
57:06
Speaker 3: AM radio that was all about the hit singles. You know,
57:11
Speaker 3: like if you didn't have the hit single, your record
57:15
Speaker 3: wasn't going to sell. I mean, part of the success
57:18
Speaker 3: of the Doors was because they had great singles, you know,
57:21
Speaker 3: or bands like Cream from those days they had great singles.
57:26
Speaker 3: And then in the early seven late sixties, early seventies,
57:29
Speaker 3: you get to this idea of the elbow of the
57:33
Speaker 3: artistic statement. And in a weird way, the MC five
57:37
Speaker 3: were caught like a little bit in the middle of that.
57:40
Speaker 3: And the problem with back in the USA was there
57:45
Speaker 3: was no hit single. You know, you were just into
57:50
Speaker 3: the energy of the band, you know, like it was
57:53
Speaker 3: a cool record, but there was no hit single. And
57:56
Speaker 3: if there was no hit single, then the album wasn't
57:59
Speaker 3: going to sell. FM radio hadn't really really kicked in yet,
58:04
Speaker 3: like you know, and and I think even what was
58:09
Speaker 3: there for FM radio, They just didn't look. They didn't
58:12
Speaker 3: like the second record. They thought it was too tame.
58:16
Speaker 3: So it was this weird thing that the radical underground
58:18
Speaker 3: thought the second record was they had tamed too much,
58:22
Speaker 3: but it wasn't tame enough for the you know, for
58:26
Speaker 3: the kids, for the hit singles, you know, that kind
58:28
Speaker 3: of thing. So they were just caught really in between.
58:34
Speaker 3: I think, you know, personally, it's their third record where
58:39
Speaker 3: they really figured it out. And to me, that's the
58:42
Speaker 3: great mystery because that the third record, High Time, feels
58:47
Speaker 3: like it should have been a classic seventies album oriented
58:52
Speaker 3: rock record. Sister Anne is a great song, you know,
58:57
Speaker 3: baby won't you is a great riff. I mean, I
59:01
Speaker 3: put that right up there with any led Zeppelin riff.
59:04
Speaker 3: I love the riff and baby won't you It's just
59:06
Speaker 3: like great. Try to think of this other song that.
59:11
Speaker 1: I miss X got to Keep Moving Future, I Got to.
59:14
Speaker 3: Keep Moving Yeah, which is which is as good of
59:19
Speaker 3: a Stone song as any Stone song either.
59:22
Speaker 1: Drummer Dennis Thompson.
59:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, that record should have been been big, but by
59:27
Speaker 3: that time the label had already lost interest. They just
59:30
Speaker 3: didn't believe it. It didn't get a push and and then
59:32
Speaker 3: shortly after that the band just fell apart.
59:35
Speaker 2: That always breaks my heart. It's not high time they
59:38
Speaker 2: have a picture of the busted clock, like a band
59:41
Speaker 2: that ran out of time like that. To me, that
59:43
Speaker 2: was like it's over, babe, you know, like you know what,
59:46
Speaker 2: Like that was a bad symbol.
59:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at it right here. Yeah. And Dennis
59:52
Speaker 1: Thompson is quoting the book, is saying that the pressures
59:55
Speaker 1: the band was under led to the use of heroin,
59:57
Speaker 1: which was another factor in the band's downfall. Basis Michael
1:00:00
Speaker 1: Davis left, drummer Dennis Thompson was next, and then the
1:00:03
Speaker 1: group disbanded not long after a show at the Grandy
1:00:05
Speaker 1: Ballroom on Year's Eve nineteen seventy two, which did not
1:00:07
Speaker 1: go well. That's where Wayn Kramer walked off the stage,
1:00:10
Speaker 1: and Rob Tyner is quoted in the book. He says, quote,
1:00:13
Speaker 1: our last album, High Time was all about the band
1:00:15
Speaker 1: taking control. Had we stayed together, it would have been
1:00:18
Speaker 1: a good beginning. And then Rob's wife said, quote if
1:00:22
Speaker 1: someone had just taken the MC five by the hand
1:00:24
Speaker 1: and said, all right, this is what's going to happen,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: they would have been more successful.
1:00:28
Speaker 2: Now.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: Wayne Cramer said it was three reasons. He has electro
1:00:31
Speaker 1: rushing the first album out as one, losing John Sinclair's
1:00:35
Speaker 1: manager and not getting John Landou to manage the band
1:00:38
Speaker 1: as the other two reasons. What do you think if
1:00:40
Speaker 1: you could hit the restart button and see it done differently,
1:00:43
Speaker 1: could the story of MC five have been different?
1:00:47
Speaker 2: It's those things go with moments like what would you stopped?
1:00:51
Speaker 2: You know, like would and you know the one thing
1:00:53
Speaker 2: about detroiters is you can never tell them what to do.
1:00:57
Speaker 1: Really, okay, I'm learning something about Detroit.
1:01:01
Speaker 2: Make me like like uteligitory stuff. They'll go make me
1:01:04
Speaker 2: or they'll think made me, and and the thing is this.
1:01:07
Speaker 2: No one would have ever told them anything. It was
1:01:10
Speaker 2: just it was a confluence of events.
1:01:13
Speaker 3: You know.
1:01:13
Speaker 2: It's like, had they not taken out an ad that
1:01:17
Speaker 2: said it would go again, that fward Bug Hussin's because
1:01:21
Speaker 2: that was the name of the retailer would have pulled
1:01:26
Speaker 2: the record off the shelves because of the obscenity. And
1:01:29
Speaker 2: they put in Electra's logo into that. So that was
1:01:33
Speaker 2: what led to them being dropped. And it was like
1:01:37
Speaker 2: there were so many little events like that, there's nothing
1:01:39
Speaker 2: you could have fixed. It was like they were on
1:01:41
Speaker 2: a fast train to oblivion. You know. It was like
1:01:44
Speaker 2: someone had set their course and I don't know why,
1:01:47
Speaker 2: you know.
1:01:48
Speaker 3: Well, to me like that, the story now almost says
1:01:52
Speaker 3: it all about MC five, Like I don't think you know,
1:01:55
Speaker 3: you could have you could imagine maybe something different happening,
1:01:58
Speaker 3: but it didn't and it couldn't and you even look
1:02:01
Speaker 3: at Okay, so the band, finally, after getting rejected six
1:02:06
Speaker 3: or seven times into the Hall of Fame, finally gets
1:02:09
Speaker 3: inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Everybody's cheering,
1:02:15
Speaker 3: but they're all they all in. The Wayne Kramer dies,
1:02:23
Speaker 3: Yeah he was That is Thompson dies, Johnson Claire dies,
1:02:28
Speaker 3: and they're all dead before they inducted into the Hall
1:02:32
Speaker 3: of Fame. It only seems fitting for this band.
1:02:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wayne Cramer was probably the most well known, at
1:02:39
Speaker 1: least for me, because I always saw his name in
1:02:41
Speaker 1: guitar magazines and he was he was out there for
1:02:43
Speaker 1: a while, and he was carrying the band, carrying the
1:02:46
Speaker 1: band's name there for a while there too. But what
1:02:48
Speaker 1: if they just had no involvement with politics, Like, how
1:02:50
Speaker 1: would that? Because that was Rob Tyner was warned by
1:02:53
Speaker 1: Janis Joplin Country Joe McDonald like, just don't do that stuff, man,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: I'm telling you. It's you know, they're going to use
1:02:59
Speaker 1: you up and throw you like tissue paper. Right, that's
1:03:01
Speaker 1: the that's the quote. So what would that have changed?
1:03:05
Speaker 3: It? It it that's just one of them anolytics that
1:03:09
Speaker 3: helped make them famous.
1:03:10
Speaker 2: I think so too.
1:03:11
Speaker 3: Okay, it was saying the word motherfucker that that helped
1:03:15
Speaker 3: make them famous. You know, like all of the things
1:03:18
Speaker 3: that that that helped them grab national attentions were the
1:03:22
Speaker 3: things that destroyed them.
1:03:24
Speaker 1: It's the eyes, isn't that interesting? Yeah? The irony of that. Yeah, yeah,
1:03:30
Speaker 1: see you break down what became of the band members
1:03:32
Speaker 1: and Johnson Claire after the MC five broke up. Rob
1:03:35
Speaker 1: Tyner he passed in ninety one. Guitarist Fred Smith died
1:03:38
Speaker 1: in ninety four. Both died of a heart attack, and
1:03:40
Speaker 1: then there were reformed lineups. Wayne Kramer formed a band
1:03:43
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two under the name We Are All
1:03:46
Speaker 1: MC five. Sadly we lost Kramer early twenty twenty four.
1:03:50
Speaker 1: Dennis Thompson passed in May eighth of this year, so
1:03:53
Speaker 1: all of the original members are gone. So my last
1:03:56
Speaker 1: question is how should MC five be remembered.
1:04:00
Speaker 2: It's the world's most evolutionary band.
1:04:04
Speaker 1: Says it right there, Yeah, MT five in oral biography
1:04:09
Speaker 1: of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band. It is out October seven,
1:04:14
Speaker 1: eight eight.
1:04:17
Speaker 3: You can go out and get it now.
1:04:19
Speaker 1: You can pre order the book now order it. Yeah,
1:04:21
Speaker 1: So you can get that wherever books or sold Amazon.
1:04:23
Speaker 1: So where can people find you, guys online? If they
1:04:25
Speaker 1: want to reach out to your websites? Any anything you
1:04:28
Speaker 1: want to get out there social media?
1:04:30
Speaker 3: I have a Facebook page. I think, uh uh, Jan,
1:04:34
Speaker 3: does I mean you can reach out reach out to
1:04:37
Speaker 3: us through there?
1:04:40
Speaker 2: Oh? You can get me at Cream Magazine. Jan at
1:04:42
Speaker 2: cream dot com. Okay, M two as.
1:04:47
Speaker 3: But uh, the book you can you know, it's available online.
1:04:51
Speaker 3: You just type in the title and a bunch of
1:04:53
Speaker 3: different ways that you can buy it will come up. Uh.
1:04:57
Speaker 3: We are going to be doing some you know, signings
1:05:02
Speaker 3: and some events. Were doing three events in Detroit on
1:05:07
Speaker 3: the eleventh, and twelfth and the thirteenth, and then we're
1:05:10
Speaker 3: going to be in Los Angeles when jan do you remember?
1:05:14
Speaker 2: October twenty fourth. October twenty fourth, music Head Gallery on
1:05:19
Speaker 2: sunset okay, And.
1:05:22
Speaker 3: I'm actually going to be at the Rock and Roll
1:05:24
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame on the day that they're inducted, signing
1:05:27
Speaker 3: books in the Hall of Fame itself. Oh cool, on
1:05:31
Speaker 3: the nineteenth.
1:05:33
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah cool. All right, So are those dates anywhere
1:05:35
Speaker 1: online that people can go to, because I'd love to
1:05:37
Speaker 1: put the link up if they're being promoted, I'm sure somewhere.
1:05:42
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'll detruit.
1:05:44
Speaker 1: Send them over, send them over. Thank you so much, guys,
1:05:48
Speaker 1: This was great. Congrats on the book. It's a fascinating book.
1:05:51
Speaker 1: And I'm now officially an MC five fan. I'm going
1:05:53
Speaker 1: to be listening to the music from here on out.
1:05:55
Speaker 3: Tack out the James motherfucker.
1:05:57
Speaker 1: There you go.
1:05:58
Speaker 2: I thought you're going to say you were Lions.
1:06:00
Speaker 1: Stand now I'm still gonna I can't freak my Steelers, man.
1:06:05
Speaker 1: I'm faithful to my Steelers, and we can.
1:06:07
Speaker 3: Talk about the Lions offline for.
1:06:12
Speaker 1: All right, guys, Thank you so much.
1:06:13
Speaker 2: Thanks Eric.
1:06:19
Speaker 3: M HM.
1:06:22
Speaker 1: That's it. It's in the books.