MC5.

THE MOTOR CITY 5 WAS THE MOST influential band of the late 1960s and early 1970s, without a doubt. Their legacy is alive and well today; the evidence is the vast number of bands who cite them as a chief influence--Lemmy said there would be no Motorhead without the MC5, and Dave Vanian of the Damned said the same thing.

THEY WERE BOTH a product of their time and well ahead of it. Their music reflected the grittiness as the shit hit the fan in late-'60s/early '70s Detroit: the American auto industry, once the backbone of American manufacturing, started to take a shit, and even Motown split. Imagine starting your band in the mid-'60s as the post-war baby boom was happening, when American muscle cars were beginning to shape Detroit's identity, sexual liberation was in full swing, drug experimentation peaked, and rock and roll was producing stars who became full-on cultural icons. Over the next six to eight years, Detroit's economy collapsed as gas prices skyrocketed, Vietnam polarized the nation, and Nixon became president. This was the environment of the MC5.

Nobody rocked as hard as they did, with songs full of pent-up sexual energy, revolution, and liberation. The MC5 was, essentially, four greaser rock and milers with a poet/beatnik singer. Although their message was completely on track with what was going on in contemporary music, their music itself was far too loud for the mellow hippies on the West Coast--the MC5 wanted to drink, fuck, and fight through their revolution, not pick flowers and hold hands. Their debut record, 1969's Kick Out the Jams, was censored after stores refused to carry it: the second track began with the infamous intro, "Right now it's time to ... kick out the jams, motherfuckers!" Recorded live in Detroit in 1968, it showed from the start that the band was different from anything that had been before, blending jazz and blues and acid in a way never before achieved. The record touted the 5's revolutionary leanings, and they are shown shiftless in the sleeve photo with their White Panther badges (they had created the White Panther party with John Sinclair, who provided "guidance," and it espoused all the tenets of the Black Panther party and demanded that all things be free land, food, shelter, clothing, education, etc). Their next record came a year later, after being dropped by Elektra for the pandemonium caused by the first record. Their second record, 1970's Back in the USA, should have established their reputation as the nation's premiere rock band, but they couldn't shake the "revolutionary" label. They covered "Tutti Frutti" and "Back in the USA," and ripped through dine other originals, all but one song three minutes or under, a departure from their first jam-heavy record. The songs here were well-written and poignant in terms of their underlying messages: sex, throwing off the yoke of the older generation, the killing machine that the US had become in Vietnam. Their last LP, High Time, returned to longer songs and expanded in terms of instrumentation with horns and percussion. Revolution was paramount at this point; the draft was in full swing and young Americans were becoming cannon fodder for reasons nobody understood. The MC5 called it quits at this point, too, unable to out-power what Detroit and America had become.

Since their implosion, dozens of recordings have emerged and all their records have been reissued. Singer Rob Tyner died in '91. Guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith died in '94. The surviving members--guitarist Wayne Kramer, bassist Mike Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson--launched a tour this year, getting Levi's to sponsor after they inadvertently used MC5 artwork. Mark Arm filled in on vocals, Marshall Crenshaw (a Detroit native) was called in for guitar duties, and Evan Dando was brought in to sing a few songs as well. I got to see the band twice (who out of respect for Smith and Tyner are touring as DKT/MC5). It was amazing both times. In this day and age their songs mean just as much as they did then.

What brought you guys to rock and roll?

Mike Davis: We didn't want to get jobs in the factory?

Wayne Kramer: That's what I was thinking!

Davis: My dad actually set up an interview with the Ford Motor Company. I went out there and started filling out the application, but I didn't go through with it. I left.

Straight to the guitar shop?

Davis: Yep, straight to the guitar shop.

Dennis Thompson: My brother played guitar. He's 10 years older than I am, and he played in an instrumental band. He was 15, I was five, and the drummer would leave his kit set up in the basement. I'd go downstairs and start smacking on them. My mother would kick me off, saying they weren't mine, but eventually they started to tolerate it and let me play more and more. I come from a musical family. My sister played keyboards, my mom sang on the radio, my dad played upright riddle.

You guys were an overtly political band. Do you see politics today mirroring what was going on the '60s? The ideology is different: then it was anti-communism, and today it is anti-fundamentalism or anti-terrorism. Is this some sort of vicious cycle, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss?"

Kramer: They're all fundamentalisms of certain sorts ...

Davis: ... It's the same if not worse. What the fuck are we doing in Iraq? What the fuck are we doing over there?

What about the role of music? Do you see as much revolutionary rock and roll today as you did in the '60s? I think the answer is probably no, but how do you explain that?

Kramer: Because there is no draft right now. When they start getting ready to ship you over there you're gonna get radical.

Thompson: There's a song called "Human Being Lawnmower" that we wrote: "There's an ancient race of killer apes/they used a thighbone/millimeter by millimeter/six times hot as the sun." Boom! But when it comes down to you and you don't want your ass to go fight a war you don't believe in you'll get politicized immediately. You have no choice.

What happened to the White Panther Party?

Kramer: The White Panther Party was a moment in time. And, it was the tip of the spear of the frustration that we felt because nobody was listening to us. We had something to say about things and nobody listened. We got together to achieve that goal, and we achieved that goal, and they did listen to us in the end, but it was too late. It was too late, the damage was done. It went the way of anything that's in the moment. The things that the White Panther Party was really about-championing justice, freedom, peace over war--that doesn't change.

Davis: We were the White Panther Party. It was us. You're talking to the White Panther Party. Certified officers.

Kramer: Ministers, actually! We're Ministers of Culture in the Streets! Did you guys follow later evolutions of rock and roll--when punk started evolving, when heavy metal started evolving?

Davis: I played in a band called Destroy All Monsters. Wayne started a band called Gang War.

Thompson: I started New Order with Ron Asheton of the Stooges.

Did you listen to the music that was coming out at the time, contemporary stuff? Did you follow punk rack?

Kramer: I didn't like it much. To me it was more of the same but not done as well. I did appreciate the spirit of rebellion, the frustration; I could identify with that. But fundamentally I'm musical and I didn't hear anything new. That's what I am looking for.

What about today?

Kramer: Still don't hear anything new in guitar rock, in garage rock. I still appreciate those guys, a lot of those guys I am friendly with, but I would rather hear them create something new. The only creative stuff that I am hearing is in hip-hop. Songs change beats six times in a song, they change theme, some of it is incredible.

Thompson: They need to take risks. Its all pretty derivative.

Davis: I don't know about them but I do like that stuff. I listen to new stuff coming along and l like it. I like stuff from Venom to Jodie Foster's Army, you name it. I like hardcore; I like Minor Threat and those guys, Dischord records. I like the adventure and passion.

Thompson: There've been tunes here and there along the way that I like because it is poppy or whatever, but I wouldn't buy the album.

It's interesting you say this stuff is derivative, because a lot of bands name you guys as one of their chief influences or sources. Some of that stuff is derived from your work.

Kramer: Hey, don't blame me!

Thompson: I wasn't there! I was in Canada! It's not meant in a derogatory sense, as much as Wayne was mentioning taking musical risks. Remember that our musical background was very wide. We were exposed to a lot of free jazz and we listened to lots of Motown. We were fortunate to be in Detroit, so all of this stuff was available to us. There was a lot of musical input, a lot to study, a lot to learn from, and we absorbed a lot of that and created a unique style. We had a lot to draw off of.

Do you think a lot of bands now are missing that?

Mark Arm: Music is ghettoized and categorized, and a lot of people just say, "I want to be that," and they point to maybe like three bands from the '80s. There are hardly any original ideas. It doesn't happen all of the time, but it happens more often than it should.

When you guys broke up in 1972, some of you guys got into some trouble. Wayne, I know you spent some time in prison. Did anything positive come out of that experience?

Kramer: It saved my life. It gave my liver a two-year break. You think of prison as a place full of terrible people, but I was actually hanging out with worse people on the street. If I hadn't nearly killed myself in an overdose I could have gotten caught up in the terrible drama that was happening everywhere all of the time.

Mark Arm: Would you say the White Panther Party turned into the white line panther party?

Kramer: Or the brown powder party.

If you contextualize that experience with where you guys are from in Detroit, this is Detroit in decline.

Kramer: It was a really bad scene in the '70s. The auto industry was gone; there really was no work for musicians. If auto workers don't have jobs, they're not going to clubs, and clubs can't hire bands. It's the Ronald Reagan trickle down--where nothing really trickles down.

Did you see the film about the Funk Brothers? Great film, same deal, the bottom end of the music industry fell out of Detroit ...

Thompson: ... Motown pulled up its stakes and left, the corporate eye turned away from Detroit. People were doing these death drugs from harmless marijuana and LSD to heroin and PCP and Quaaludes. And it was hard to find marijuana. You hear about paraquat in the fields, and all of a sudden it's easy to buy this other stuff. It's everywhere. Everybody started doing drugs that put them to sleep. Activity just declined.

Davis: The whole experience changed in the early '70s. Instead of being about mind expansion and everybody having fun it was more about isolation, and I remember Sinclair publishing something about these devil drugs and how the CIA was introducing all these evils into counterculture to destroy it. And for a while I anaesthetized myself, but I found out there is no happy ending. It leads to death or jail. But it all kind of happened in this one year, and everything got dark.

Thompson: The movement came to a halt. We played the democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, and there was supposed to be a bunch of other California bands to show up and show some solidarity, but we were the only band that showed up. And when we played, in the middle of our set the police riot began, and there were riots in other parts of the city, but I felt in my heart at that moment that the revolution sort of died. Here was the revolution--but nobody came.

The DVD that came out has FBI surveillance footage of you guys. People must have been scared of you guys. Or at least the message.

Kramer: We were part of the whole generation, we weren't the only ones under surveillance. Any group that had an organized voice against the government was under surveillance. As a generation we all said, "You're not going to fight this war in my name. You can't rip away civil rights in our name." There's a big difference between then and now. Now there is no agreement. Everybody's kind of waffling around, trying to get to the mall. That's one thing everyone agrees on.

You're involved with punkvoter, right?

Kramer: We're trying to get young people to participate in the democratic process. Democracy requires participation. It's not an abstract thing; it's participatory. Participating can change the world.

Mark Arm: I was backstage at the Chicago show in John Sinclair's room and a joint was being passed around, and this girl was kind of looking to him for advice, and she said, "Do you think I should really vote? Do you think it makes a difference?" And John Sinclair said, "I vote every chance I get. That's the whole basis of democracy."

What's different between an MC5 show then and now?

Davis: Besides the fact that Rob and Fred aren't here? Besides that fact, I think we're really kind of doing the same thing.

Kramer: Back then nobody knew the songs. Now everybody knows the songs, note for note, lyric for lyric, and they all have 30 years of experience with the music. You'll see groups of people out there, and we'll go into a song and it'll be "their song," and they'll just light up. That kind of thing never used to happen. Everything we did then was a shock to them, no one had ever heard anything like that.

Thompson: And on a more serious note, Wayne can't jump up and do a spin in mid air, a windmill or the splits, and Michael doesn't run backwards into his bass amp.

Kramer: I can jump and spin in the air! And the splits! All that!

Thompson: I want one! I will get you a massage if you do all of it! I read this great review of you playing Seattle in 1968, that said that people were running from the place covering their ears because it was so loud.

Thompson: They didn't like us much there.

Kramer: The MC5 never connected much on the West Coast. The hippies didn't dig us. They were struggling with folk music and flowers in their hair and here comes this band from Detroit, gold lame clothes, spinning like James Brown, big Marshall amps, playing Little Richard music, screaming about "kick out the jams, motherfucker!"

Thompson: They thought we were from a different planet.

I also read an interview in which you stated that you're going to disappoint when it comes to people's expectations.

Kramer: That's not what I said. Life is so constructed that the event will not, and cannot, live up to expectations. It may exceed your expectations ...

Thompson: It's best to have no expectations. Then you won't be disappointed.