Wayne Kramer: Mad for the Racket and Not Near Done
by Denise Sullivan
In August of 1968 with the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as their backdrop, a five-piece band that had yet to record its debut drove from Detroit to play a concert as part of the Yippie-organized Festival of Life, a planned week of anti-war protest which they’d hoped would attract bands and young folks from throughout the country. As it was, only one band showed up, and over the next eight days, the whole world watched as law enforcement and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the historic police riots that some would say changed the nature of street protest forever.
"They performed despite then-Mayor [Richard J.] Daley trying to say it was illegal for people to gather in the park and protest the war. They came out anyway," said Zack de la Rocha from the stage last month where Rage Against the Machine were putting in an anti-war appearance of their own at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. "The name of the band was called the MC5. And the brother who's with us tonight is named brother Wayne Kramer."
"Forty years ago, we went to Chicago to protest an illegal war that we were lied into," said Kramer from his position onstage between de la Rocha and Rage guitarist Tom Morello. "Today, we're in Denver to protest an illegal war we were lied into," he continued, guitar strapped on and ready for action. "I stand here with the Iraq Veterans Against the War, with my comrades Rage Against the Machine, and I say right now, in the spirit of peace—peace—it's time to… kick out the jams, motherfuckers!"
As Rage and Kramer rolled out the intro to one of rock's most celebrated rebellion songs, the 10,000-strong audience at the Tent State Music Festival rocked right along with them. Following the show, an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 of the concert goers peacefully marched with the musicians to the Pepsi Center, where the Iraq Veterans Against the War's position on the war was heard as they confirmed a personal appointment with candidate Barack Obama. Mission accomplished.
"Everybody had a ball. They behaved like big boys and girls," said Kramer, chuckling as we spoke by phone immediately after the demonstration. "An artist can also be an activist and actually take action like we did today," he continued. "Because the old ideas aren't going to work… they aren't effective anymore. The authorities know how to handle that. I just finished a march where the Denver police had these streets absolutely locked down. Nothing spontaneous is going to happen. This is not going to get out of control. They've learned their lessons well—they're professionals. Protesters are amateurs. So we need a new paradigm and we need new ways to do things, kind of what Rage made happen with this concert: To use their position as rock stars as a platform, to be able to point out the contradictions."
If ever there was a band of rock ‘n’ roll contrarians, it was Kramer's MC5, a ramshackle musical outfit typical of young bands in the post-Beatles/Stones era but with a trajectory that imploded them rather than skyrocketed them to fame. In 1963, Wayne Kramer, Fred Smith, and Rob Tyner were still in high school when they started knocking around in local bands; by ’65, with the addition of Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson (in place of Pat Burrows and Bob Gaspar, who had quit), they became the MC5 as they are now remembered. Claiming the avant-garde's Sun Ra and rock ‘n’ roll's Chuck Berry as inspiration, they started playing covers, and evolved to include in their repertoire grinding originals steeped in an old-time rock sound. The band was central to the Detroit underground scene blossoming in their midst—a swirl of Trans Love Energies and White Panther Party politics, much of it spearheaded by the "high priest of the Detroit hippies," John Sinclair, who would for a time work as their manager.
Following their convention appearance, the band recorded their 1969 debut, Kick Out the Jams. The title became a rallying slogan, but an albatross as well: The band's party-on style, radical politics, and run-ins with the law were confused as middle fingers flipped to authority rather than seriously conceived actions in the name of a movement toward cultural change on a mass scale. (They were, in fact, a bit of both). As it turned out, the world just wasn't ready for their Sinclair-conceived credo of "dope, guns, and fucking in the streets,” and there were those who wanted to see the likes of the Five locked up—which they were any number of times—for daring to even say such things. Which is, of course, an oversimplification of the band's history, but it’s at least a start on the pathway toward explaining why the MC5 and "Kick Out the Jams" have remained synonymous with radical rock.
"The literal and literary content of the lyric is a celebration of being in a band," explains Kramer a couple of weeks after the Denver appearance. "I read later that Tyner said when he wrote the lyric he was actually sending a message to the rest of us in the band, to quit fucking with him, let him be who he is, let him do his thing." He pauses to laugh gently, presumably at the memory of a departed friend, and then picks up the thread. "I extrapolate the meaning of the song to say, ‘You can have an effect on things but you have to do it wholeheartedly.’ It doesn't say ‘stroll out the jams’ or ‘blasé out the jams,’ it says ‘kick out the jams.’ If you do something wholeheartedly, you can make something happen. But if you do it halfheartedly, you won't make anything happen."
Kramer stewards the MC5's legacy through his interviews and a sheer stick-to-it-ness that has ultimately seen him make good on his band's promise of culture jamming. As mouthpiece and historian for the band, he's helped to ensure MC5's place in music history, as well as the places of the lesser-sung heroes who influenced them. And he's done it through the good times and bad: The deaths of bandmates Tyner and Smith and a tiring lawsuit brought by Tyner's wife over intellectual property rights were low points, while reuniting for gigs with bandmates Thompson and Davis as DKT and special guest vocalists (from Marshall Crenshaw to Handsome Dick Manitoba) have been among the highs. Kramer's also rehabilitated himself and has been a recording artist since his ’70s prison stay on drug charges; he remains an advocate for addiction and recovery issues within the prison population. This year, Kramer was recruited by Morello for the Rage guitarist’s ongoing musical actions, like the day in Denver and the "Justice Tour," which featured a day of local political activity (like meeting with union and immigrant rights organizations) as well as music.
