AADL Talks To Wayne Kramer

Thu, 03/08/2012 - 9:58am

When: December, 2011

While he was in town for the 40th anniversary of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, Wayne Kramer, lead guitarist and co-founder of the seminal Detroit/Ann Arbor band, MC5, sat down to talk with us. Wayne discusses the early years of the band and the influence of jazz, Sinclair, and Detroit culture on their music. He also talks about his troubles in the years following the band's dissolution; his current work with Jail Guitar Doors and fondly recalls the concerts in West Park.

Read more about Wayne Kramer and the MC5 at aadl.org and freeingjohnsinclair.org.

Transcript

• [00:00:04.79] ANDREW: Hi, this is Andrew.
• [00:00:06.12] AMY: And this is Amy. And in this episode, AADL talks to Wayne Kramer.
• [00:00:13.03] ANDREW: While he was in Ann Arbor for the events surrounding the 40th anniversary of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, we had the chance to talk with guitarist and co-founder of the MC5, Wayne Kramer. Wayne talks about the influence of John Sinclair, jazz, and Detroit culture on his life in music, his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, and how they led to his current work. He also recalls his favorite concert in West Park and his signature guitar.
• [00:00:37.80] AMY: I want to ask you first of all about that guitar last night, the red, white, and blue guitar. Is there a story behind it?
• [00:00:43.09] WAYNE KRAMER: Well, that particular guitar is a commercially available Fender signature stratocaster Wayne Kramer signature model, which I'm very proud of. It's very humbling to be a guitar player and one day find yourself with a signature model. You know for a kid that grew up looking at Fender catalogs and thinking maybe someday I could own one to having my own signature model is a pinnacle of my life as an artist or a professional musician.
• [00:01:22.26] And it's a reproduction of the stratocaster that I built and played in the "Kick Out the Jams" era of the MC5. And I felt like I wanted the band to have a look and that we were putting on a show or performance and that everything you did was part of the performance.
• [00:01:51.93] And I admired Pete Townshend. And he wore this jacket that was cut out of red, white, and blue motif like the Union Jack. And I thought, that's very cool. But I'm not British. But I am American. And maybe I could use the American flag motif on my guitar.
• [00:02:10.93] And it was also a way to make a political statement, which was that, although I disagreed violently and militantly with American policies, that I was expressing my patriotism and my belief in the founding principles of America in protest by embracing the symbol of the flag and letting it be known that I'm really opposed to actions that the government's taking that I think are immoral and unethical.
• [00:02:46.39] ANDREW: So how did the MC5 start and develop a sound that wasn't like anything that had come before?
• [00:02:53.51] WAYNE KRAMER: The sound that the MC5, I guess, is recognized for, this kind of aggressive guitar-based music, it really came about as a result of a confluence of many influences. I came up in the '50's. And the era of the electric guitar was just emerging.
• [00:03:20.23] Chuck Berry was the leading proponent of a whole new style of guitar playing where the guitar had a tone to it that was really from the amplifier not the traditional sound of an acoustic guitar. But it was an electric sound. And he played it with a velocity that was exciting. And there were a few other guitar players around that were pushing the envelope.
• [00:03:44.68] So that's where I started. And then in the middle '60's, with the coming of the British first wave, there were guitar players from England. I mention Pete Townshend as a huge influence and Jeff Beck. And I really admired what these guys were doing. I thought they were pushing the guitar further.
• [00:04:05.91] But the real portal that opened up the door for the sound that became the MC5 sound and my approach to the guitar was in the music of the free jazz movement. So when I heard John Coltrane go from traditional scales and modes into what one critic called sheets of sound, I saw there was a way to push this music beyond traditional Western music.
• [00:04:35.81] And my fellows in the band, we all were on the same wavelength about trying to do this in the rhythm section, to have the drummer play outside the tempo rather than lock down the tempo and the tone of the instrument itself. I actually played the amplifier as much as I played the guitar. That's how we ended up there.
• [00:05:00.20] ANDREW: Did you talk about just becoming a jazz band?
• [00:05:03.64] WAYNE KRAMER: No, because we couldn't play that well. I was a rock and roll kid. I could play three chords. I could play the dickens out of those three chords. But I didn't know anything about complex harmony or music theory or how to improvise through chord changes. I hadn't learned any of those things yet.
• [00:05:27.48] But we admired them as people. And we admired them as a lifestyle. And certainly, we heard what they were doing. We couldn't play that. But we were inspired by them and probably attached a great significance that wasn't actually meant to be there. But that's the way it is when you smoke a lot of marijuana and take acid and listen to the same record over and over and over again.
• [00:05:51.83] AMY: I was thinking about this last night. You weren't at the original rally 40 years ago. And I know that the rift between the MC5 and Sinclair is legendary. And I'm just kind of wondering, you obviously patched it up at some point with John. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, set the record straight on what happened.
• [00:06:10.50] WAYNE KRAMER: When someone gets ready to go to prison, prison is a really traumatic experience. I mean most people can't relate to it. And as well they shouldn't. It's an absolutely horrific experience.
• [00:06:27.44] And often times you want to blame somebody. You don't want to take the responsibility that you created this situation. And maybe you didn't.
• [00:06:41.66] But I think in the case of John's marijuana sentence and imprisonment, he was incredibly angry. And I think that he wanted to blame somebody. And I think, when that happens, oftentimes, you attack the people you're closest to.
• [00:07:08.00] And I think he's right in thinking that he was made the scapegoat for all that the MC5 represented, the fact that there's this rock band that's telling young girls to burn their brassieres and kids should go have sex and everyone should smoke marijuana and we should have no money and free everything for everybody. Well, there was a great resistance to these ideas. And teachers, parents, PTAs, prosecutors, lawyers, policemen, priests, people really opposed us.
• [00:07:45.42] And so in a lot of ways, John was made the scapegoat, that conviction. I mean had he been a mild mannered guy that no one had ever heard of maybe he wouldn't have got that sentence. But because he was up front about everything and everything we did was in the public eye so, in a lot of ways, John was the scapegoat for what me and my band were doing. And we were all in it together.
• [00:08:14.81] But he interpreted my attempt to have a conversation about what was I to do with the band should he go to prison. It was an eventuality that he couldn't face. And so when I tried to have the conversation with him, it became very awkward.
• [00:08:35.66] And he took the position that I was selling him out. And that the band was selling him out. And he was never in it for the money. He was always in it for the music.
• [00:08:48.02] And those are admirable principles. But it didn't change the reality that, if he went to prison, I still had to try to run a band. And I still had to pay for management. And I still wanted to contribute to John's defense.
• [00:09:04.29] And we did. We continued to play benefits for John's defense. And in fact, right after John was sent to prison, Fred Smith and I went to the Hill House and met with Leni. And we'd brought money with us to give her.
• [00:09:20.83] And we said, do you need money? And she said, no. We're going to be OK. We're fine. And we said, OK, well, if you need it, let us know. And we're here for you.
• [00:09:31.35] So even though he feels like we sold him out, we never sold him out. And we never stopped loving him. And we never stopped admiring him. But it's an unfortunate human emotional reaction to an absolutely horrific set of pressures.
• [00:09:54.35] And then the whole thing was played out in the press. I had written him a letter trying to explain how I felt. And he, of course, reacted bitterly and kind of a knee jerk reaction.
• [00:10:07.37] And it was really painful. It really hurt a lot. Because I always loved John. And I love him to this day. And he was always a great mentor of mine. But there was nothing I could do. I was powerless in the situation.
• [00:10:23.83] And then as times progressed and then the Freedom Rally concert came up. And Dave Sinclair wouldn't let the MC5 perform as a kind of way to stick it to the band. We're going to get you guys. We're going to fix you.
• [00:10:43.87] And these are human beings. And this is messy stuff. And I don't have any problem with any of it today. I understand it. And I can put myself in Dave's shoes. The MC5's off shooting heroin, driving sports cars. And John's in prison. It doesn't look good.
• [00:11:07.51] But the interesting thing was that my personal life went down the drain. And my professional life went down the drain. And I acquired a heroin habit then became involved in criminal activities and caught a federal narcotics traffic case.
• [00:11:30.61] And after John got out of prison, I went to John. Because I was worried about what was going to happen to me. And John was the only man that I knew that I trusted what he had to say. And I said, look, I've got this case. These agents are pressuring me. What do you think I should do?
• [00:11:49.02] And we talked. And it was like we were OK. And then I had to go to prison for about the same amount of time he did, two and 1/2 years. And when I came out of prison, it was like everything was OK between us.
• [00:12:05.02] Somehow, he had to go. And he had to do his time. And then I had to go and do my time. And then somehow that balanced the scales emotionally. I don't understand why it worked out that way.
• [00:12:18.56] But I know it did. Because when I got out, we re-upped immediately and resumed our friendship. And our friendship's been stronger than ever all these years since then.
• [00:12:30.40] But it was a very hard time. We're all under incredible pressure. And none of us knew how things were going to turn out and what direction things were going to go in. I think I understand what happened and why it happened.
• [00:12:47.36] I mean I felt those same feelings when they told me I was going to have to go to prison. Well, this ain't my fault. And this is somebody else. And I've wondered about that for the 30 years. Why did I have to go to prison? Why did John have to go to prison? And I have some ideas about those things now today. But that's what happened with that.
• [00:13:14.20] ANDREW: Can you talk about meeting John and how he became your manager, which happened pretty quickly after you meeting him, I think?
• [00:13:21.82] WAYNE KRAMER: Rob Tyner, the MC5 singer, had been seeing a woman that lived down by Wayne State. And she was kind of in the periphery of this Artists Workshop world. And he had started to attend these poetry readings.
• [00:13:40.47] And he would come back and tell me, man, you should see what's going on down there. They're beatniks. They're real beatniks. And they do poetry. And it's great. I said, really? He said, yeah, and this neighborhood is terrific. You can rent apartments really cheap. And nobody cares if you have long hair.
• [00:14:00.85] So I was 17. I left home. And I moved downtown. And I got one of those cheap apartments and had long hair and smoked marijuana and started getting a feel for the neighborhood and learning about this guy John Sinclair, who was, in fact, in DeHoCo, the Detroit House of Corrections, serving a six-month sentence for his second conviction on a marijuana charge.
• [00:14:27.74] And so we all heard that John Sinclair was coming home. He was coming home. He was going to be released. So everyone in the community put together this event at the Artists Workshop. And it was going to be at all day celebration. And dancers were dancing. And poets were reading poetry.
• [00:14:49.59] And the MC5, we said we would come and play. Because we had been playing for beatniks before. And we liked playing for beatniks. Because, first, they didn't ask us to play the top 10. If we just played good music, they liked it, which was a new experience for us being a teenage rock band.
• [00:15:06.78] Because most everywhere we tried to play, that's what they wanted to hear was whatever was being played on the radio. And we don't want to do that. We wanted our own songs being on the radio.
• [00:15:16.94] And we waited and waited and waited. And they kept putting us off and putting us off. And Charles Moore and his band played. And more poets read poetry. And more dancers danced. And it got later and later and later. And we waited around all day.
• [00:15:33.96] And finally, at 2:00 in the morning or some late hour, they finally said, OK, you guys can play. So we set up our gear. And we had these massive amplifiers, these gigantic VOX 100-watt amps. And we started rocking. And everybody's dancing. We're having a ball.
• [00:15:48.92] And Leni Sinclair came down and pulled the plug on us. And she just said she wasn't going to allow it. Because her husband had just come home from prison. And she didn't want to have the police come. And that's it. Get out. Stop it.
• [00:16:07.04] So I started reading the kinds of things the Artist Workshop was putting out and the things what John was saying. And he was being kind of dismissive about rock in general. He thought really, he was being kind of an elitist snob about the only real music is the blues and avant-garde jazz.
• [00:16:25.29] But I knew the blues and avant-garde jazz. I'm listening to that music, too. And I'm in a band. And he said, well, the Artists Workshop is a community. And I said, well, I live in the community.
• [00:16:35.89] And I think him and Tyner had an exchange in the press, a little letter writing battle. And then one day, I just went over to Sinclair's house. He lived in the castle there on the service drive of the expressway, the John C. Lodge.
• [00:16:56.41] And I just said, hi, I'm Wayne Kramer. And I got a band. And we live in the neighborhood here. And I'd like to know how we could work it out where maybe we could use the Artists Workshop to rehearse in. We need a place to rehearse.
• [00:17:07.69] And he said, well, come on in. Let's smoke a joint and talk about it. And we just found out we were way more alike than we were different. And that began a great friendship and a great kind of student teacher relationship. John's a little older than me. And he's certainly better educated than I am.
• [00:17:30.51] And we smoked a lot of marijuana together. And we talked about everything and everybody and how did things get the way they are and things that I only knew on a gut level that, yeah, the systems sucks. Yeah, everything sucks. I knew that. But I couldn't articulate it. I couldn't tell you why or how things became the way they were.
• [00:17:55.13] And John had an idea about those things. So I enjoyed his company. And I enjoyed his analysis and his understanding and his help in how I could get my band organized and how we would do things.
• [00:18:10.14] So you're right. It wasn't much time after that that he became a huge fan of the band, like our number one supporter. And then I think he finally realized that I was trying to manage the band myself. And it was impossible. And he knew that I needed help. And I think that's when he stepped up and said that he would manage the band.
• [00:18:33.39] AMY: So did you convince him that there was a reason to like rock? Or did he just finally realize that he had an opportunity here to manage a group and that they might be able to pull something off? Or did he lose his elitism?
• [00:18:47.66] WAYNE KRAMER: No, I don't think he did. But I think he heard in the MC5 that there was a possibility this band could actually break the mold, that this band was clearly listening to Sun Ra and listening to John Coltrane and Albert Ayler.
• [00:19:03.77] And then after I met him, I started learning even more. Because he had a just spectacular record collection. And I'd just go over to John's house and listen to records all day. And he would turn me on to, hey, but have you heard this, Heliocentric Worlds? Have you heard Bells?
• [00:19:21.85] So all these records, and they imprinted on me in a deeper way than music as it imprinted on me in the rest of my life. Studies have been done about this where music imprints on young people's brains at a certain, I think, during puberty, just after puberty, that it gets set up in your neural pathways on a different plane than, like I've heard a lot of music in the 50 years that I've been playing the guitar. But that music still affects me deeper.
• [00:19:55.89] ANDREW: Could you talk about when the MC5 decided to leave Detroit and come to Ann Arbor?
• [00:20:00.20] WAYNE KRAMER: Sure. We moved into, well, I forget the address. It was those series of structures that were on the corner of Warren and John C. Lodge. Sinclair was living up there for a while. Then he moved to another spot over on Second Avenue and Canfield or whatever the next block up is. There was another building there that he took over.
• [00:20:27.84] So the band moved into his place. And then we had what used to be the storefront for the Artists Workshop as our rehearsal hall downstairs. And Detroit was a very volatile and dangerous place in those days.
• [00:20:44.73] And we came in from a show one night. And the Committee to End the War in Vietnam office was below where we lived. And the right-wing, I suspect the John Birch Society, fascists had set the place on fire. We pulled up. And the fire department's putting the fire out.
• [00:21:05.70] And we had constant trouble with the Detroit Police Department. They knew who we were. So they were constantly harassing us and stop you on the street and pull you over and search you. We also had just kind around the way problems being in a very poor neighborhood, a high crime neighborhood. There was a raper who had raped a couple of the women in our sphere.
• [00:21:42.41] One day we were learning a new song. And we had the record player upstairs. But the band stuff was downstairs. And we were going up. We'd listen to the record. And then we'd come down. And we'd try to figure out how to play the tune. Let's go up and listen again. And someone forgot to lock the door. And when we came down, all the guitars were gone.
• [00:22:01.48] So then we knew thieves in the neighborhood knew that we were in there. So then we got new guitars. They broke in, stole the next guitars. Then we got another set of guitars. And they followed us to a gig and stole them again.
• [00:22:18.58] So between our van got fire bombed, the police, the rapist, and the thievery, and just the general dangerousness of life in Detroit, and we'd gone through the '67 rebellion in Detroit, we just decided we need to go to Ann Arbor where we'll be safe or safer anyway. It was just too hairy.
• [00:22:45.04] It stopped making sense. Having cheap rents and the laissez faire attitude in the neighborhood wasn't worth the pain and misery of it. It was scary. You didn't know what was going to happen next.
• [00:23:00.00] AMY: When you were in Ann Arbor, were you hoping that it would be your new home? Did it feel like home? Or did you miss Detroit? Was Detroit really home?
• [00:23:06.81] WAYNE KRAMER: No, I didn't miss it. I didn't miss it. I loved Ann Arbor. I thought we had arrived. And when we got to Ann Arbor, we had this big beautiful house. And that was right about the time that the band was being courted by some record companies.
• [00:23:27.96] So I felt like we were really making some progress. And we were starting to make money. And we were booked a lot. We performed regularly. So cash was coming in. We could pay for the big house and the 30 people that lived there. None of us made any money. But we had everything that we needed. So Ann Arbor was terrific for a good while, yeah.
• [00:23:56.10] ANDREW: Could you talk a little bit about the concerts in the park?
• [00:23:59.09] WAYNE KRAMER: The free concerts in the park were just an extension of the kinds of things that we did all the time. I mean our attitude, my attitude, is, if you're trying to win fans and create a movement, you've got to play. And so we would play anywhere anytime anyone would let us. I'm almost still that way.
• [00:24:24.96] And so when we figured out this idea of playing concerts in the park, we thought, well, this is terrific. We'll go over there, set up our gear, and start playing. And then people started coming. And it became a regular, I think we did them on Sundays. It was regular events. And they were great fun, just terrific.
• [00:24:44.30] AMY: Do you have a favorite memory of any one of those particular performances?
• [00:24:48.13] WAYNE KRAMER: Yeah, I have one. We were playing in the band shell. I think it's West Park. Is that West Park? And apparently there was the founder of the John Birch Society owned a home up on top of the hill. And he complained to the police about the profanity, "Kick Out the Jams, Mother Fuckers."
• [00:25:12.44] And so when the next week came, we heard about it. And the police were there. And John was talking to, the chief of police in Ann Arbor, in those days, with a guy named Eugene Staudenmaier.
• [00:25:27.04] And he was actually a good guy. He was a peace officer. He came over to our house and introduced himself. And he wasn't in uniform. And you could smell the marijuana.
• [00:25:38.46] And he said, I don't care what you guys are doing. He wanted to meet us. He wanted to see who we were, were we really there to start a violent revolution, what was our story. And he liked us. And we liked him.
• [00:25:54.69] So Lieutenant Staudenmaier was at the park that day. And he was sitting with John. They were watching the concert up on the hill. And I got it into my mind to push it too far.
• [00:26:14.03] So when we did "Kick Out the Jams," I made the crowd say, kick out the jams, mother fucker not once, twice, three times while John's sitting there with Lieutenant Staudenmaier. And then we played the tune. And I thought, oh, it's a great concert, power to the people.
• [00:26:38.36] And when I got with John later, he was furious with me. You've never seen John mad. His face gets red. And his voice goes up by octave. And he was furious.
• [00:26:51.27] He said, I'm sitting there with the mother fucker. And you're saying that over and over again. What are you doing? I hate to take joy in John's misery. But it's one of my better memories of that.
• [00:27:11.00] ANDREW: So what was your story? Were you there to incite a violent revolution?
• [00:27:16.51] WAYNE KRAMER: Well, what were we in Ann Arbor to incite a violent revolution? We had some romantic ideas about what violent revolution meant. We were frustrated as young people in America.
• [00:27:38.24] And we were in agreement as a generation that the direction the country was going in was wrong, that the war was wrong, that the way people of color were treated was wrong, that the marijuana laws were wrong, that Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were wrong. It was all wrong. And we rejected it.
• [00:28:01.32] So the White Panther Party became a way for us to voice our frustration, to align ourselves with the Black Panther Party, to take a militant stance, to buy guns, to embrace Malcolm X's thinking that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. These are all dangerous and romantic ideas.
• [00:28:25.46] And I was a young guy. And I bought into it. And I thought this was exciting. But it was all fantasy. It was all from growing up watching television where the good guys and the bad guys shoot it out. You go shoo. And the guy goes, oh, and he winged me. It's not reality.
• [00:28:50.76] And it was a mistake. It was a mistake we made. It was a mistake I made. And I don't know any other ways to explain it, except to say that it was a crackpot idea. But we didn't know any better.
• [00:29:08.09] We didn't know what it really meant when you embrace the symbol of violence and the symbol of the gun and the bomb, that you can't control the outcome, and that will generate a reaction in the authorities, and believe me, they have way more guns and bombs and aircraft carriers, and that the whole idea of using violence as a way to make a positive political change is absurd.
• [00:29:40.36] And I've discussed this at length with John and Pun and even my good friend Mark Rudd from the Weather Underground. And Mark told me that the Cubans told the Weather Underground to disassociate from violence. The Vietnamese said, don't go with violence. Go with a mass nonviolent people's movement.
• [00:30:05.23] Even the Black Panther Party said, do not embrace violence. We're going with the free breakfast program. That's sustainable. Because what violence got the Black Panthers was, of course, death squads. In cities all across America, Panthers were murdered.
• [00:30:20.45] And it took a while for me to see the reality that this is not a joke. The police aren't joking when you talk about guns and bombs. They're a paramilitary organization. And they're militarized. And they're trained in weapons and tactics.
• [00:30:43.00] And real people get killed. You get really dead. And you get really shot. And you get really sent to prison. And these were things that we didn't fully grasp.
• [00:30:56.29] So on one hand, we talked a good game. But when you look at the history of political change and revolution and the history of social movements and social progress, violence, sometimes it happens. Sometimes I guess you could say it's necessary.
• [00:31:21.61] But as a strategy, it's a nonstarter. It'll blow up in your face. And that's what it did. Because we ended up discrediting a legitimate anti-war movement. We ended up doing the FBI's work for them. A legitimate civil rights movement, we discredited them.
• [00:31:45.23] The power in Martin Luther King was nonviolence. How do you fight nonviolence? Power has to make a concession to that. Violence they can deal with.
• [00:31:56.45] ANDREW: Did you and the band come to that realization concurrently with the White Panther Party coming to that realization? Because they came to that realization at some point, too. That's when the Rainbow People's Party name change happened. Was that all part of what was happening in that community? Or did you all get there at different times?
• [00:32:13.97] WAYNE KRAMER: I think we got there at different times. Because when John went to prison, we were purged from the White Panther Party. We were persona non grata.
• [00:32:26.58] And it took a while for us to, by us I mean me, Tyner, Smith, we were the ones that really were interested in these things, our rhythm section guys didn't care too much about it, but to really develop our own political thinking, our own ideologies, and our own analysis and to finally be able to stand on our own feet and not have to have John explain things anymore but to say, you know what, we're not part of a violent revolution.
• [00:33:02.18] If you're going to use violence, our thinking was, if you figure more than half the people in the world are going to disagree with you and you're embracing violence, then you got to kill more than half the people in the world. And I said this to a German, a militant German student, once in Germany. And he turned to me. And he said, no, we think only some thousands will be necessary.
• [00:33:28.02] So that's when I said buy this man another beer. We're not going to talk about this anymore with you. You're out of your mind. They ended up being Baader-Meinhofs.
• [00:33:39.20] See the difference between us and them is we went up to the edge, looked over. And we stepped back. Baader-Meinhof and many of the Red Army Faction and other groups around the world, they went all the way over the edge.
• [00:33:55.23] ANDREW: Do you feel that, at this point now 40 years later, that the legacy of the MC5 is able to be about the music and has been able to free itself from that rhetoric, that was really just rhetoric at the time, and now, when people think of the MC5, it's the music that they are being turned on to?
• [00:34:16.10] WAYNE KRAMER: No, I don't think you can separate it. I think that the context that the music emerged out of, the industrial world of Detroit, is part and parcel of the music itself. And I think the anger and the frustration of the '60's is also part of that music.
• [00:34:42.23] I mean, if I think about what was the source of the passion that made me want to play that guitar with more velocity, with more power, with more authority, I would put it into my sense of outrage, my militancy at seeing the Detroit police beat kids mercilessly with no justifiable reason.
• [00:35:13.77] I mean when we played the Love-In at Belle Isle and I watched Detroit police officers play polo with kids heads on horseback, riding by going thwack, hippy kids who weren't doing nothing, they were just there to have fun at a free concert, and the police, it was a police riot, and then to live through the rebellion in '67 and see people murdered, see the police just go on a blood rampage for a week, you start to wonder what's going on.
• [00:35:51.41] And it's infuriating. It challenges your sense of what's right. And how can you sit still? How can you not have a feeling about that? At least, I can't.
• [00:36:04.20] So yeah, I don't think you can separate it. I like that people are interested in the music. But I think you can't separate the musician from the world. You can't take Charlie Parker out of 52nd Street. It's all part and parcel.
• [00:36:22.26] AMY: At the same time, though, when we talked with Brett Callwood, he was, I'm pretty sure it was you, he was saying you didn't like that a lot of people thought of the MC5 as protopunk or the term didn't really sit with you, whereas, that spirit of the politics and the music is together in that particular idea. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about that.
• [00:36:44.12] WAYNE KRAMER: Really it's a semantic issue. Originally, when I first heard about this punk rock movement, I was in prison. And punk meant something different then. Punk was the kind of guy that they would knock down and make your girlfriend or have you washing their socks. I mean that was a term of great derision. I mean those were fighting words. They could be killing words in prison.
• [00:37:09.75] So when I would read magazines about these new bands like The Clash and The Ramones and they love the MC5 and they play punk music, I would rip them up and flush them down the toilet. Because I didn't want anyone to associate me with this punk thing just because of the environment.
• [00:37:28.43] Punk, it has another meaning coming from my upbringing in Lincoln Park and growing up in Detroit. If two kids were in a schoolyard and one called the other one a punk, then you're probably going to have a fight.
• [00:37:42.13] So it wasn't until after I got out of prison and really had a chance to see what the punk movement was and that it was the next generation demanding their own efficacy, fighting for their own voice, that I realized, well, this is just part of the same thing we did, that the jazz guys did before us, that the big bands did before the marching bands, which Beethoven did, which Picasso did, which every new generation has to demand its own voice.
• [00:38:20.28] And so in that sense, of course, I'm a punk. I'll always be a punk in that sense. But in the old school meaning of the word, that was the only problem I ever had with it.
• [00:38:36.44] ANDREW: Could you talk about what it was like to have the responsibility of being the economic engine for 30 people? Because, for a while there, the MC5 was the only thing bringing any kind of money into those Hill Street houses and really keeping those people fed and clothed. Did you feel that sense of responsibility that we've got to get out there and we've got to make some money because these people are counting on us?
• [00:38:58.82] WAYNE KRAMER: No, I didn't have any sense of it whatsoever. All I knew was that I was in my band, that I was getting to play more and more for bigger crowds, and everything was going according to my grandiose plots and schemes for my future. And the fact that we were buying food for 30 people was a great idea as far as I was concerned.
• [00:39:24.36] I didn't feel any weight from that whatsoever probably part of my youthful egoism that I just wasn't concerned with those kinds of issues. I was concerned with the music and the band and my own satisfactions and my own accomplishments. I was completely self-obsessed I'm still self-obsessed.
• [00:39:54.06] ANDREW: Did John and David do that on purpose? Do they keep that stuff from you so that you guys could focus on the band and the music and not have to worry about any of the rest of that so you could focus on what you were doing?
• [00:40:04.52] WAYNE KRAMER: Well, yeah, but I don't think there was anything sinister to it.
• [00:40:07.99] ANDREW: No, that's not what I meant at all so you wouldn't have to worry about it.
• [00:40:11.02] WAYNE KRAMER: David didn't have anything to do with the MC5. He just was John's brother and our friend and part of the community. But I think John at least understood that someone needed to collect the money. Somebody needed to put it in the bank. Somebody needed to write checks.
• [00:40:27.78] These were all things beyond me. I was about chasing girls and being in my band and causing a disturbance. I was on the rabble rousing end of the deal.
• [00:40:42.07] AMY: I wanted to show you this. We pulled it out of our exhibit. Does it look familiar? This is a, I take it, a statement from the band. Each member got to write answers to the question.
• [00:40:52.71] WAYNE KRAMER: Oh, this is for the fan club.
• [00:40:54.10] AMY: Your religion is Church of Zenta.
• [00:40:57.02] WAYNE KRAMER: Yeah.
• [00:40:58.89] AMY: Is it still?
• [00:41:00.36] WAYNE KRAMER: No, I don't subscribe to any organized or disorganized religions. I'm highly critical and suspect of religions.
• [00:41:10.75] AMY: And I like how it says the type of girl you like, natural and freaky.
• [00:41:13.86] WAYNE KRAMER: Well, yeah. Tell my wife about that. She fits. She's natural. She's a freak.
• [00:41:22.41] AMY: Your favorite entertainers, Archie Shepp, The Who, you still talk about The Who as [INAUDIBLE].
• [00:41:26.65] WAYNE KRAMER: Yeah.
• [00:41:27.05] AMY: So there you go.
• [00:41:27.67] WAYNE KRAMER: And I still love Archie Shepp and John Coltrane and The Fugees. I'm 5'10", 155 pounds. I haven't seen those days in a while. This is terrific. Oh, my sister was 16. So I was 20. She's four years younger than me. I was 20 years old when I did this.
• [00:41:48.79] Yeah, I see that footage, that YouTube footage. And I see this ebullient young guy dancing around, playing his guitar. And I think he has no idea what's ahead for him.
• [00:42:06.07] There's a thing that happens with young people if they achieve recognition on a large scale. It inflates their ego. They start to think that they're right about everything. And there's kind of an infallibility that sets in. And in a way it's intoxicating.
• [00:42:34.08] If I drink a glass of vodka, I know I'm going to be intoxicated. But if I work real hard and I start to achieve some things in the world, I don't necessarily know that I'm intoxicated. But you are. It's an ego feeding proposition.
• [00:42:49.95] And everyone you see smiles when they see you coming. And girls sleep with you. And people give you presents. And they laugh at your jokes. And everyone sucks up to you.
• [00:43:01.75] But you don't know what's going on. You just think, at least me, I mean I just thought that everything's going the way I planned it to go. This is the way I meant for everything to work out. And I had a plan. And everything worked until it didn't work anymore.
• [00:43:20.32] And it's not a unique scenario. You see it over and over in music and in the arts, in particular, where people achieve international recognition at an early age. And then life gets complicated. It's very hard to sustain a career in the competitive world of the amusement industry.
• [00:43:50.25] And especially in my case, where the MC5 met so much resistance, we not only had the resistance from the entertainment industry itself that we were too much trouble but from the police, the FBI. And so we were effectively crushed out of the game. But that happens to most bands anyway.
• [00:44:19.31] Most bands, there's an arc to it. And you see them come. And you see them go. Mostly, you see them go. And there's very few bands that sustain over decades. There's The Who and Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones. And there aren't very many that, U2. But they all had people die.
• [00:44:42.79] And you know the old adage that the center never holds is never more true than in bands, that however things are today, they're not going to be like this in five years. Anytime artists get together for a common purpose, they band together and put their energies together, they can achieve a great deal.
• [00:45:06.12] I mean, look, the Nazis were about 15 people. And they almost took over the whole world. The Neocons are probably 10 people. And they've created the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've destroyed the economy.
• [00:45:23.98] So if you get a few people together, they want to do something, they can generally accomplish it. And most bands do. But things don't stay the same.
• [00:45:31.67] So when I was faced with the prospects of the band doesn't exist anymore, all the dreams of the '60's, all the promise, the potential, none of it seemed to be working out. John had gone to prison. And in my case, that's where the wonderful pain killing properties of Jack Daniels and heroin enter the picture.
• [00:45:58.27] And it's not unique to me. I mean it happens over and over and over again. It's amazing how predictable it is. And of course, once you acquire a drug addiction and alcoholism, they bring with them their own sets of problems.
• [00:46:17.39] And so now you can't contend with your career activities. Because you're too busy getting high. Or least I was too busy getting high. And things go from bad to worse. So if I had to do over again, I would have done a few things differently.
• [00:46:34.17] But I had nothing to prepare me for that. And I had no community around me once the band broke up. That was my community. That was my way I made money. Those were my friends.
• [00:46:45.12] And we live in a world of our relationships with other people. So when those relationships ended, then I'm on my own. And I made decisions out of fear and out of desperation. And when people are in desperate situations, they do desperate things. And I made really unwise decisions.
• [00:47:08.44] And it got good to me. I found out there was a way to achieve some status by being bad and that there was a whole culture, this underworld culture, where it's a reverse culture, where good is bad and bad is good, like hurting somebody is considered good. And robbing somebody is considered good. And scamming somebody is considered good.
• [00:47:36.47] And I identified with it. And I went with it. And I embraced it. And I wasn't very good at it. And it all blew up in my face. And it ended up with me with multiple arrests and convictions and, finally, a federal prison term. So there were a lot of things I would have done differently if I could travel back in time.
• [00:48:01.12] But today I can tell you that, for a long time, I thought I'd ruined my life. I'd wasted my life. And I'd wasted 30 years being stoned in a bag of heroin and a bottle of vodka. But I was able to find a way to live where drinking and drugging wasn't necessary. And I became part of another community of people just like me.
• [00:48:36.61] And I find out that the things that I thought were me at my worst are the most valuable things that I have. Because if I talk to specifically another musician who's going through the kinds of things that I went through, I can say the one thing that nobody else can say to him or her.
• [00:48:58.36] The rabbi can't say it. The therapist can't say it. And the priest can't say it. And his mother can't say it. His friends might not be able to say it. But I can say it.
• [00:49:08.64] I know how he feels. Because I did what he's doing. I've been there. I've done that. I can connect with him.
• [00:49:16.67] All that that I did wrong ends up being the best gift I have to help somebody else. Because part of how I can find this way to live without drinking and drugging is I have to stop being self-obsessed. And I have to start doing something for somebody else, start thinking about somebody else.
• [00:49:40.01] And it's cut across my whole life. I learned this idea of being of service to my fellows. And then I look back to my prison experience. And I realize that I'm in a unique position that I have one foot in prison still and one foot in music. And maybe I could be a bridge to connect those two worlds.
• [00:50:02.93] So I've formed a group with Billy Bragg. And it's called Jail Guitar Doors. And we find people that work in prisons that are willing to use music as rehabilitation. And we provide them with guitars. And we've been in to about eight states' prison systems so far and the federal prison system.
• [00:50:23.26] And it's the best stuff I do, delivering guitars and talking to prisoners. Because I feel like half the time they're the only people that really understand what I'm talking about. Because I know these guys. I am those guys.
• [00:50:38.55] And if they can use a guitar to find a way to express complex feelings that they can't do otherwise, if they can find a way to tell their story in a nonconfrontational way, process their problems in a nonconfrontational way, then I'm cleaning up a little bit of the mess I made. My goal is to leave the place a little nicer than I found it.
• [00:51:10.62] AMY: To learn more about Wayne Kramer, visit freeingjohnsinclair.org.
• [00:51:17.45] ANDREW: AADL Talks to Wayne Kramer has been a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.