MC-5 LIBRARY

| INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES | TESTIMONIALS |

January 1969 MC5 by Alain Dister - 1977
The 5 plays in Buffalo the last evening of these eventful days, at first organized for LEMAR, movement to legalize marijuana, but soon implied in student fight. Their concert hall: a sport place stuffed with a very young audience
read
Wayne Kramer interview by Woody 'Mighty High' - 1994
"When is somebody going to do something about the MC5?..... "What was it like having The Man put you in the slammer?".... Well, it made a believer out of me....
read
Real Cool Time by Chris Hodenfield - 1969
MC5 and the Stooges & David Peel & Mollock at the Pavilion, Flushing Meadow, NY, 9/1969 - Concert report
read
Dave Marsh on The MC5 - M.C.Five Gateway - 2000
This Q/A was conducted via email someday in 2000. "Ultraveteran rock critic/journalist/biographer" Dave Marsh was patient and kind enough to enlighten some points of history as the MC5 Gateway was about to tell the story of the MC5 - still an untold story at that time
read
Michael Davis From The MC5 by Eric Lorey - 1986
From the mid-60's to the early 70's, the Motor City 5 rampaged through the musical world like a locomotive gone wild. Their blistering assault of ideas and music, their freshness, substance, and drive have never been equalled.
read
 
Dennis Frawley, Bob Rudnick, Kokaine Karma & the MC5 - 2007
After the MC5 released their second 7" Looking at you b/w Borderline in 1968, manager "John Sinclair, on a trip east to hustle up work for the band, took the record to East Village Other (the most influencial and widely read paper served by the web ... and it was reprinting some of the MC5's exploits) columnists Bob Rudnick and Dennis Frawley . . .
read
     
 
WHITE PANTHERS' Total Assault On The Culture by Jeff A.Hale - 2001
The White Panther Party (WPP) of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan was a radical counterculture group which became a major target for the FBI's counter-intelligence (or "COINTELPRO") program between 1968 and 1971 . . .
read
     
 
Presentation of the film GOLD (1968-72) featuring MC5's original soundtrack
In early February 1972, the MC5 were in England for the second time to play gigs promoted by the Buffalo Agency and founder of Radio Caroline and MC5's manager Ronan O'Rahilly. MC5's Michael Davis missed the very first date at the London School of Economics in London because Airport security in Detroit would not let him board his plane for England. He quit the band four gigs later . . .
look & listen
     
 
MC5 by Richard Goldstein - The MC5 is a whole thing by John Sinclair - Brother John Sinclair in Darkest America by Dean Latimer - 1970
from paperback magazine COUNTDOWN, an associate member of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) - First printing in Feb.1970 by the New American Library
read
     
 
MC5 : Kickin' out the jams by James Thompson - 2000
Formed in about 1965, the Motor City Five - soon shortened to MC5 - began as yet another British Invasion-inspired teen combo, playing at local teen dances and rehearsing in parents' homes in and around Lincoln Park, in the Downriver suburbs of Detroit. . . .
read
     
A Testimonial From Our Sisters - The Censored Story Of MC5 Groupies - THE HIGHLAND PARK STOMPERS - 2004
THE MC5 HAD, IN ITS HEYDAY, A LEGENDARY SQUADRON OF GROUPIES WHO LIVED, BREATHED AND OTHERWISE SPENT A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF LIFE ON EARTH WORSHIPPING THE BAND. CHIEF AMONG THEM WERE THE LOCAL LEGENDS, THE HIGHLAND PARK STOMPERS . . .
read
     
ROCKBOMB: MC 5 ! in RUISSALO , FINLAND - 1972
This years greatest surprise at Ruisrock was that, as a substitute for Humble Pie, they had gotten hold of the MC 5. Believe it or not, but only a week earlier the very same American quintet were driven off stage in London, in the middle of their performance . 
read
     
MC5 PROBLEM BY CAROLINE BOUCHER - 1970
THE MC5 are a very good, very determined rock band. In the old days when people weren't too bothered about listening to them, they used to leap off the stage and blow a saxophone in people's ears, or throw money at the audience - anything to get a reaction .
read
     
ROB TYNER INTERVIEW BY JOHN SINCLAIR - 1967
John Sinclair: Let's talk about the music.... Robin Tyner: Well, as I see it, the real music scene in Detroit is doing all right. But the whole - the population of all the musicians - and there's an awful lot of young musicians in town - the percentage of these people who are really into it is so low that you never get to hear any of it...
read
     
LED ZEPPELIN via The MC5, JOHNNY WINTER, BIKERS vs POLICE & SQUIRMING FEMALES OCTOBER 25, 1969 at Narragansett's First Tribal Rock Festival Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts BY TOM BRINKMANN - 2003
There was no place to see professional, big name rock acts in Concord, New Hampshire in 1969, so at the time my only experience had been with Jr. High and YMCA dances at which friend's bands usually played. Being 14 and just beginning to start many years of experimenting with and abusing marijuana and alcohol, I thought myself quite the little hippie, not to mention radical...
read
     
ROCK & ROLL DOPE #5 BY JOHN SINCLAIR - 1968
Poet-MC5 manager John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police, the Oakland County Sheriff's Department, and the Michigan State Police while performing at a teen-club in Oakland County last Tuesday, July 23rd...
read
     
 
THE MC5 NOW:A BRIEF MUSE BY IAN FINES - 2003
What has become of the MC5 legacy? is some bitch from Friends or other tv crap show going to be the official band rep of the day? a hipster thing is it? reduced to a name, label listed off, in reference to: neo-proto (fake) garage rockers. yeah....
read
     
ROCK & ROLL DOPE #4 BY JOHN SINCLAIR - 1968
In the past two weeks since the last issue of this paper a bunch of new developments have taken place: Almost every job for the MC5 brings a new and different creep scene into being. At a Wednesday night job in Tecumseh, Michigan, at the local teen center, guitarist Wayne Kramer ripped a pair of pants early in the second set . . .
read
     
ROCK & ROLL DOPE #3 BY JOHN SINCLAIR - 1968
I promised you when I started this column that I'd take you behind the scenes in the rock and roll industry so you can see what your bands have to go through just to be able to do their thing on stage, and ever since I said that so many weird things have been going on that I hardly know where to start. But the Grande Ballroom scene last Sunday was probably the weirdest of all . . .
read
     
ROCK & ROLL DOPE #2 BY JOHN SINCLAIR - 1968
A strange polarization (or maybe it's a natural one) seems to be happening with rock and roll fans right now, with white teen-age audiences turning toward either total freek scenes or greasy reactionary hostility when confronted with the revolutionary guerrilla tactics of the MC5 . . .
read
     
 
MC5's MICHAEL DAVIS' GEAR - 2003
"I never saw equipment destroyed the way they destroyed it. I mean they really did it right. No doubt about it - the best equipment destroyers in rock'n'roll history." JON LANDAU
read
     
FUSION INTERVIEW : JON LANDAU BY ROBERT SOMMA
- FUSION - 1970
I had met Danny [Fields] and eventually, after meeting him, he invited me down to Elektra and I met Jac Holzman and at that time, which was in '67 or so, Jac offered me a job. He'd offer me a gig training me as a producer on the basis of some letters I had sent to Elektra...

read

PRINTABLE FORM (RTF file)printable RTF file

     
KICK OUT THE JAMS BY RICHARD GOLDSTEIN - THE VILLAGE VOICE - 1968
Detroit may have gone Humphrey, but it's Nixon country - a vast, gray flatbed gone dour with the resignation of an industrial spa. The streets are straight, the houses frame, and the people - well, the best one can say is that they form a city of rank and file. It's hard to guess whether the giant tire which hovers over the airport expressway is someone's idea of an L.A. joke, or an authentic religious symbol. At very least, that plaster imitation of a rubber wheel is the totem of Detroit...
read
     
 
GRANDE BALLROOM - MC5 PROGRAMME - 1968
Programme for "an evening recital of new music" as performed by Detroit's own MC5 at the Grande Ballroom, May 10 & 11, 1968 ...
read
     
 
MC5 BIOGRAPHY - 2003
Michael Davis-bass, Wayne Kramer-guitar, Fred ‘sonic’ Smith-guitar, Dennis Thompson-drums, and Rob Tyner-vocals are the MC5. Together, they were the hardcore of late-60s musical revolution in the American Midwest. In the fall of 1965, they create an explosive electric music that will put them in the forefront of the radical scene in their native Detroit...
read
     
FROM DETROIT INNER CITY BLUES TO ZEN AND THE ART OF THE STUDIO: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE MC 5'S WAYNE KRAMER BY DAVID ENSMINGER - LEFT OF THE DIAL - 2001
So you’re working with David Was again? Yeah, it’s that kind of thing. Sometimes I think, at least on a couple of songs, they’re too linear, and I need to chop them up into parts and put them together, like more of a William S. Burroughs cut-up technique. Sometimes I happen to go in a narrative, and I want to break that up...
read
     
RIOTS I HAVE KOWN AND LOVED BY WAYNE KRAMER
LEFT OF THE DIAL - 2002

Usually, when the band stops playing and the mob doesn’t have any-thing to focus on, the riot starts. At least that’s the way it generally went down with my band: The MC5. ...
read
     
ROCK AND ROLL REVIVAL BY DENNIS FRAWLEY - THE FIFTH ESTATE - 1969
Detroit's 1st Rock and Roll Revival held Memorial Day weekend at the Fairgrounds significantly began the summer's slew of pop festivals across the country. The actual attendance is unknown but it must have drawn at least 25-30,000 together for the two days of rock and roll?...
read
     
 
MC5 LIVE RECORDINGS - NOTES AND CRITICS
BY AARON DUCHAN - 2002

Aaron Duchan discusses the sound of the MC5 Live recordings and makes relevant observations on the three original reviews of the MC5 albums... what you ever wanted to hear about those rants that never treated the MC5 justly - did they even intend to for that matter?...
read
     
 
67 STEERING COMMITTEE- 1967
67 Steering Committe was presented in January, 1967 by John Sinclair, Gary Grimshaw, Emil Bacilla, Rob Tyner, Allen Van Newkirk (Guerrilla newspaper) and Jim Semark ( Artists' Workshop) as a first attempt to bring together newspaper columnists, musicians and other artists so that they would be in an effective position of strengh in the "hip" community of Detroit - a brief episode that ended one month later, when John and Leni Sinclair and G.Grimshaw formed Trans-Love Energies Unlimited...
read
     
MOTOR CITY MADNESS BY ART JOHNSON - 1969
"I'm a businessman now," John Sinclair would say in his hawking farmer's baritone, and we'd all guffaw. Ex-convict, three-time loser, beatnik days poet and jazz critic, Sinclair had taken to hanging around with Rob Tyner and his grizzly Motor City Five. Coming home late at night from the Fifth Estate office back in '68, i could hear the Five blasting the primitive atonality into the glass-littered streets outside what was then their home, the Artist's Workshop. Their only fans were greasy bike outlaws and fugitive dope addicts....
read
     
PAT BURROWS : AN INTERVIEW WITH THE ORIGINAL MC5 BASSPLAYER BY KEN SHIMAMOTO - 2002
When Wayne Kramer played Dallas in July 2002, he dedicated the show to "all bassplayers, past, present, and future" (in the weeks surrounding the start of the "Adult World" tour, Dee Dee Ramone, John Entwistle, and Ray Brown had all left the planet), then introduced a slight, grey-haired man standing near the stage as Pat Burrows, the original bassplayer from the MC5...
read
     
THE MC5 AT UNGANO'S, NYC BY FRED KIRBY - BILLBOARD - 1969 AND BY HUBERT SAAL - NEWSWEEK - 1969
NEW YORK - Ungano's vibrated with excitement and sound on Tuesday (6) as the MC5 opened a three - night stand. The Detroit quintet overpowered its material to the delight of the large audience. Rhythms were strong; the sound was powerful. They're clearly one of the most exciting acts around...
read
     
KICKING THE GREAT NECK JAMS BY WILLIAM ARONSTEIN - CHANGES - 1969
The MC5 is the most perfect example of the modern guerrilla band, radically altering American culture with no-nonsense, rock-hard rock. The band is totally committed to the nation's youth. Out of all of the nation's bands, the MC5 is one of the very few who will perform at a high school even though there is more money in a club...
read
     
KICK OUT THE JAMS BY CHRISTOPHER STIGLIANO - 2002
I first bought a copy of the MC5's debut platter at a time when the avant punk movement that spawned more than a few groups influenced by the Five's rebel rock were beginning to pop up across the planet. Prior to this time I never knew they existed...
read
     
HUMAN BEING LAWNMOWER BY KEN SHIMAMOTO - 2002
I was just looking at my review of Bro. Wayne Kramer's reished "Hard Stuff" and I musta been outta my fuckin' mind when I wrote it...that album definitely rates five Rolling Rocks if anything does...
read
     
MC5 REVISITED BY ANDERS RODER - 2002
If you LISTEN to the MC5 you'll soon know that this is no ordinary rock band that you are listening to. MC5 came on with an unprecedented approach to what had hitherto been unheard of in rock. Down home gutsy and loud rock'n'roll that was not afraid to embrace the more arty side of music combining the elements with passion and intelligence and a literate approach. Now 30 years down the road the music of the MC5 seems as fresh as then...
read
     
MC5: THE BOOTLEG LEGACY BY KEN SHIMAMOTO - 2001
The MC5's recorded legacy is a problematic one. All three official albums came with built-in flaws. The band felt betrayed when Elektra wouldn't allow them to re-record the exciting but flawed "Kick Out the Jams" performances...
read
     
MC-5 IN SAN FRANCISCO BY ART JOHNSON - 1969
SAN FRANCISCO - The MC5 have blasted their way out of the grease pits of FoMoCo city, resolved their feud with the Motherfuckers of New York's lower east side, and wound up in the San Francisco jailhouse after a near street fight with a squad of TACs...
read
     
TEEN OUTRAGE IN CROYDON BY CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY - 1972
The gig was chronically under-advertised, and there was every reason to doubt that any significant proportion of the audience knew who the MC5 were.
'well, if they don't know who we are now, they sure as hell will when we're through', said singer Rob Tyner and took another slug at the band's bottle of Old Grandad. It takes quite a lot to shake up a band that's been together seven years...
read
     
 
HAD THE HORNS OF THE HUNS EVER HAD NOISE TO COMPARE? BY NORMAN MAILER - 1968 "PLAYING GUTS BALL" BY CHARLES E REISEN - 2003
"...Lincoln Park on a Sunday afternoon in summer . . . the traffic of the tourists and the curious was great; one had to leave the car six blocks away. Curiosity was contained, however, in the family automobile: the burghers did not come to the park. Young tourists and cruisers were there in number..."
read
     
 
GARY GRIMSHAW ON THE MC5 - 2001
Lincoln Park, Michigan is a lower-middle class "bedroom" suburb of Detroit populated by factory workers in the nearby car assembly lines, steel mills and chemical complexes. It has no industry of its own, unless you count the big cheap liquour warehouse at the north-west corner.
read
     
MC5 LIVE AT BEAT FORUM NOV.23 1972, GLADSAXE, DENMARK BY ANDERS RODER - 2001
"Around 1000 people attended the concert held by Beat Forum in Hoeje Gladsaxe salen also known as The Kennedy Gym. The doors opened at 7.30 pm. Admission was Danish Kroner (DK KR) 7,- (US$ 0.85). The announced support band "Day of Phoenix" had dissolved and had therefore been replaced by the Danish psychedelic band "Alrune Rod"..."
read
     
MC-5 AT THE "STRAIGHT THEATER"
STORY BY
MIKE WALTER - 1969
"We had never heard of the MC5 before the Straight Theater gig. After that one night we never forgot them. I was a roadie for Clover at the time and was one of the first to arrive to set-up the equipment for the night. The MC5's roadies were already there setting up a huge wall of Marshall amps on the rear of the stage..."
read
     
 
1968 ELEKTRA FACT SHEET
"The following fact sheet was made up by Elektra (They're now with Atlantic). They ask the questions and the answers are supplied by Wayne Kramer, guitar player for the MC5.
Real Name : Wayne Kramer Birthplace : Detroit, Michigan..."
read
     
FORMER DJ AT WKNR IN DETROIT JERRY GODDWIN RECALLS - 2001
"As a DJ at WKNR-AM in Detroit in '65 I did regular "record hops" on a weekly basis. I used a band at that time called "Jack and the Misfits." When that band broke up I then picked up "The Motor City Five"..."
read
     
MC5 INTERVIEW BY NICK KENT - FRENDZ MAGAZINE - 1972
"NICK: Firstly, why the move to Europe?

WAYNE: Basically there are some people we want to work with over here like Ronan O'Rahilly, we have a few projects going with him..."
read
     
"ROUGH TRADE FROM VENUS" BY CHRIS HODENFIELD - STRANGE DAYS MAGAZINE - 1970
"WAYNE KRAMER HAD BEEN DRINKING. Dennis Thompson, the drummer, was leaning against the wall of the hall in the Marquee, and Fred Smith the guitar came up and told him. After a minute's conference, they decided he'd be all right to go on that night..."
read
     
EXCERPTS FROM PETER CAVANAUGH'S BOOK "LOCAL D.J." "I had seen the band initially at Delta College outside the Tri-City airport near Saginaw in late January. I worked with them for the first time at the "Foxy Lady" in Bay City a few months later. The club had a capacity for eight hundred. Twelve hundred were packed inside. Another five hundred were turned away..."
read
     
MC-5 INTERVIEW BY DAVID G.WALLEY - JAZZ&POP MAGAZINE - 1969
"This interview took place in the New York apartment of the MC5's press agent Danny Fields, the day after the Detroit band signed their new contract with Atlantic Records. Present for the MC5 were Rob Tyner, Wayne Kramer, Fred Smith, Dennis Thompson, Michael Davis and Brother J.C. Crawford..."
read
     

* MC5 Concert Posters * Lyrics * Links & Sources * Guestbook *

* Discography * Album Reviews * Miscellaneous * MC5 Concert Dates *

* Press Releases * Timeline * Updates * Gallery *

* MC5 Gateway * Legends Of The MC5 * MC5 Filmed Material (coming soon) *

 
 

* LOCAL DJ * A Rock'n'Roll History "Pioneering the Evolution of Rock'n'Roll Radio. Launching the Careers of BOB SEGER, TED NUGENT, ALICE COOPER, MC5, STOOGES and Dozens More."
by Peter C.Cavanaugh
    [ E X C E R P T ]

* MOTHER'S AND OTHERS
The Rocknroll History of Romeo, Michigan
(52 pages)

* ROCKIN' AT THE LIMBERLOST (32 pages)

by David McLaughlin
PO Box 242, Lakeville, MI 48065-0242