MC5: Dope, Guns, and F***ing in the Streets

The stories about the MC5 are insane. Their music soundtrack, The Violence of Multiple 1960s riots, they were the only band to perform at the infamous protest outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Their home was raided by cops, government officials clocked their subversive career moves, and a U.S. Army tank was once deployed to intimidate the group and bring them into custody. Their manager, Johnson Claire, aligned the band with the Black Panthers and openly subscribed to a revolutionary ethos of rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets. The MC5's politics scared the shit out of mainstream white America, as did their music. Great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melodron, called Crock Rock MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. And why would I play you that specific slice of "take a sad song and make it better" "cheese" could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America, on October 30, 1968. And that was the day the MC5 began recording their live debut album, forever changing the meaning of the word "revolution" within the context of rock and roll. On this episode, riots, revolution, rock and roll, dope, fucking in the streets, in the MC5. I'm Jake Brennan and this is The Scrake's Land. [Music] Revolution. Rachel Green knew nothing about any revolution. Yet, there it was on her t-shirt, right there in the central perk. Joey wanted to borrow Monica's Porsche, Chandler wanted Ross to explain the word "Buhaki". And Phoebe was, says, to be expected, significantly confused, as was I. Not over the inane to save moderately humorous dialogue. After all, why else do we watch friends? Why does everyone watch one of if not the most successful television shares of all time? It's easy, it's comforting. It's not supposed to make you think. In fact, it's supposed to do the opposite. There are no sharp edges, no real emotional stakes, no struggle, no revolution. Yet again, the revolution was right there on the screen. On Rachel Green's t-shirt in the MC5 band logo and distressed red, white, and blue. Three decades ago, that logo maybe still meant something. Today, that logo doesn't symbolize revolution. It symbolizes the all-too-familiar corporatization of 60s culture. But back in 1968, things were much different. That MC5 logo was a testimonial from a Detroit rock band, a revolutionary manifesto that called for American use to rise up and join the MC5. That logo meant something besides corporate greed. In 1968, that MC5 logo meant rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets. Wayne Kramer, guitarist for the MC5, watched the mounted Detroit police gallop into the so-called love-in on Bel Isle. The cop could give a fuck about peace and love. This was 1967. There was a revolution going on. Wayne didn't know it yet, but the cops saw him and his friends as a threat to their way of life. A movement away from the Eisenhower era's social construct that protected the cops and the establishment. Wayne didn't know anything about that at the time. He just wanted to smoke grass, play guitar, and scam chicks. But the Detroit cops saw it differently. Dope, long-haired music, free love. It was all a challenge to their authority and to the guys of peace and love. If heads didn't roll, then violent revolution would displace them. So heads were gonna roll. His band, the MC5, up on that stage on Bel Isle, played loud and fast on a necessity. They had no other choice, and they knew no other way. But like the best Detroit rock and roll, they had feel to match their fury. That's what happens when you grow up with guitars in the shadow of Motown's musical giants and within the industrial echo of the big three motor companies. The MC5 sounded like their hometown, like Detroit, like the perfect mix of American muscle and hitsville USA. Willie Bowie, Louis Louis, the MC5 were content that blasted the Bel Isle love him with the frat rock favorites. But the violence of the Bel Isle ride would soon inspire a more radical take on rock and roll. How could it not? MC5 members Wayne Kramer, Rob Tiner, Fred Sonic Smith, Michael Davis, and Dennis Thompson watched helplessly as Detroit PDs mobile tactically unit bludgeoned their friends and fellow Detroiters. The cops moved in with a riot squad to disperse a bunch of peaceful high school and college kids who are just there to smoke dope and public listen to rock and roll and protest the war in Vietnam. From atop their horses, they swung their billy clubs indiscriminately. Most in attendance that day made their way to the MacArthur Bridge that connected Bel Isles situated in the middle of the Detroit River to the mainland. The police had the bridge road blocked. They had the protesters right where they wanted them. Members of the MC5 sat in the van horrified watching the scene unfold before them. The riot officers unloaded with their billy clubs from up on high on their horses, walloping the hippies on their heads and some sick version of crowd control. Screams, tears, blood, cops were merciless. Unless the hippies wanted to jump off the bridge, 80 feet into the water, there was only one way off the island through the Detroit PD meat grinder. Somehow, the MC5 made it off Bel Isles relatively on skates. The police response to the peaceful protest on Bel Isles was totally disproportionate to the threat imposed by the youthful protesters. After the dust settled, it was clear to at least some members of the MC5 that the cops weren't out to stop long here at adolescents from listening to their brand of souped up rock and roll. They were there instead to stop them from fermenting a revolution. A revolution that was being stoked by a dangerous agitator the likes of whom Detroit had never seen. A tall, long-haired, charismatic, modern-day Ben Franklin minus the syphilis plus a double dose of dope-powered subversion named Johnson Claire. Johnson Claire was the unofficial leader of Detroit's 1960s protest movement. He preached revolution, published regularly in underground newspapers, listened to free jazz, got high with Archie Shep, got high in public, and was a rumored sex maniac. But above all, he showed a pension for real organization. Johnson Claire organized the Bel Isle Loven. Johnson Claire had the year of Detroit's youth. Johnson Claire was a threat. Johnson Claire managed the MC5. Hey everyone, I'm Josh Radner, and I am so excited to tell you about how we made your mother a rewatch podcast looking back at how I met your mother, and I'm here with Craig Thomas, who co-created the show along with Carter Bayes. Hi Craig. Hey Josh, somehow it has been 20 years since the show premiered. That's seem I'm going to check the math on that. Ten years since it went off the air, and we thought that made this a perfect time to look back, see what the hell we did, and why the show still seems to resonate with fans around the world today. Follow and listen to how we made your mother wherever you get your podcasts. Our program is cultural revolution through a total assault on the culture, which makes us use every tool, every energy, and any media we can get our collective hands on. We take our program with us everywhere we go and use any means necessary to expose people to it. Our culture, our art, music, newspapers, books, posters, our clothing, our homes, the way we walk and talk, the way our hair grows, the way we smoke dope and fucking eat and sleep. It's all one message and the message is freedom. So went the opening paragraph of the White Panther Party's manifesto as written by MC5 manager Johnson Claire. It went on. Rock and roll music is the spearhead of our attack because it is so effective and so much fun. We have developed organic high energy guerrilla bands who are infiltrating the popular culture and destroying millions of minds in the process. With our music and our economic genius, we plunder the unsuspecting straight world for money in the means to carry out our program and revolutionize its children at the same time. And with our entrance into the straight media, we have demonstrated to the honkies that anything they do to fuck with us will be exposed to their children. We don't need to get rid of all the honkies. You just rob them of their replacements and let them breed atrophy, die out. All of this concluded with, we're bad. Then the White Panther manifesto listed off its 10 point program. Number one, full endorsement in support of the Black Panther's 10 point program. Because Johnson Claire started the White Panther Party partly in response to a call from Black Panther co-founder, Huey Newton, who was quoted saying that if White people wanted to support the Black Panthers, they could do so by becoming anti-racist and starting a White Panther Party. Johnson Claire heard Huey Newton loud and clear. The second point of his 10 point White Panther program stated, "Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets." This is where Wayne Kramer and his MC-5 came into play. They brought all the rock and roll a little bit of the dope and of course some of the fucking in the streets. The brutality the Bell-eye riot left the lasting mark on Wayne and his bandmates. Chuck Berry riffs and Teenage Lust were no longer enough, no matter how much him fed of me and they threw at them. There was indeed a need for revolution. The cops had made that clear. Johnson Claire articulated it, and the MC-5 were now soldiers in a much bigger war. A war with the establishment, with the pigs, with parents, the government, with any and all institutions, with Johnson Claire as their leader. Points three through 10 of St. Clair's 10 point White Panther Party manifesto hardly mattered, because the MC-5 was quite literally the perfect manifestation of the second point. Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets. This is exactly what the MC-5 were. Total assault. It's hard, no, it's near impossible to explain the raw power of the MC-5. There have been nothing like them before. Not in Detroit, not anywhere. They were punk before punk. There were a high-watt locomotive doped up on speed in revolution and too young to care and too naive to know any better. Johnson Claire's politics infused a sense of purpose into the MC-5. It gave them a point of view. Every major city in America at the time had its version of a pre-Johnson Claire MC-5, which is to say a great little rock and roll band that took Chuck Berry's rear side of the garage and was on the verge of becoming something original that perhaps didn't sound exactly like a Beatles or Stones rip off. Seattle had the Sonic's, Boston had the remains, New Jersey had the Rascals, Hell even Idaho had Paul Revere and the fucking Raiders at Detroit had the MC-5. But politics would soon separate the MC-5 from their contemporaries. This is more than just a different lyrical point of view. The political message, the constant call for revolution in radical politics, was the holy spirit coursing through the bands and their fans veins. It fused them. They lived and breathed rock and roll dope and fucking in the streets. MC-5 concerts were part part of punk VFW Hall madness, part Sunday testimonial, and part political rally. The energy, the excitement, the maximum sex drugs and rock and roll was all too much for words. To witness the band live was a take part in a teenage religious experience. White kids from Detroit's working class packed the band shows. They mobbed the stage. They locked into the energy of the band into something that resembled the spiritual awakening. They shook, they shimmy, they testify, they drank Budweiser, old style, whatever was wet. They smoked, they snorted whatever was available. And they arms themselves, guns, knives, etc. They had sex anywhere, everywhere, with the band with each other backstage and cars in the street. The kids were pretty fucking far from all right. Rock and roll dope and fucking in the streets for sure. A testimonial, the MC-5. John Sinclair couldn't have said it better himself. The urgency in those words that served in part as the band's live stage introduction were absolutely necessary as Sinclair saw. It was time for a testimony. Who was ready? Which side were you on? There was a larger war that was worth fighting and outside on the streets of Detroit. There was a riot going on, literally. July, 1967. The stuff shirts on the local news predicted a long hot summer. Boy, how do you where they ever write? Wayne Kramer of the MC-5 looked out across the Detroit skyline as a evening sun went down. Above Grand River Avenue, he saw it. Revolution. Not on a t-shirt and not on the hand bill. Not spewing from the lips of some hyped up hippie Charlton. He saw revolutions smoking from atop the flames that tore through the four- and five-story apartment buildings on Grand River Avenue. Detroit had had enough and Detroit was on fire. Destruction was the price Detroit was paying for years of systemic racism and economic hardship voisted upon its black community. Just like Newark, New Jersey, which had recently exploded in urban violence leaving 23 dead, all but two of them black. Just like Cleveland Watts and Philadelphia, were riding was also exploding over urban frustration. It was just as Malcolm X said, "The chickens coming home to roost." Smoke covered the sky, sirens blasted through the evening air. Young black men and women sprinted down the streets holding as much merchandise as they could in their hands. Television sets, racks of clothing, cases of booze, food, toilet paper, baby formula, makeshift signs covered shop windows with hand-painted slogans that read black power and soulbrother in a desperate effort to deter the looters. Detroit police officers patrolled the streets with shotguns, viciously beat down any and all rioters and black civilians they accounted with their nightsticks. Try as they did, the cops could not suppress the rioting. It dragged on for days. Local politicians made their pleas on television. The mayor enacted a curfew, banned the sale of alcohol of firearms. The riot still raged. Community organizers failed to organize a stand down, more looting. Detroit Tigers left fielder Willie Horton drove straight into the riot on 12th Avenue after a game, stood up on the hood of his car and pleaded with the black residents of the neighborhood he'd grown up in to stop the violence. They didn't listen. Michigan governor George Romney declared the event a state of insurrection, "impleaded with President Lyndon B. Johnson for federal assistance to comply with the Federal Insurrection Act." Romney, a Republican, was a potential presidential challenger of Johnson's in the upcoming 68 election. Fuck Romney, fuck Michigan, and fuck the people of Detroit. Or so, when the Democrat LBJ is thinking, the president did nothing. The insurrection raged on, and more people died. Panic in the streets, widespread looting, black owned establishments suffered the worst of it. 1,800 arrests. Over 2,500 guns were stolen from local shops. 483 fires. Firefighters who attempted to call the flames were shot at. President Johnson finally gave in to his political opponent, governor George Romney. And at 1.30 a.m. on July 25th, sent in the National Guard to crack skulls. In the end, 7,000 Detroiters were arrested. 43 were dead. Police, fearful of rioting snipers on rooftops, went on a rampage during the insurrection. They discarded legal police tactics in Torah by any means necessary page out of the Black Panther's playbook. A legal surges in police brutality became the order of the day. Wayne Kramer and his bandmates in the MC5 were not immune to the abuse and oppression from local law enforcement. 8,000 National Guard troops, nearly 5,000 paratroopers. US Army tanks rolled down Detroit streets flanked by local police. To Wayne and his bandmates, it was an unimaginable scene. The power and reach of local state and federal authorities was downright chilling. Johnson Claire's rented home on Warren Avenue sat just down the block from Wayne Kramer's. On the roof of the home, John placed a large sign that read, "Burn, baby, burn." The police raided his home without a warrant. Guns, John. Sinclair refused to back down. He held his newborn baby up in front of him. In the faces of the cops with their John shotguns, he dared them to shoot. "I'll shoot me or get the fuck out of my house." The cops backed down. It was fucked up. All of it. The entire scene. But it was a win. Wayne Kramer knew it then. The revolution was on. Days later after the rioting had subsided, Wayne Kramer slept quietly in his apartment just down the street from Johnson Claire's place. He awoke to the sound of his German shepherd whimpering in pain on the receiving end of a Michigan state police beating. Stadia's were flooding his home now with guns drawn, ripping long hairs out of their slumber by their scops, rousing them awake, naked and confused, and demanding to know where the guns were. The cops wanted to bust some snipers. Except Wayne and his roommate didn't have any guns. The cops had confused the telescope in an upstairs window for a shotgun. It didn't matter. Wayne and his roommates were arrested anyway, and they were led out of his house in handcuffs. What Wayne Kramer saw blew his mind. There, in his front yard, the US Army tank with its cannon pointed straight at him. Wayne Kramer, Johnson Claire, the MC5, were officially at war. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. The arrest didn't stick. A couple nights in the local cooler and Wayne and his roommates were released without being charged. Charge for a crime that is. In another way, Wayne had been completely charged. He took the shock and awe of government power and authoritative overreach and used it to power him creatively. He and his bandmates in the MC5, in those early days, they took their roles as revolutionary seriously. As a rock and roll band and political functionaries of Johnson Claire's movement, they were uniquely suited to reach and inspire American youth for the cause, toward revolution. This task became a lot easier when the MC5 were signed along with their little rock and roll brothers from Detroit, the Stooges, to Electra Records. With a record deal, the MC5 had money coming in. Money that Johnson Claire managed, sort of, with much of it funding his trans love energy and anarcho syndicate commune/bordinghouse/MC5 production team in that order. Kind of, I guess. I'm not really sure. But the band in mind, that's the point. They wanted Johnson Claire to manage him. They were on the road spreading their message, performing alongside bands like the Velvet Underground and the Jimmy Hendrix experience, blowing Eric Clapton's cream off the stage, refusing Janice Joplin's drunken advances backstage. How had it come to this, Wayne Cramer wondered? Months ago, they were being harassed by police and thrown in jail. Now they were celebrated rock stars on the come-up of the Vanguard of 60s culture and politics. So, when they were asked to perform at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 25th, they of course said yes. Bob Dylan and Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe McDonald and his band The Fish were all invited to perform, but no one except the MC5 showed up. There were rumors that the whole scene was going to go bust. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, leaders of the Yippee movement, counter-cultural front to the decade's new left, specializing in media circuses, had organized a protest outside the convention called the festival of life. I used the word "organize" loosely. There was barely a stage in zero production. That didn't stop the MC5. There was a show to put on, and there were thousands of kids there at the convention who had been promised like-minded entertainment. The revolution must continue to turn. So at 4 p.m., the MC5 took the stage. Immediately, they felt it. An overwhelming sense of tension and violence in the air. From the stage, Wayne Cramer and his bandmates could see them in the crowd. Real jug-head Joe Square types riling the hippies up. Dudes with flat tops and military fatigues, black shoes, and white socks. It was planned as day to anyone with eyes and not completely stoned out of their minds. These squares in the crowd were government plans, Asian provocateurs, placed there by the FBI to create problems, to egg on the hippies, to get the kids to overreact, to take the first swing and justify our government beat down the likes of which this generation had never seen. Which is exactly what happened. While the MC5 stormed through a manic Detroit-powered rock-and-roll barn burner of a set, the government plants in the crowd teap-shot hippies in the ribs, spit on them, push them around. Little skirmishes broke out, and hippies pushed back. The agents got ugly. Fists started to fly more freely. Up above the stage, a police helicopter flew low, buzzing the band and adding a sonic world at Wayne Cramer welcomed. It perfectly augmented the electric torn he bent out of his red-white and blue stratocaster. The helicopter took off, turned, and came thrusting back towards the stage. Its giant propellers grinded into the Chicago air, sending anything not bolted down on the ground to tumble you throughout Lincoln Park. It was an intimidation tactic, and it worked. The sense of fear on and off stage was very real. Everyone felt the same sense of intending doom. The MC5 wrapped their set, hopped into their van, and got the hell out of there. In their wake, the fuse they helped ignite would later explode in violence. The 1968 Democratic National Convention will go down as one of the most disastrous events in American political history. The protest organized by Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and the rest of their political pranksters would result in more rioting in clashes with the police. Skulls were cracked, heads rolled, 668 were arrested. Two more than the devil himself could have managed. A similar number were injured along with 192 police officers. Hoffman, Rubin, and five other organizers who were converged on Chicago were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with intent to start a riot. They would be tried together as the infamous Chicago 7. The conspiracy charges didn't stick, though, because the 7 had barely coordinated anything. They barely even knew each other. Five were convicted on the riot charge, facing five years in prison each, and the judge convicted all seven, and their attorneys on contempt of court charges thanks to the Yippee's publicity stunts, which meant even more jail time. Ultimately, it was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Because in the end, nothing changed. The Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey, even his name was Square. The revolution hit a wall. Wayne Kramer and the rest of the MC5 made it back safely to Detroit, but their manager, Johnson Claire, was eventually arrested, and it looked like he'd be going to jail for a long, long time. Revolution was stressful business, more stressful than robbery. The revolution came and went, but Wayne Kramer's heroin addiction didn't seem to be going anywhere. It was 1973. Five years removed from the heavy days of the MC5's peak, and only a year since it had broken up. Wayne Kramer was a broken, busted, unreliable, junky musician. He put the revolution down. Breaking an entering was his new hustle. Wayne could tell the owners of the massive house on the outskirts of town were at home. No cars in the driveway. He and his partner rang the doorbell to be sure. Buckeyes. So they broke into the garage first, located some tools, and used them to pry open the door to the main house. Once inside, the liquor cabinet was the first stop. Big gulps of the brown wet stuff to drown the sinking feeling that being alone in someone else's home usually gave to Wayne. It was wrong, no matter how he tried to justify it. Deep down, Wayne knew what he was doing was fucked up. He went through the motions, tried to locate jewelry, expensive rocks, television sets, and high-five equipment. He let his mind wander back a couple years to a better time. So much had happened since his days in the MC5. It appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone before their first record kick up the jams was even released. When it came out, all their dreams of revolution and rock and roll rebellions seemed inevitable. Then, electoral records dropped them over a skirmish with a retailer. Next, John Sinclair got sent to jail over an easily two joints. Sinclair wanted more support from the MC5. More money. More revolution. More. More. More. Wayne and the band offered to help, but what they brought to the table wasn't enough for John. Sinclair skewered the MC5 in the underground press. He said the band wanted to be bigger than the Beatles, but he wanted them to be bigger than Chairman Mao. That's stung, but John Sinclair was stressed. He was heading to prison. He had a wife and a young child to take care of from behind cell doors. Then, the white panthers got indicted for the bombing of a CIA office in Detroit. The evidence was questionable. In several of the Chicago Sevens attorneys represented the white panthers now. This time, it was scored a cleaner victory. In presenting their case, the government was caught using warrantless wiretaps to spy on the white and the black panthers. The Michigan judge overseeing the trial even sued the federal government to force them to reveal their warrant was surveillance. The Nixon administration appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court before the panthers and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution got their ultimate vindication. In the process, the MC5 fell apart. Their records bombed. Their record labels gave up on them. They became known as "unreliable" drunks, too fucked up to make it to the gig on time. They broke up in 1972. Wayne took up a heroin habit. He no longer hung out with rock stars and revolutionaries. Instead, he spent his days with reprobates and thieves, hustlers, pimps, dealers, anyone who could cook up a scam that would result in him staying high. The revolution was dead, and Wayne Kramer was barely alive. He was busted, and like Johnson Claire before him, heading to jail. His life as a low-down B&E man came to an abrupt halt in late 1974 when he was busted for some serious narcotic way while on probation for a previous bust for possession of stolen goods. The DEA kept his latest arrest out of the news, hoping to gain Wayne's cooperation as an undercover informant. But Wayne decided to face the music for practical reasons. He wanted to move past all this Sunday, and he knew the life expectancy of snitches. So Wayne was sentenced to four years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky, commonly known as the "narcotic firm," with its history of housing addicts, including many of them the most famous jasmine of the 1930s, '40s and '50s. In prison, especially in this prison, Wayne Kramer was able to get his hands on a guitar, playing music with a clear head and a renewed focus helped him do his time. But when he was released on parole three years later, he was truly rehabilitated through the power and the saving grace of music. After his incarceration, Wayne teamed with the great musician Billy Bragg to expand Bragg's charity organization, Jail Gatorra Doris, named after the clash song that Joe Strummer and Mick Jones wrote in part about Kramer's incarceration. Jail Gatorra Doris's mission is to help rehabilitate incarcerated individuals through the transformative power of music. Fittingly, Wayne Kramer of the MC5 is its executive director. Post-Prison, Wayne Kramer kicked his addictions and started a family. Now he leads the Jail Gatorra's organization and his image, and through the example he set by providing guitars and rehabilitative programming for prisoners throughout the United States. Wayne himself has personally led many music lessons and songwriting sessions for the York, and the program overall has expanded to include artists who met during convicts in rap, piano, and more, extending its reach into over 140 prisons in Jails across the US. The revolution may have failed, but Jail Gatorra Doris, like Wayne Kramer of the MC5, is a success because the only revolution that really matters is personal revolution. You say you want a revolution, you want to save the world, change yourself, then change your family, then your friends, then your community. Changing the world is impossible, it's juvenile folly, the utopian hippy dream that America is still unfortunately hung up on from the 1960s. Society doesn't change, doesn't matter the era, it'll always be unjust. Politicians don't change, it doesn't matter what party, they will always be corrupt. Individuals though, they can change. Revolution from the inside out, real change, the power to change yourself, to break your own cycles of narcissism and selfishness and make yourself a valuable contributor to society. This is extremely difficult, but change, revolution, on a personal level, is always possible. Sure, it isn't as sexy as rock and roll dope and fucking in the streets, but Wayne Kramer of the MC5, he proved that personal revolution can deliver one from disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Land. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, Credits for this episode, can be found on the show notes page at disgracelampod.com. If you're listening as a disgrace land, all access member. Thank you for supporting the show, we really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free, plus you'll get one brand new, exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelampod, and on youtube at youtube.com/@disgracelampod. Rock and roll.