On the death of MC 5 guitarist Wayne Kramer: Intoxication, riots, revolution

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Wayne Kramer (1948 - 2024)

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Jim Dyson/Getty Images

Criticism of capitalism? Invitation to copulate? Order to freak out? There has been a lot of speculation about the exact meaning of the song “Kick Out the Jams”; his co-creator Wayne Kramer himself, when questioned, was generous in allowing all interpretations to apply. Intoxication, riots and revolution were always closely linked in his band MC 5.

The battle cry, in which "Kick out the jams" was usually followed by the inevitable "motherfucker!", was heard on record for the first time on MC 5's debut. It formed the intro and was also the title of the album. The recordings were recorded live in 1968 on two late October evenings at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. These were the last hot days of the US presidential election campaign, which had been charged by previous race riots and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

MC 5 – the name is short for Motor City Five – had played at a number of demonstrations and happenings in the previous weeks. Anyone who looks at film documents from the time and shortly afterwards will see an extremely unleashed Wayne Kramer, who on the one hand played riffs of previously unheard-of heaviness on his guitar and at the same time performed the great rock 'n' roll ballet with a broad grin. He pirouetted and twerked his butt toward the audience, he did the windmill arm and imitated Chuck Berry's famous duck walk. Sometimes Kramer also held his guitar like a machine gun.

Clowning, eroticism and militancy came together in a daring combination at MC 5. You could have called it punk if the word and its later meaning had already existed. “Kick Out the Jams” is now considered the first anthem of the genre.

Bigger than Mao?

MC 5's manager at the time was the anarchist John Sinclair, who, however, went to prison in 1969 for selling marijuana. The band played several benefit concerts for him. In 1968, Sinclair founded the White Panther Party to support the Black Panthers in their fight for self-empowerment. That same year, Sinclair was charged with carrying out an attack on a CIA office. MC 5 shared many of his radical views, but then parted ways with him while he was in prison.

It cannot be said that political activism fueled MC 5's music career. The band remained commercially unsuccessful throughout its short existence, and after Sinclair's departure they were also saddled with a pile of debt. Later, the fired manager is said to have said to MC 5: "You wanted to be bigger than the Beatles, I wanted you to be bigger than Mao."

In 1975, Wayne Kramer followed the ex-manager to prison. He had previously been caught trying to sell cocaine to undercover drug investigators. At the time, he was doing heroin himself. Looking back, Kramer saw prison as a personal salvation because, in his own opinion, he would probably have died from the drugs if he were free. At the same time, he has repeatedly appeared as a critic of the US penal system, which, in his opinion, produces more crime than it prevents.

The equanimity of the survivor

After his release from prison in 1979, he was unable to build on the great days of MC 5. He made ends meet, occasionally playing in small clubs and later becoming a carpenter. The most exciting thing was his collaboration on the Gang War project with Johnny Thunders, another punk pioneer who was also on the hook. Thunders died in 1991. Shortly afterwards, Kramer lost two of his MC 5 companions: singer Rob Tyner and guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith.

Kramer survived the devastation of the first wave of punk - and then became an important reference figure for the musicians of the second and third waves of politically motivated representatives of the field. The radical left-wing megastars Rage Against The Machine covered “Kick Out the Jams,” while Bad Religion gave Kramer a new artistic home on their Epitaph label.

From the mid-nineties onwards he regularly recorded solo albums. In Germany, you could witness Kramer's indestructible power during a number of tours in the second half of the 1990s: the inevitable signal "Kick Out the Jams", with which he opened the performances, was followed by punk songs, which he sometimes dimmed to blues temperature, sometimes to infernal ones Free jazz excursions expanded. In their early days, MC 5 borrowed from free jazz greats such as John Coltrane and Sun Ra.

Kramer viewed the fact that in the 1990s there were often not 50 paying guests at these services of rock 'n' roll freed from all conventions with the equanimity of someone who is happy about sheer survival. Most recently, he worked with drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, the other survivor of MC 5, on another album under the legendary band name. It would have been the first MC 5 album since 1971 and was due out this year.

On Friday, Wayne Kramer, the riff king and possibly the greatest punk rock guitarist of all time, died in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 75 years old.