John Sinclair is dead: MC5 discoverer and king of the hippies

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John Sinclair (1941-2024)

Photo: Leni Sinclair / Getty Images

He had a phenomenal knowledge of music, was well versed in political theory, knew how to use words and could apparently talk to and mobilize people in an almost magical way. John Sinclair was a man of many qualities. Modesty was not one of them.

After the band MC5, which is now considered the first real punk ensemble in the USA, fired him as manager in the early 1970s, he is said to have shouted after them: “You wanted to be bigger than the Beatles, I wanted you to be bigger than Mao .”

Between hedonism and revolution

This punchline contains the dichotomy that summed up Sinclair's work in its incredible scope. He moved between pop and politics, between hedonism and subversion, between marijuana and machine guns.

At the beginning of the 1960s he went to the proletarian car manufacturing city of Detroit because he was a central revolutionary force in the black music that was spilling into the mainstream there, including through the successful soul label Motown. Sinclair later recalled: "I came to the seething center of African-American culture as a refugee from white American society."

As an author and theorist, he supplied and founded newspapers and magazines such as “Fifth Estate” and “Detroit Artists Workshop Press”. As a socialist and activist, he was involved in the founding of the White Panther Army; she was supposed to support the Black Panthers in their fight for self-empowerment. He recruited

the young, still inexperienced MC5 - the band name refers to the

Motor City

of Detroit - as a kind of house band for the White Panthers, who played at their happenings or demonstrations.

Not just metaphorically militant

For group photos, Sinclair hung the pretty, often half-naked boys from MC5 with bullet belts. He raved about an “army of guitars” with which to rebel against the establishment; He saw in LSD the key to developing "from the simple rock'n'roll rebellion" into "revolutionary music" for an age after the inevitable collapse of Western civilization. Sinclair's militancy was not just metaphorical.

Guitarist Wayne Kramer, who died in February at the age of 75, once remembered how he and his MC5 colleagues celebrated the slightly older Sinclair as the "King of the Hippies." The shaggy-bearded man not only supplied the musicians with drugs and promises of political happiness, but also injected them with all facets of African-American music, from the primordial rock'n'roll of Chuck Berry to the soul of James Brown to the free jazz of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane.

The band developed their very own sound from this: sexy, loud, rowdy and with an incredible feel for riffs. Their song "Kick Out The Jams", first released on their live debut album from 1968, is now considered a kind of beacon of punk, which is still played at concerts by radical political bands like Rage Against The Machine.

Ten years for two joints

Sinclair, who despite his hippie look must be classified as one of the most important pioneers of punk (he also helped launch the careers of Iggy Pop and the Stooges), was increasingly targeted by the US security authorities due to his appearance. In 1972 he was accused of being involved in planning an attack on a CIA building. The proceedings were closed because the authorities had tapped telephones without an investigation warrant. However, Sinclair had already gone to prison in 1969 for marijuana trafficking: because he was said to have offered two joints for sale to an undercover agent, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

With his imprisonment, Sinclair became an icon of the left-wing countermovement. John Lennon recorded the protest song "John Sinclair" with Yoko Ono, in which they also discussed the double standards of US politics. Lennon sang: "If he'd been a soldier man / Shootin' gooks in Vietnam / If he was a CIA / Sellin' dope and makin' hay / He'd be free, they'd let him be / Breathin' air like." you and me / Fight on«. In December 1971, Lennon and Ono organized a large demo with a live program for Sinclair, including Stevie Wonder and Phil Ochs.

After his release from prison, Sinclair was active as a poet, singer, musician, producer, DJ and essayist. Projects and publications are hard to believe. He has toured with his band The Blues Scholars throughout the last decades. For a while he lived in Amsterdam, where he gained some fame as a DJ for Radio Free Amsterdam.

As first reported by the Detroit Free Press newspaper, John Sinclair, king of the hippies and patron saint of punks, died of a heart condition in Detroit on Tuesday. He was 82 years old.