RIP Wayne Kramer of the MC5

We lost another one this week.

Back in 1969, most of North America was wrapped up in the peace’n’love hippie ethos. In Detroit, though, something different was happening. Iggy Pop and The Stooges were seeing how many drugs they could take and still appear onstage. The MC5 was testing to see how political they could get before being arrested.

At the head of the MC5 (“Motor City Five”) was vocalist and guitarist Wayne Kramer. Together with the rest of the band (and with outside help from The Stooges), they pioneered a new, loud, aggressive form of rock that presaged what was to come a few years later. The MC5 were one of the most important proto-punk acts of the era.

The MC5 started back in 1963 and progressively got louder and more in-your-face. By the time they released their debut album, they were unlike anything else out there. They were one part garage rock band, one part political party, one part activist organization. Their manager was John Sinclair, a member of the radical White Panther Party.

This was a new type of hard rock, delivered with an angry urgency. You can draw a straight line from the punk of the middle 1970s back to the MC5.

There were just three MC5 albums before the band fell apart in 1972. Kramer ended up in prison for three years for trying to sell a giant whack of cocaine. When he was released, he pursued a solo career and spent a lot of time on Jail Guitar Doors, a non-profit that provides musical instrumental to inmates. The company’s mandate is “providing musical instruments and mentorship to help rehabilitate individuals experiencing incarceration through the transformative power of music.”

Kramer played and recorded when he could, something that included a free jazz album inspired by his time in the penitentiary. There was also a 2018 memoir entitled The Hard Stuff.

Kramer died this week at the age of 75. No cause of death was given.