Before there was the Clash, Nirvana or Rage Against the Machine, there was the MC5.
“The MC5 played punk rock music before there was a name for it,” says Tom Morello, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist for bands like Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.
“They built the framework upon which bands like The Stooges, The Ramones, The Clash, the Sex Pistols, Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down ply their trade.”
The MC5 – short for Motor City Five – is coming to the Rock Hall this year, just months after the deaths of the last two original members, drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson and guitarist and singer Wayne Kramer.
The Detroit-based MC5 are part of the Class of ’24 that also includes Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Cher, Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest, Kool & The Gang, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Matthews Band, the late Jimmy Buffett, Dionne include Warwick, Alexis Korner, the late John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton. The induction ceremony is Saturday in Cleveland.
The band – which also included Fred “Sonic” Smith on guitar, Rob Tyner on vocals and Michael Davis on bass – had little commercial success, releasing only three albums, but its legacy endured, both for its sound and for its fusion of music. to political action. During the chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, only the MC5 showed up to play.
“The reason they deserve to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is not because of the depth or breadth of their catalog. It’s because of their influence. Without them, there is no punk rock music,” says Morello. “They are on the Mount Rushmore of the founders of this particular brand of music.”
“Kick Out the Jams” was their best-known song – with the lyrics “Put that mic in my hand / and let me kick the jam out” and “Let me be who I am / and let me kick the jam out.” A live album of the same name reached the top 40 in 1969, their highest-charting release. They also released the studio albums “Back in the USA” and “High Time” before disbanding in late 1972.
In honor of the MC5, Rage Against the Machine named their band’s fastest song “MC5” when they were recording albums. That’s how “Sleep Now in the Fire” from the album “The Battle of Los Angeles” was called for months.
Grammy Award-winning producer Don Was grew up in Detroit and vividly remembers seeing MC5 live, calling what he heard “a tsunami of sound.”
“For me, they unleashed a force. You could taste the music and see it. It was never really captured on recordings. It was a big, monolithic wall of distortion and groove.”
Morello and Was are among several musicians appearing on a new MC5 album, “Heavy Lifting,” out this month and featuring songs by Kramer and Thompson. Slash, Vernon Reid and William DuVall of Alice in Chains also contributed.
“The idea, as Wayne described to me, was to make one last great MC5 record that would distill the spirit that the band had decades ago, but that was also a product of where those influences lead,” says Morello. “I put everything into it. I thought, ‘Let’s make another really, really great MC5 record.'”
There’s also a new book, “MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band” by music journalists Brad Tolinski, Jaan Uhelszki and Ben Edmonds. It includes stories of Iggy and the Stooges, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, promoter Bill Graham, John Lennon and the Jefferson Airplane.
Morello, a member of the Rock Hall nominating committee, says he has been pushing for the inclusion of the MC5 for years and recent changes in the Cleveland-based organization have brought in more fan favorites like Rush, Kiss, Judas Priest – and now MC5.
“The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame tells a story. It can’t tell every story, but it does tell a story. I think that story is becoming broader and more reflective of rock fandom than in the past, when it might have been a more subtly composed situation.”
Kramer, who served years in prison on drug charges, later founded Jail Guitar Doors USA, a nonprofit organization that donates musical instruments to prisoners and offers songwriting workshops in prisons. He helped people get sober, find jobs for former inmates, build music careers for at-risk youth and was always ready to support a progressive cause.
Was says that in the 1960s, Kramer went from believing that a revolution was coming to realizing that it might fail while still trying to make life better for people.
“Wayne Kramer was the best man I ever knew,” said Morello, who will help introduce the MC5 on Saturday. “He possessed a unique blend of deep wisdom and deep compassion with beautiful empathy and tenacious conviction.”
