Co-founder of the revolutionary rock band The MC5 was 75

Wayne Kramer

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NEW YORK (AP) — Wayne Kramer, the co-founder of the Detroit proto-punk band MC5 that rocked hardcore anthems like “Kick Out the Jams” and influenced everyone from the Clash to Rage Against the Machine, has died at age 75.

Kramer died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, according to Jason Heath, a close friend and executive director of Kramer’s nonprofit Jail Guitar Doors USA. Heath said the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

From the late 1960s to early 1970s, no band was closer to the revolutionary spirit of the time than the MC5, which included Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith on guitars, Rob Tyner on vocals, Michael Davis on bass and Dennis “Machine Gun”. . Thompson on drums. They were led for a time by White Panther co-founder John Sinclair and were known for their raw, uncompromising music, which they saw as the soundtrack for the coming uprising.

“Brother Wayne Kramer was the best man I ever knew,” Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello wrote on Instagram on Friday. “He possessed a unique blend of profound wisdom and compassion, beautiful empathy and dogged conviction. His band MC5 basically invented punk rock music.”

The band had little commercial success and its core lineup did not last beyond the early 1970s, but their legacy endured, both because of their sound and their fusion of music with political action. Kramer, who has a long history of legal battles and substance abuse, told his story in the 2018 memoir “The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities.”

Morello is among the musicians appearing on the MC5’s new album, “Heavy Lifting,” out this spring, which features Kramer and Thompson from the original group. Slash, Vernon Reid and William DuVall from Alice in Chains also contributed.

“Pushing the music forward, giving a message of self-efficacy and empowerment — and just having fun,” Kramer told Mojo magazine in December. “The MC5 has everything. Creativity is the solution to the challenges we face.”

Thompson is now the only surviving member of the band.

Kramer and Smith had known each other since their youth and played with various other musicians in Detroit before the core line-up was finalized in the mid-1960s. At Tyner’s suggestion, they called themselves the MC5, short for Motor City Five, imitating the Rolling Stones, The Who and other hard rock bands of the era.

By 1968 they had developed a significant local following and were influenced by Marxism, the White Panthers, the Beats and other socio-political movements. The MC5 was more politically radical than most of its colleagues and otherwise louder and bolder. They were virtually the only band to perform during the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where police beat anti-war protesters.

“Kick Out the Jams” was their most famous song, beginning with an unprintable call to arms: “Kick out the jams motherf———-!” 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 splitting up at the end of 1972.

Kramer led various incarnations of the MC5 in the decades that followed, appearing with, among others, Was (Not Was). But for a while he sank into the life of what he called a “petty Detroit criminal.” He was arrested on drug charges in 1975 and sentenced to four years in prison. Jail Guitar Doors, which provides musical instruments to inmates, is named after a Clash song that references his struggles: “Let me tell you about Wayne and his cocaine business.”

Survivors include his wife Margaret Saadi and son Francis.