Detroit Rock City by Steve Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

that’s what MC5 and our community—we were all in total agreement about things like politics, the country was heading in the wrong direction. About art and culture. The music we liked was the most advanced and forward. That our band was the cutting-edge band of all bands; we were doing stuff that was more forward. And if you achieved some recognition, that reinforces it. There’s very little self-criticism and looking inward. And very little criticism around us. We weren’t good Marxists; we weren’t that dogmatic. We smoked a lot of weed,dropped a lot of acid, and were having a ball doing what we were doing. Everything was hitting as it was supposed to hit. The politicization came as a result of just living in America in those years, the sixties. We just wanted to be a great rock band; I wanted to be a world-class guitar player, song writer, and performer. When I was younger my goal was just to be able to work in nightclubs. Just have this nighttime world, late-night musicians—that was living to me. In those days there were a lot of clubs to play in. The auto factories went 24/7, so there were clubs open seven days a week, five sets a night, forty-five minutes on fifteen off. We quickly came to the conclusion that we wanted to be the band on the radio rather than the bands playing those songs in the clubs. We wanted to write our own songs, and then we realized we could go on tour and play big venues. Once we saw the model—the British band model once they started touring—we realized it was doable.
    John Sinclair: They were just kids. I mean, they were just unorganized. Well, they were fucked up. I loved the band, so I went to see them whenever they played. They had these two little hippie guys working for them; they carried around a box full of wires and stuff. The band showed up for the gigs right about the time when they were supposed to hit the stage. Instead of hitting, these two little guys were up there, wrestling around the spots, pulling all the wires and trying to figure out what went to what while everybody’s there waiting for the show to start. Well, that’s where I thought I could help with this. This is embarrassing.
    Leni Sinclair: Slowly things started improving because John, being a writer, he started writing a column for the Fifth Estate every week. A lot of times he would be late with turning in his copy; the paper was supposed to go to the printer in the morning, and they’d get home from the gig at two or three in the morning. Everybody else would go to bed or have some girl over, something. John would type up what happened. Every week there was something happening with the band that was worth writing about. John, because of writing about them all the time—that helped create interest in the band. Then he got them to be the house band at the Grande Ballroom when the Grande Ballroom started.
    Wayne Kramer: John proposed that he would take over. He was getting this commune concept together, which was still kind of ethereal. Tyner had tried to explain the idea to me. Through that kind of utopian, amorphous structure, John came to the conclusion that the five of us were completely out of control and couldn’t evenget to rehearsal. That really was the case—we missed gigs, we were a mess. I’d have to go find Fred, and he wouldn’t be ready, and I’d sit in the car, and finally he’d be ready and we’d get there too late and our slot would be gone.
    John Sinclair: I never had a contract with the MC5. Why would I?
    Becky Tyner: We had to make money somehow, because all the money the band made went to Trans-Love Energies, our little collective.
    Pete Cavanaugh: MC5 did not play without pay. They presented this revolution and music for the people, so on one hand, it was free this and steal this and take it, but this was a business.
    Billy Goodson: We would use Gary Grimshaw’s first-print posters to soak up water puddles in the