DANGEROUS MADNESS - an interview with WAYNE KRAMER
WHAT CAN BE SAID ABOUT WAYNE KRAMER?
As a member of Detroit's legendary MC5, he did more than anybody else to help destroy the cosy establishment of the 60s and early 70s. The MC5 set a new standard in music, paved the way for punk rock and introduced a new word to the world - motherf*cker.
Today, Wayne is still kicking out the jams, as an Epitaph recording artist. On Good Friday, April 5 1996, I was granted the privilege of a telephone interview with one of my musical heroes. I thought I might get ten minutes - I got 40. From Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa to Gada Yada Ra Ra Ra, here it is.
WHERE ARE YOU CALLING FROM, WAYNE?
I'm at home, in Los Angeles.
YOU'RE NOT TOURING AT THE MOMENT, THEN?
I just played last night, here in LA at the House of Blues. It was a benefit for NORMAL, the legalise marijuana people, for their legal self-defence fund for people with medical marijuana cases. You know, where the police charge them for smoking marijuana to combat their glaucoma or AIDS? Even though I don't use drugs anymore, I am pro-drugs. And I'm certainly anti-drug war. In a civilised world, people are gonna use drugs. They always have and they always will. So it's really a matter of how we handle it. In this country, it's a terrific disaster because there's over a million people in prison in America and 80 per cent of them are there for drug-related offences - the biggest problem being that they've tried to legislate morality and you can't do that. And I know who those 800,000 guys are in there because I am one of those guys!
YOU DID A STRETCH YOURSELF, DIDN'T YOU?
Yeah. I'm really dismayed with the situation because they're creating a new permanent underclass of people who are further disconnected from the mainstream and who will come back to the street one day and be more angry and less equipped to handle life. The gap in this country gets bigger and bigger between the ultra wealthy and the working poor. Wall Street and big business don't make any less money. They're making more money than ever this year. And everybody else is struggling. No options, no possibilities. The madness has truly gotten dangerous.
HOW DID THE GIG GO? DID YOU RAISE MUCH MONEY?
It was sold out. They're doing another tonight. It's going well. We just finished a US tour last week and I leave on Sunday for Europe, so I'm pretty busy.
IT'S 6PM HERE - ISN'T IT REALLY EARLY OVER WITH YOU?
It's 9am.
AND YOU DID A GIG LAST NIGHT! ARE YOU USED TO GETTING UP THIS EARLY?
Yeah. You know, when you're not drunk and hungover it's not that hard (laughs).
YOU DON'T DRINK?
No.
WHY HAVE YOU DECIDED TO COME BACK AS A SOLO ARTIST NOW? IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME.
There were two things involved. One was Epitaph Records which is an absolutely revolutionary record company. It's really artist-oriented. They really care about the music and about the musicians in a way that major labels would never understand.
BECAUSE BRETT HIMSELF IS IN BAD RELIGION...
Yep. He knows exactly what we're faced with and what the problems can be. He's a genius. The other thing is I had to make peace with the MC5. I carried the bitterness of the end of the MC5 around with me for years. I didn't know it, but it was a terrific loss that I had to work through. And then with the death of my brothers Rob Tyner and Fred Smith it really all slammed home and I had to reconcile who I was and the work I did as a younger man with the work I do today. It was a process of reclaiming my lost brothers. That freed me up so I could go back to work and carry on in the best tradition of the MC5, but with the work that I'm doing today.
DO YOU THINK ROB AND FRED WOULD APPROVE OF WHAT YOU'RE DOING TODAY IF THEY WERE STILL ALIVE?
I'd like to think they would, yeah.
ARE YOU STILL IN TOUCH WITH MICHAEL AND DENNIS?
Yeah, we talk all the time.
WHAT DO THEY THINK OF YOUR SOLO CAREER?
I talked to Michael Davis the other day. He said he thought I'd made a great record - thought my singing was much improved. He said: "Wayne, you sound like a real singer!" (laughs)
Photo: Marina Chavez
Courtesy: Epitaph
ARE THEY STILL WORKING?
Yeah, Michael is in a band called The Luminarios and Dennis is working on some more experimental music.
IS THERE ANY CHANCE OF YOU THREE GETTING BACK TOGETHER?
There's always a chance, sure. I'm always looking for a way to get the three of us in a recording studio. That's a great rhythm section.
HAVE YOU TALKED MUCH ABOUT DOING IT?
Sure. It's just a matter of time and place.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO RE-RECORD "POISON" ON "THE HARD STUFF"?
It was The Melvins' idea. I was recording with them that night. They had done MC5 songs before and they wanted to do one. And I didn't want to do "Kick Out The Jams" I didn't want to do "Rama Lama...", I didn't want to do "Looking At You". I said, let's pick something that nobody's ever done before. And I always felt that it was a good song that never got a wide enough hearing. It's a difficult song to play because it has that whole centre section, the improvisation and the spoken word. That's really some work that I've carried on and I'm still interested in and I still do. And they're such a good band that they just nailed it.
HOW DID IT FEEL TO RECORD IT AGAIN? DID YOU REMEMBER RECORDING IT FIRST TIME AROUND WHILE YOU WERE DOING IT?
Sure, I remember all that.
"BACK TO DETROIT" ON "THE HARD STUFF" SOUNDS LIKE A REMINISCENCE. LIKE YOU REALLY MISS YOUR DAYS IN DETROIT. WOULD THAT BE FAIR?
I think there are things that happen in our lives, particular events that change the course of everything. In that song, I was trying to dig back to the point where our family had broken up - my mother and father were divorced - and what that meant to me as an eight-year-old little boy and how that kind of fractured my sense of safety. So I focused on that. I was having a regular day that day and my mother came in and said: "Oh yeah, your dad's leaving and we're moving back to Detroit". Then I took that idea and extrapolated it not only through what happened to me, but also what happened to the city of Detroit. It was such a great place to grow up in. It was a boomtown and everybody worked, everybody had jobs - everybody could go shopping and had possibilities. And today it is such a desolate place. We just went out there and shot a video for that song and for me it was emotionally devastating to go back to those neighbourhoods that were alive and vibrant. Now they look like Beirut - bombed out, empty buildings. Big business - Chrysler, GM and Ford - just went in and ripped the guts out of the city, took all the money and then when it didn't work anymore they all left. It really speaks for the whole ripping the guts out of this whole American dream that we were all going to go out into this beautiful, suburban existence. The truth is it didn't work that way.
"GOD'S WORST NIGHTMARE" - HAS TOM WAITS HEARD THAT SONG?
I don't know (laughs)
IT'S GOT TO BE A NOD TOWARDS HIM, HASN'T IT?
Actually, it was a nod to Louis Armstrong.
SO IT GOES BACK EVEN FURTHER?
Yeah, I'd just read his autobiography before I cut that song and I thought - let me give this a try. So that song is really done with apologies to Louis. It's just a fun song, a crazy madness. Demonic imagery, you know...
IT'S CERTAINLY DIFFERENT TO EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE ALBUM...
Yeah.
HOW DID YOU GET TERENCE TRENT D'ARBY ON YOUR ALBUM?
I just ran into him over at the Schechter guitar factory. I was over there looking at some guitars and someone asked me if I knew Terence. They were working on one of his guitars, so we started talking.
He told me that on his first tour he took two CDs - one was Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and the other was Kick Out The Jams by the MC5. I needed some backing vocals on the track (Dangerous Madness) so I asked him if he would do it and he was very cool about it. He's a bro.
HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN THE MC5 INFLUENCE IS ACKNOWLEDGED BY OTHER MUSICIANS?
Well, the musicians have always been forthright about the influence of the MC5. It's always good to be recognised for your work, especially by your contemporaries. The business interests were a little slow to admit the importance of the MC5, but they never really accepted the MC5 in the first place. To me, it's like a confirmation that I was on the right track and that I'm still on the right track.
"SOMETHING BROKEN IN THE PROMISED LAND" STARTS OFF WITH THE LINE - "SOME MOTHERF*CKER'S PISSING ON MY GRAVE..." PRETTY MUCH UNTIL RAP MUSIC CAME ALONG WITH ITS VIOLENT IMAGERY, 'MOTHERF*CKER' WAS ALMOST AN EXCLUSIVE MC5 WORD. YOU DIDN'T HEAR IT ANYWHERE ELSE IN MUSIC. IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE GETTING AT IN THAT SONG?
Well, I think it's just a colourful and descriptive word that we use to mean any number of things. It can be a word of high praise and it can also be a word of intense derision. It's a very flexible term. In that application, the intent was to get over the sense of good ideas gone bad. That there's a grand plan that's going pear-shaped on us. That song addresses that American Dream that they sold everybody - the idea that we were going to go out to Happy Valley, 2.2 kids, two cars, see the USA in a Chevrolet, gada-yada-ra-ra-ra... and it ain't worked out that way.
YOU'RE STILL AN ANGRY MAN, WAYNE....
There's a number of things that still piss me off, yes! (laughs)
MAINLY AMERICA, IT SEEMS. HAVE YOU NEVER THOUGHT OF LEAVING THE COUNTRY?
No, because this is where all my interests and activities are. There was a point when I first got back from prison that I thought I would maybe relocate to Europe - but I got over it. But I really love Europe. I'm looking forward to this tour coming up.
SO AM I. I MISSED THE GIG IN LONDON LAST TIME. HOW DID IT GO?
It was sold out. Wall-to-wall people, it was packed. It was a great gig - packed from the front to the back wall.
DO YOU PLAY ANY MC5 SONGS THESE DAYS?
Sometimes I do, if it feels right on the night. I try not to ave a set programme and I like to vary the material from night to night. It keeps it interesting for me and the other musicians. Some nights we'll do some MC5 stuff. It just depends on the night and the crowd and how it's all going.
I'm proud to have been a member of the MC5. It was one of the greatest rock bands of all time. But it was a long time ago. It's part of who I am, so those songs are my songs too.
WHO HAVE YOU GOT IN YOUR TOURING BAND?
The band features Brock Avery, the wonderful drummer who worked with me on "Dangerous Madness" and who toured Europe with me last year, and the bassist is Paul Ill. They are both really strong players, really insightful cats. They're both schooled players, they can read music, they can play jazz, latin, funk - they can play all that stuff. So in all the improvising that we do, we can go in any direction, We can go back to the roots of blues and funk and then we can go ahead into the more freedom music of the influences of the music of Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler - all that stuff that originally inspired me. It still inspires me, and we still do a lot of that every night. Also, I encourage home-tapers because every gig is different. Epitaph sells my records and they pay me fairly so I'm not threatened by people taping the gigs. I think everyone who wants to have access to art and culture should have access to it.
ANYBODY WHO'S PARANOID ABOUT PEOPLE TAPING THEIR PERFORMANCE CAN'T BE PUTTING IN A VERY GOOD PERFORMANCE...
Right! (laughs)