Wayne Kramer, the guitarist who co-created MC5 – one of the rawest, most influential and politically engaged bands in US history – has died aged 75. His Instagram page announced the news: “Wayne S Kramer. Peace be with you. April 30 1948 – February 2 2024.”
Born and raised in Detroit, Kramer teamed with teenage friend and fellow guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, each of them influenced as much by free jazz as they were by R&B and rock’n’roll. Along with the frontman Rob Tyner, they made MC5 into an incendiary force in their city’s music scene, alongside peers such as the Stooges.
MC5 (short for Motor City 5) quickly built a formidable live reputation playing on bills with the likes of Cream, and were signed to Elektra in 1968. Their debut album, Kick Out the Jams, was released the following year: a live recording from Detroit’s Grande Ballroom where the band had made their name.
The band were proud of their working-class roots and were charged with revolutionary zeal from the outset; manager John Sinclair formed the White Panther Party and the band protested against the Vietnam war and the Democratic National Convention. Buoyed by an astonishingly heavy guitar sound from Kramer and Smith, the words “kick out the jams” – hollered by Tyner on the album’s title track – they became synonymous with resistance, and pointed the way towards the punk rock of the 1970s.
“People said ‘Oh wow, “Kick out the jams” means break down restrictions,’ and it made good copy, but when we wrote it, we didn’t have that in mind,” Kramer later said, explaining it was directed more at bands who would incessantly jam.
The group hopped to Atlantic Records and released their first studio album, Back in the USA, in 1970, followed by High Time the next year. Each album flopped commercially; bankrupt and mired in drug use, MC5 split in 1972.
Kramer continued his music career alongside dealing drugs, and was jailed for four years following a bust in 1975. After his release in 1979, he joined funk-rockers Was (Not Was) and was an itinerant figure on the New York City underground music scene, but spent much of the 1980s out of the spotlight, working mostly as a carpenter. In the mid-90s he began releasing music again, as a solo artist signed to punk label Epitaph Records.
Tyner and Smith died in the early to mid-1990s, but in 2001 Kramer formed a supergroup to perform MC5 music, including the Cult’s Ian Astbury and Motorhead’s Lemmy. While the lineup didn’t stay quite so starry, MC5 were reignited as a touring entity and played gigs across the world in various iterations, including a 50th anniversary tour in 2018. That year he also published his memoir, The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5 and My Life of Impossibilities.
At the time of his death, Kramer was preparing to release a long-awaited third studio album from the band. Explaining why he was returning, Kramer said: “I think it was time to reignite that spirit of 1968, the spirit of my generation, when we were all young people. I think we’re at a very dangerous time in our history. And I think if we don’t all organise, come together, and step up, we could lose it all. Democracy could go away. The forces that we’re up against are not joking. This is not playtime. This is serious.”
A release was being planned for spring 2024.
In later life, Kramer also co-created the US arm of Billy Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors initiative, providing musical instruments for prison inmates.
Among those paying tribute to Kramer following his death was former collaborator Tom Morello, guitarist with Rage Against the Machine. “Brother Wayne Kramer was the best man I’ve ever known,” he wrote. “He possessed a one of a kind mixture of deep wisdom & profound compassion, beautiful empathy and tenacious conviction.”
