WAYNE KRAMER
April 30, 1948 – February 2, 2024
We look back at the life and times of a guitarist who, during his years with the legendary MC5 and beyond, kicked out the jams more than most.
Words: Gary Graff
Photo: Mike Barich
Iggy Pop remembers a night more than 55 years ago when he and the other Stooges stood on a street in downtown Detroit listening to Wayne Kramer and the MC5 rehearse Kick Out The Jams, “which was coming right through a huge, reinforced warehouse door”.
“It was very, very powerful and sonic,” Pop says of the future classic from his Michigan rock brethren. “We had come for a visit, and had to wait for them to break so they could hear us knocking.”
Few, and perhaps nobody, kicked out the jams like the 5, and certainly nobody continued to wave that flag with the unapologetic, relentless passion of Kramer –who passed away on February 2 at the age of 75 in Los Angeles, shortly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The profound mourning and heartfelt tributes from peers and fans that came in the wake of his death was partly from shock; he’d fought off salivary gland cancer a few years before, and few knew of his latest condition. But it also spoke to the regard in which ‘Brother Wayne’ was held. Not just for his ferocious musicianship, but also for his consciousness as a social and political activist – particularly as the American ambassador of Billy Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors initiative, bringing music into prisons – and as a recovered, once-incarcerated addict who was a shining example of what genuine redemption and a truly extraordinary second chapter could look like.
“My attitude is live strong and live wise and stay creative.”
Wayne Kramer
“He was just dedicated to being a better person at all times, and at all costs,” says John Sinclair, the Detroit writer and activist who managed the MC5 for a time and had Kramer guest on some of his albums. Fellow Detroit rocker Mitch Ryder adds that Kramer was “driven to be a part of history, and I think he’s already part of the history. But he [had] a bigger frame in mind for himself”.
The MC5 kicking out the jams in Mount Clemens, Michigan in 1969: (l-) Dennis ‘Machine Gun’ Thompson, Wayne Kramer, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, Rob Tyner.
“Wayne was a force of nature. A soul man in a rock’n’roll body, lean and slinky.”
Producer Bob Ezrin
Kim Thayil, the Soundgarden guitarist who was part of Kramer’s MC50 collective during 2018-19 to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, was a huge MC5 fan who was pleased to find that the then 70-year-old Kramer was “so bright and focused intellectually on ideas of justice, of fairness, of equality. This guy… didn’t just get his shit together so he could walk a straight line. He got his shit together so he could guide other people to walk that straight line… and stand up when he saw things that were wrong and try to do something about it”.