FILTER BOOKS
Revlon in the head
The trailblazing proto-punks get the raucous history they deserve.
By Stephen Thomas Erlewine.
Famous five: rock’n’roll seditionaries MC5 (from left) Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, Dennis Thompson, Wayne Kramer, Rob Tyner, Michael Davis, 1969.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
MC5: An Oral Biography Of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band
★★★★
Brad Tolinski, Jaan Uhelszki, Ben Edmonds
OMNIBUS. £25
THE STORY of the MC5 – the pioneering Detroit band who blazed a trail that pointed toward punk – is riddled with missed opportunities, bad breaks and self-sabotage. The book that became MC5: An Oral Biography Of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band nearly became a posthumous chapter in that doomed saga. Former Creem editor and MC5 confidante Ben Edmonds started work on a biography way back in 1990, labouring on the project until his death in 2016. Edmonds’ Creem colleagues Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki have turned his research into a finished book every bit as alive as the group itself. Death nevertheless hangs over this oral history. Founding guitarist Wayne Kramer died earlier this year, followed swiftly by the band’s drummer Dennis Thompson and John Sinclair, the counter-culture guru who envisioned the group as the conduit for his revolutionary dreams. Their deaths mean that all the major players in the MC5 drama are now gone, their absence lending the book a sense of poignancy that only escalates as the band buckles from dashed dreams and rampant drug abuse.
It’s a tragic and perhaps inevitable end for a band that spent its brief life charting unknown territory. A collection of misfits, beatniks and greasers united by their mutual love for The Rolling Stones, the MC5 cut their teeth at teenage record hops. Those early years are brought to vivid life through the testimony of Rob Tyner, the band’s lead singer who died in 1991, and Tyner’s wife Becky. Rob Tyner’s sharp, witty insights are counterbalanced by Kramer’s earthiness. Their complementary, sometimes conflicting, accounts are punctuated by Thompson and bassist Michael Davis – Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, the group’s second guitarist, never delivers a first-person account yet his presence looms large in most stories – capturing the combative chemistry that shone through on stage and record.