SPIN revisits a 1997 interview with the MC5 guitarist, who died on Feb. 2, 2024 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
This article was originally published in the June 1997 edition of SPIN. In memory of“Punk had a different meaning in prison,” recalls Wayne Kramer with a hearty laugh. “It wasn’t anything I wanted to be associated with.” Kramer’s jailhouse reticence is understandable, but as far as the accusation of providing a sonic blueprint for punk rock, he’s guilty as charged.
Kramer and the late Fred “Sonic” Smith were the dual guitar attack for the MC5, one of the leading exponents of late ’60s Detroit-area horsepower that helped paved the way for not just punk but heavy metal as well. Wedding the out-there explorations of Sun Ra with the down-there exhortations of Chuck Berry, “Citizen Wayne” and the Five performed with a ferocity unmatched by anything except the radical militancy of their political beliefs.
It was such a fervent stance, in Kramer’s view, that it got the MC5 “crushed out of the music business.” After the band’s dissolution in 1972, Kramer turned to heroin and alcohol for solace, supporting his habits by “scamming anything that would turn a profit.” He ended up serving 26 months in a federal prison in the mid-’70s for cocaine trafficking, then scraped together various ill-fated band projects before relocating a few years ago to Los Angeles.
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