‘An Ann Arbor legend.’ Wayne Kramer, co-founder of rock band MC5, dies at 75

ANN ARBOR, MI — Wayne Kramer, co-founder and guitarist for the seminal proto-punk rock band MC5, has died.

He was 75.

Legends are still told about how the band, known for anti-establishment lyrics and kicking out the jams in boisterous fashion, moved to Ann Arbor from Detroit in 1968 and became part of a new radical left countercultural movement.

Managed by marijuana activist John Sinclair, whose entire commune of hippie activists famously relocated to Ann Arbor and started the White Panther Party, the band rocked out in their garage on Hill Street for hours every day and put on high-energy shows in West Park that the city eventually shut down.

“Everybody was on acid at West Park. We just had a ball at that motherf*****,” Sinclair once recalled, noting they called themselves “acid freeks,” spelled with two Es like “free.”

Ann Arbor’s West Park kicked out the jams in the 1960s — then the city shut it down

Kramer died Friday, Feb. 2, in Los Angeles from pancreatic cancer, The New York Times reported, crediting the MC5 for helping set the stage for punk rock and inspiring generations of bands, including the Clash, Sex Pistols and Ramones.

“An Ann Arbor legend,” City Council Member Dharma Akmon, D-4th Ward, said of Kramer in a Facebook post.

The Ann Arbor District Library reflected on the passing of Kramer on Friday, noting AADL has a pair of interviews with the late rocker available, as well as books and music that library patrons can request to celebrate his life and career.

AADL’s online archives also include photos and articles about Kramer and the MC5.

In a 2012 interview with AADL’s staff while in town for the 40th anniversary of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, Kramer reflected on his life and career, discussing what influenced his music, struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, the Vietnam War protest era and how he used an American flag motif on his guitar to make a political statement that he disagreed with American policies but was still expressing his patriotism and belief in the founding principles of the United States.

He recalled having the police called on the MC5 for performing loud music with profanity in West Park and how police came to their house to see if they were trying to start a violent revolution.

“We had some romantic ideas about what violent revolution meant. We were frustrated as young people in America,” Kramer said. “We were in agreement as a generation that the direction the country was going in was wrong, that the war was wrong, that the way people of color were treated was wrong, that the marijuana laws were wrong, that Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were wrong. It was all wrong. And we rejected it.”

The city ended up taking legal action against the MC5 for unauthorized concerts in the park and at one point all five members were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct.

Watch the MC5 perform at West Park in 1969.

That wasn’t Kramer’s only run-in with the law. Later in the 1970s, he spent two years in prison for trying to sell cocaine to undercover agents.

By the time he sat down with AADL in 2012, Kramer had started a nonprofit organization called Jail Guitar Doors USA with a mission to provide musical instruments to prisoners. He ran the charitable organization with his wife, Margaret, out of a Hollywood studio where he made a comfortable living composing music for movies and television, The Associated Press reported.

“And it’s the best stuff I do, delivering guitars and talking to prisoners,” Kramer told AADL. “Because I feel like half the time they’re the only people that really understand what I’m talking about. Because I know these guys. I am those guys.”

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