Don Was has spoken to NME about working on the first MC5 album in 53 years and the sad loss of the band’s sole surviving member Wayne Kramer to cancer just months before its release.
Kramer died back in February, something that Was described as “a real shock”.
“He certainly didn’t know that he wouldn’t be here to talk about it,” Was told NME. “He didn’t know that he was that sick until about 10 days before he died.”
The new album, titled ‘Heavy Lifting’ and out today (October 18), is the first album under the MC5 name since 1971’s ‘High Time’ and features a starry cast of players including Was on bass and Tom Morello and Slash on guitar.
Was claimed that the fittingly impassioned, political and altruistic album – previewed with the singles ‘Boys Who Play With Matches’ and ‘Can’t Be Found’ – wasn’t initially mooted as an MC5 record.
“Everyone was there to work with Wayne,” he said. “I honestly can’t remember how the concept [of making it an MC5 album] got introduced. I’m not even sure that that was the intention going in. [But] it was certainly to capture the spirit of that music, not just to be 18 again, but what would that music sound like if people in their seventies played it? Can you keep that rebellious spirit alive? Can a 75-year-old put that edge on? I think the answer is yes.”
Check out our full interview below, where Was told NME about famous friends, politics, and keeping the punk spirit of MC5 alive.
NME:Hi Don. How did you come to be on the record?
Don Was: “Wayne just called me to come play. I welcomed any chance to play with Wayne Kramer for most of my life. I didn’t know what he had in mind, really, but I was honoured he called me and I showed up.”
Did you get an impression of why he wanted to do an MC5 record after all these years?
“Yeah I did. One point I think that is important to make is that he understood that it was not the five guys from MC5. No one went in there thinking, ‘Alright, we’re the new MC5. Like anyone in their 70s and going forward from that point would think, he was concerned with making sure that the ethos of the MC5 was understood and perpetuated. Now, I was his prime audience. I’m only about three years younger than him, but that was huge if you’re a teenager.
“I grew up in Detroit going to see the MC5. I saw him for the first time when they opened for the Dave Clark Five at the hockey arena, and they were wearing suits, which is pretty wild. I liked the Dave Clark Five, but the MC5 blew them off the stage. I’d gone to see them in all their incarnations, dropped acid and gone to the Grande Ballroom, the whole thing, and MC5 represented an accelerated level of teenage rebelliousness. It was not just angst about your dad taking the car away or your girl going to the prom with somebody else. It had a worldview, and they understood that you could win the hearts and minds of young people with serious rock’n’roll and then turn them on to some more worldly concerns.
“This was rock’n’roll that wasn’t just about teenage angst. It was about changing the world by whatever means necessary. It looks a little like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight when you look back retrospectively at a bunch of hippies trying to start a revolution, but in the moment it was very serious and it represented a kind of optimism and activism that had previously not been mobilized through rock’n’roll.”
Did you get any idea of why he left it so long to make the album?
“I don’t know that Wayne ever left it. If you go through his solo records, you find him talking about meaningful things, always. He’s got a song that was on his ‘Citizen Wayne’ album called ‘Revolution In Apt. 29’, about failed revolutionaries, highly unmotivated. He talked the talk and walked the walk. He did a lot of stuff that flew under the radar in terms of trying to help people.
“In general, the whole ’60s revolution idea, I think, went from thinking that you could change every government and overthrow it, to thinking ‘One person at a time, I’m going to go in and try to help people get better lives’. And Wayne did that. He was very active in AA, people wouldn’t know that but he sponsored hundreds of people, myself included, and saved a lot of lives like that.
“I played with him at Sing Sing prison, which is a serious maximum-security prison in the United States, in upstate New York. We played a show there, we had Billy Bragg and Perry Farrell and Tom Morello, a bunch of us. He led an AA meeting before that, and he combined that with a rock’n’roll message and the message of the Jail Guitar Doors thing that he was so active in. He founded that, where he was trying to let incarcerated guys know that there was a better life awaiting and that maybe music would help them get out and find something to do. And he lived by example.
“He did time, and he came out and kept going back to prisons for the rest of his life, not as a prisoner, but to demonstrate that you can rise from the ashes and make something out of your life.”
With yourself, Slash and Tom Morello involved, was it an egos at the door affair?
“It was so relaxed, man. We had a really nice time. We just had fun for about four days. And it was not only great to play with Wayne, but it was great to be produced by Bob Ezrin, who’s someone I’ve admired for many, many decades.”
Were there any moments that stood out of from the studio?
“It was a feeling we got when the thing connected, or we stayed with the song ‘til we connected. When it connected, you could feel the energy in the room alter. And in a way that I remember from the Grande Ballroom. We elevated to Grande Ballroom level energy exchange. There’s no better thing in music than having that happen.”
Do you think ‘Heavy Lifting’ is a fitting finale to the MC5 story?
“I’m glad he did it. There was originally the talk about calling it, ‘We’re All MC5’, which is really what the point is. I’m not sure where Wayne chose to change it, but the idea is to remind everybody that rock’n’roll isn’t meant to be tame, self-indulgent music. It can be tapped to make the world better, make lives better. I think that was really the intention of the MC5, and that was Wayne’s intention throughout life. And calling it MC5 is a good way to make that point.
“He didn’t know the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame or any of that shit was gonna happen, and he certainly didn’t know that he wouldn’t be here to talk about it. That was a shock. And he didn’t know that he was that sick until about 10 days before he died.”
‘The Edge Of The Switchblade’ looks back on the glory days of the MC5 – a heartwarming moment?
“Absolutely. If you knew Wayne and saw what his mindset was, you could see how it’s a direct outgrowth of what he did 50 years ago. He just became wiser and more sophisticated and more effective in his delivery.”
The album tackles social disintegration (‘Change, No Change’), warfare (‘Black Boots’) and the January 6 insurrection in the US (‘Barbarians At The Gate’). What do you make of the politics on the record?
“It’s more sophisticated. It’s wiser. If you came to the ’60s thinking that you were part of a revolution, and then you saw the state of the world today, you would say the revolution failed. But that doesn’t mean you should stop and surrender. I guess that’s maybe the point of the record. Be more effective, be smarter, but don’t lose the mission.”
‘Blind Eye’ seems to summarise Wayne’s core philosophy: “In my America, everybody’s free…I see no hunger, I see no fear”.
“I don’t think he ever stopped being that guy and I think this is his most articulate and and musically potent statement. It’s a heck of a way to go out, to be on top of your game like that.”
‘Heavy Lifting’ by MC5 is out now