MC5
Back in the USA

"I have neither money, nor resources, nor hopes. I am the happiest man in the world. A year, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. Now I don't think it anymore, I am one. All that was literature has fallen away from me. There are no more books to write, thank God.

And what is this then? This is not a book. It's a pamphlet, slander, defamation. But it's not a book in the usual sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a spit in the face of Art, a kick to Divinity, to Man, to Destiny, to Time, to Love, to Beauty... to whatever you like. I will sing for you, perhaps a bit out of tune, but I will sing. I will sing while you die, I will dance on your filthy corpse...

To sing, you first have to open your mouth. You need a pair of lungs, and some knowledge of music. You don't need an accordion, or a guitar. What matters is wanting to sing.

And so this is song.

I sing"

Beautiful. More than that, fantastic, I would say. Some of you may have recognized these extraordinary words. It's the beginning of "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller.

The question I want to start with is: does a rock work exist that has the same violent and passionate potential as Miller's text? Is there a prolonged insult, a spit in the face of Love and Beauty made with rock music? Has anyone, playing rock, ever danced on our filthy corpses?

Each of you will have your own answer. Punk, heavy metal, grunge bands will be mentioned. They will all surely be respectable answers. I am curious, come forward.

My answer is yes, and for me, something like that was done by MC5 in 1969 with the album "Kick Out The Jam". Anyone who has listened to it even once will surely have been more than struck by how "ahead" these artists were. It's really hard to believe that this concert took place at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in 1969 and not ten years later.

Nevertheless, there’s nothing to be done. That incredible concert, with its explosive violence making the Sex Pistols or the Damned of 1977 seem dull, took place in distant 1969 and, besides projecting MC5 into the rock star firmament, constituted a formidable platform for the ideas of their manager, mentor, and inspirer, the leader of the revolutionary socialist and anti-racist movement of the White Panthers John Sinclair.

But it is not "Kick Out The Jam" that I want to talk about here. After all, it is a work that has received all its due recognition. The best critics have certainly not underestimated this work, and many claim it is the greatest live album in rock history. I privately share this opinion.

The story I want to tell here is about the next MC5 album, recorded in 1970 for the Atlantic label and titled "Back in the USA," and how the American System, so violently attacked by MC5’s debut album, managed to silence and definitively extinguish the voice of this revolutionary band.

The following is told in broad strokes, a story that reeks of compromise to get by. I respect you, and so I will warn you when it’s time to hold your nose.

So let's go back to that distant 1969, following the release of the album "Kick Out The Jam". That scream from singer Rob Tyner that started the concert:

"And right now... right now... right now it's time to... kick out the jams, motherfuckers!!!!!!"

was quite shocking, given the era. Thus, the public didn’t immediately grasp the potential of the work, which would be re-evaluated only several years later (no different from what happened to the New York Velvet Underground). However, the “spit in the face of Love and Beauty” had indeed launched, but not so much in front of the audience as at the country’s Powerful ones, politicians, financiers, generals, Freemasons, entrepreneurs, in short, those who hold the real power in every country in the world.

So, in a room on the 79th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, shadows in dark suits sitting around a table began to ponder how to silence these dangerous artists.

It's hard not to believe that the events that followed weren’t premeditated and didn’t follow a precise strategy. Really hard.

First, they silenced John Sinclair. For the possession of a few grams of weed (precisely two joints) he got TEN years TEN in prison. The sentence was so absurd and unjust that it sparked general protest in America. Many rock stars, with John Lennon at the forefront, started a campaign to raise awareness about the injustice suffered by this intellectual. However, in the meantime, they threw him in jail.

Then they turned their attention to MC5, who were Sinclair’s megaphone. Their label, none other than the multinational Elektra, did something strange and suspicious: under the pretense of the drug arrest of the group’s manager, they terminated the contract with MC5. A decision absurd and all the more suspicious if one closely follows what happened subsequently.

Simultaneously with Elektra’s dismissal, another record multinational, Atlantic, came forward offering MC5 a contract under the same conditions as the previous one.

ALMOST the same conditions. Just a couple of additional clauses, nothing major: MC5 had to drop their old manager, who was in jail preparing an appeal against that absurd sentence, and accept for the future a producer chosen by the record company. The person in question was Jon Landau.

Jon Landau was an excellent professional (in subsequent years he would work extensively with Bruce Springsteen), but with ideas extremely different from Sinclair’s: preferably no protests, no spits in anyone's face, but from now on, healthy and clean rock'n'roll. That nice old-fashioned rock'n'roll, Chuck Berry, that kind of thing.

Jon Landau was reasoning like this: you want to protest? I don't agree, but if you really insist, do it quietly. Lower your voices, calm down, and clean up. Then, if you want to express yourselves against the Vietnam war or against the System’s hypocrisy, (I don’t agree, I repeat), well, go ahead, but gently, with generic and harmless words. And enough with those sulfurous and interminable solos. Enough with this ridiculous… what do you call it? Ah, psychedelia. From now on, pieces of 3 or 4 minutes and no more. And also enough with mentally ill people like Sun Ra or folks like that. Little Richard or Chuck Berry. Clean faces from now on.

What did MC5 do? Did they tell Atlantic, Landau, and company to go to hell? Did they form a small independent label to resume the fight? Did they join John Lennon for Sinclair’s release?

That would have been wonderful. But no. Unfortunately, it didn’t go that way. And now, hold your nose.

They accepted Atlantic’s proposal. They dropped Sinclair while he was locked in jail and preparing the appeal to that absurd sentence. They signed with Atlantic and accepted Landau’s anti-revolutionary and reactionary ideas.

This explains why at the concert organized in 1971 by Lennon and company for Sinclair’s release, dozens of musicians and writers participated (just to name a few, Yoko Ono, David Peel, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs, Bob Seger, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, poets Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders) but MC5 were not allowed to take the stage. If they had done so, they would have been booed off.

Here is the context in which "Back in the USA" was born. I won't say anything about this album because there is nothing to say except that it doesn’t seem to be the same band that played "Kick Out The Jam" the previous year and that it is a completely insignificant album. But what "protopunk"? This is mere light water!

I conclude with the epilogue of the story: in 1972 Sinclair won the appeal, obtaining a Supreme Court ruling that has become a landmark in American jurisprudence, recognizing his civil rights. He was released after little more than a year of incarceration and now lives in Amsterdam, where he continues to spit in the face of power through a radio show.

MC5 were heavily punished by their audience. "Back in the USA" was an utter flop and so was the next album, to the point that by 1972 the band had to disband due to bankruptcy.

In a room on the 79th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, one shadow in a suit and tie said to another, "congratulations, good job. You will go far!".

What remains is "Kick Out The Jam". Fortunately, the System could not make all the vinyls of that masterpiece disappear.

MC5, who in 1969, but only that year, danced on our filthy corpses...

P.S.

The story of the ten years of jail given to an annoying poet for the possession of two joints, a story that scandalized all of America in 1971, is recounted by the web magazine “Ondarock” (by Francesco Nunziata) like this (hold your nose again):

"Irreducible and ultra-politicized, MC5 are a cancer from which America has never been able to free itself. After the album’s release, the band couldn’t enjoy its moment of glory, since Sinclair was arrested for a shady drug affair."

Then, as if not content, they even manage to qualify "Back in the USA" as "the definitive proto-punk album".

The definitive album! Not peanuts.

I doubt they deigned to listen to it. Kudos to "Ondarock". Truly excellent journalism!