MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band

A series of interviews conducted by late music journalist Edmonds with band members and associates of MC5 anchors this immersive account of the proto-punk group. Fleshing out those exchanges with narrative sections, music journalists Tolinski (coauthor of Play Loud) and Uhelszki depict a musically vibrant 1960s Detroit where high school friends Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith started playing guitar together. “Weirdo” vocalist Rob Tyner joined soon after, bringing a “contrarian spirit” that fueled the band’s intense, energetic sound and countercultural ethos. After a performance for antiwar demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention turned into “a full-scale police riot,” MC5 became “the darlings of the growing hippie underground.” Yet their revolutionary mindset, the authors suggest, may also have cut short their career. The 1969 album Kick Out the Jams was pulled from record stores due to profanity and subsequent albums saw little label support. By 1972, the band members had gone their separate ways, though they reunited for performances in subsequent years. Contextualized by vivid background on the political and artistic upheavals of the 1960s, the band members’ own words jump off the page, bringing alive creative clashes, charged group dynamics, and the excitement of a Detroit underground filled with hippies, beatniks, rockers, and radicals. It’s a scintillating portrait of a band that punched far above its weight. (Oct.)