LENNON PLAYS THE JOHN SINCLAIR FREEDOM RALLY ’71
“THE GIG WAS TERRIFIC” Sinclair and MC5’s Wayne Kramer talk government pressure and happy endings.
WAYNE KRAMER: “I was at the Rally, but at that event the MC5 were personae non grata. John had been our manager but by then our relationship with his family and friends was acrimonious. They thought we’d abandoned him – which was not the case. On a human level, and I know this from experience [Kramer later served two years for drug-related charges], when you get ready to do a prison term it’s traumatic, and John was facing an unbelievably harsh sentence. There was never going to be a good resolution, however you looked at it. I did the best I could at that time, arranging for him to continue getting a percentage of MC5 monies to support his family, but he rejected that offer. I made the offer to his wife, too, then they rejected us for selling John out. So you had people with great passion and emotional investment… it was overwhelming for everybody. But the good news was that the gig was terrific, the kind of cultural event we’d been working towards for four or five years, and it got John out of jail and we won his case. I served a jail sentence myself, and when I came out John and I became friends again. He was one of the great countercultural figures of my generation, who took a courageous stance and fought back. But it was forced on him – he was really a poet who liked jazz and blues, and wanted to be left alone to do what he wanted to do. And smoke a little weed.”
JOHN SINCLAIR: “In prison, I didn’t have any problem with the other inmates, because I spoke up for the under-privileged. I gained a tremendous amount of respect. But my second child was born while I was in prison and my other one went from being two to four; it’s too painful even to think about, even now. The phone call I made from prison to the concert [broadcast over the PA] – I was terrified. I was scared the guards would hear what was going on, drag me out of the booth and throw me in the hole. I was quaking with fear, you can hear it in my voice, but I looked out and the guards were listening to a baseball game. When they called me into the office on the Monday I thought I was getting punished, but instead they said they were posting my bond. ‘You’re going home tonight.’ I thought I was going to the hole for 30 days! I met John and Yoko afterwards in NYC. He’d written the song John Sinclair for the show, so I’d become a hero of the counterculture. It had become TV news. We talked about doing a left-wing tour, but then the government came after Lennon and he withdraw from everything. Do I see my release today as a turning point? To some extent, but look at President Trump – it’s hard to feel positive about things when he’s trying to dismantle everything we worked towards. But more states are legalising cannabis, so that’s good.” As told to Pat Gilbert
John Sinclair’s Beatnik Youth Ambient mini-album is out on July 28 on Iron Man Records.