HALF A CENTURY OF SHRED

50 YEARS ON, KICKOUTTHEJAMS STILL REIGNS AS A PROTO-PUNK CLASSIC. SARAH COMEY CATCHES UP WITH THE LEGEND BEHIND IT RIGHT BEFORE MC50 LAND DOWN UNDER.

Unless you’ve spent the bulk of your life wearing military-grade earplugs, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the fretwork of – or at least some inspired by – Wayne Kramer. The MC5 leader makes the term ‘virtuoso’ seem like a participation trophy, and weilding his Stratocaster like a rifle aimed squarely at the core of the machine, he kick-started a revolutionary chapter of the political punk movement.

2020 marks a prodigious 50 years since the release of MC5’s debut – the rough ‘n’ rugged, yet luminescent

KickOutTheJams – and though it’s grown some dust around the edges, the OG live recording still a crucial listen for any self-respecting music lover. With the revitalised MC50 project, Kramer is set to take Kick

Out The Jams on a stint through Australian arenas in March. Of course, we needed to get in on this hype.

I hear you’re in the studio with Alice Cooper?

That’s true! We’ve written a bunch of songs and done a bunch of fascinating covers, and I think it’s going to be a pretty interesting record. It really rocks. We had some really great players on the sessions, and we all had a good time doing it. It was hard work, but that’s the name of the game!

What can you tell us about the experience you had making the record?

Well, we were all playing together live, like a band. We had Paul Randolph on bass, Garrett Bielaniec on guitar, and the great Johnny “Bee” Badanjek from The Detroit Wheels on drums – there was a rocking little powerhouse of a band, and we had Alice and his producer Bob Ezrin with us all the way through it all.

That’s the only way you can make music that has genuine heart to it. You need to follow the path the song is taking you on, not what might seem like the most technically proficient path.

Exactly. I remember I played a couple of solos where I would take a pass at one and then I’d say, “Here, let me do another one.” And then I’d record a second one and think, “Well, technically that one was better,” and Bob would say, “Nah, the first one had the juice in it, let’s go with that one.”

What are you most excited to get up to on this arena tour with MC50 and Alice?

Well, the Australians are kind of like Detroiters to me. The people in Detroit, they work hard and they play hard. I always have that feeling about Australians – that they work hard and then play hard, and when they come to a show, if the band really puts it on up there onstage, the audiences respond with great fervour. To me, it’s very inspiring to know when people are really enjoying what you’re doing. I want them to enjoy it as much as I’m enjoying it, y’know?

There’s always been such a powerful message behind the music of MC5, which is arguably as relevant as ever today. Do you see touring these days as an opportunity to reach a new generation with that message?

No question about it. When we come to Australia, 99 percent of the people in the audiences will not know a great deal about the MC5; y’know, their older brothers will and their parents will, but they won’t. This’ll be the first time they’ve ever been exposed to it, and I think they’ll be pleasantly blown away. At the risk of tooting my own horn, we’re a great band! We slay live and we really rock hard, and I think audiences know what that means when they hear it, and I think they’ll respond appropriately. I’m really looking forward to it.

You’ve got a brilliant lineup with you on this run, too. How did you manage to pull together such a supergroup team?

Once I made the decision to move forward with MC50, it was just a matter of calling up all my friends to see if they were available – if they thought it sounded like fun. That was really the criteria. Because not to brag, but I don’t really need the money from this tour – I have another job writing music for film and television, which I enjoy very much – so if I can’t have fun doing this, I’d rather do something else. And so I just looked for guys that would be fun to play with.

The main thing was that they had to be good people. Y’know, when you tour with somebody, you’re around them all the time. Sometimes you don’t get to eat right, usually you don’t get a lot of sleep, and you’re always in motion. I wanted people that understood that from the get-go, that were professionals, that had been down this road before – and all of the guys in the group have been in touring bands all their adult lives. They know exactly how it goes and they all have a great, mutual respect for each other.

They also have a great intellectual curiosity about the world that we’re all travelling through, so that makes it an enjoyable experience for me. I like their company and I like coming up with ideas with them, and to me, that’s the real payoff.

As guitarists, what’s your chemistry like with Kim Thayil in particular?

We ebb and flow in an interesting way. We come from two different generations of guitar players, but there are things that connect us – we both love the hard rock of the ‘60s, all the Hendricks and the Yardbirds and The Who and Jeff Beck. And then he can bring all of his experience in Soundgarden to the table, and the way they approach things. All of that was completely their own and uniquely original. And I can bring what my experience has been in jazz and funk and early rock ’n’ roll. The good news about Kim is that he keeps an open mind. I can present him with unorthodox ideas on the guitar, and once he figures out how to do it, he’ll embrace the challenge.

What’s your current go-to guitar setup?

I have a custom Stratocaster that Fender made for me – it’s a reproduction of the one I played in the early days of the MC5. I also just bought myself an effects processor called the Helix, which sounds unbelievable, and we all play through Fender Hot Rod DeVille amps.

What is it about that classic Stratocaster sound that you just can’t shake?

It’s more than just the sound, it’s the feel of the guitar itself – the action of the resistance of the strings against the fretboard, the position of the volume control knob… I recently started to realise that I control everything through one volume knob on my guitar – I change it a thousand times in a set. That’s the secret to making the guitar do what I want it to do.