LENNON, STEVIE WONDER ET AL PLAY JOHN SINCLAIR FREEDOM RALLY, 1971
He was the MC5 manager, agitator and White Panther Party co-founder who got 10 years in prison, on trumped up drug charges, from the Nixon administration. Then the underground rallied for John Sinclair’s release at the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan
John Sinclair talks acid, jail; gig-volunteer Commander Cody recalls ‘spaced’ Lennon.
JOHN SINCLAIR: “The basis for what happened to me was the War On Drugs, which came from a memo from [White House policy chief] John Ehrlichman to Richard Nixon, recognising that the ‘problem’ with society was black people and hippies. They thought they could use the forces of government against these two areas, under the rubric they were protecting people from drug abuse. They were most scared of the Black Panther Party, they oppressed them viciously. We formed
the White Panther Party to show our support, and to display our political principles outside [of just music]. Was that a courageous thing to do? (Pause) OK, we were on acid, the whole bunch of us, so we were fearless! We were already under constant attack. You couldn’t play a gig without fear of being shut down by the police. In LA and San Francisco
they had the Summer of Love; in Detroit we had the National Guard out and tanks in the street to quell rioting. It was like a war. We were hippies and the five pillars of hippydom were long hair, not having a job, fucking, rock’n’roll and not joining the army. Then one day an undercover policewoman asked me for a joint; it was Christmas [1969] so I gave her two. As manager of the MC5 and a political activist, the police didn’t like me much. It took two and half years to move [the case] forward – I wanted to adjudicate the issue inthe Michigan court of whether marijuana was a narcotic and that, for two joints, the sentence of 10-years-to-life was a cruel and unusual punishment. But I had to take the conviction before it could be appealed. But when they put me in prison they wouldn’t give me an appeal bond. They said I was a danger to society, for giving away two joints (laughs)! I knew they were organising the rally at the [15,000-
capacity] Crisler Arena, there was Phil Ochs, Archie Shepp, Commander Cody, people who couldn’t draw 500 people… but when they announced John Lennon and Yoko Ono were going to play, it was unbelievable. John Lennon in Ann Arbor – come on?! Then Stevie Wonder called and asked if he could play too. It sold out in three hours.”
COMMANDER CODY (AKA GEORGE FRAYNE): “John Sinclair has been a good friend of mine for 50 years. So when he went to prison we were more than happy to help him out. When we heard he was getting 10 years we were totally shocked. We were going to do the gig with Bob Seger and others, then John Lennon was thrown in because they knew it would sell out the gig. But on the night he wasn’t very nice – he wouldn’t talk to anybody, he wouldn’t shake my hand. And the reason for this was the immense amount of coke he’d taken. It turned out he’d been driven all the way to Ann Arbor from New York, or so the story goes. I knew the security guard in the Crisler Arena, and said, Hey man, where’s Lennon’s limo? Can I sit in it? I got in and there was so much cocaine in the back seat I went and got an 8”x11” piece of paper, scraped it all up and took it back to the dressing room. I made 10 bundles out of it and sold it to my band, a few other people (laughs). By the time the show was on, everybody was so blasted! It was a gigantic blur of a mess, as you can see from the film [Steve Gebhardt’s 1971 documentary Ten For Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally]. But in 1971, it wasn’t just Lennon, everyone – and I mean everyone – was enthusiastic about coke, me included. It was only four years later people realised perhaps it wasn’t such a good thing. As far as the concert went, it was good to support John. The atmosphere was bad. The cops, they didn’t call them ‘Pigs’ for nothing. I had cops handcuff me, push me around, I got gassed and beat up in the Berkeley riots. But the Rally for John showed we were growing in power. In the end, they had to turn people away, it was national news.”