Wayne Kramer Discusses the MC5, guitars, and his new jazz project

Wayne Kramer’s Jail Guitar Doors

(Guitar Shop TV  Editor Alex Baker shared his excellent interview with legendary MC5’s Wayne Kramer in this far reaching article. Guitar Shop TV offers the latest in guitars, music, artists, venues, and lifestyles.)

As a founding member of the MC5, Wayne Kramer is arguably one of the most influential American rock guitarists to emerge from the 1960s era. The MC5’s revolutionary stance and proto-punk sound were ahead of their time and while they never became a huge success, they’ve been massively influential on generations of bands since then. After the MC5 broke up, Wayne did a two-year stint in prison for dealing cocaine. Today, he is a successful soundtrack composer, responsible for scoring films like Talladega Nights and shows like Eastbound and Down. Wayne took a few minutes to talk to GSTV about the MC5, guitars, his upcoming jazz album and a project to get guitars into the hands of prisoners he’s involved with.

GSTV: Thanks for talking to GSTV.

Thanks for the opportunity to blab (Laughs).

GSTV: Full disclosure, I’m a big fan and listened to Back in the USA this morning on my run. It’s my go-to rock and roll cardio album because it’s just 30 minutes of pure energy.

It’s a lot of up-tempo songs.

GSTV: It must’ve been shocking the first time people heard that album.

I think it was shocking, I think that it threw people. It flew in the face of the trends of the day which were 10 minute drum solos and 15 minute guitar solos and kind of Sixties marijuana haze of indulgence. And you know my goal with the record really was to counter some of the criticism that we got because the first album was so wild and so undisciplined and unrestrained. I like all those things but I just kind of wanted to prove to the world that the MC5 was actually a great band that we could write great songs and we could play in time and in tune if we wanted to.

GSTV: And in the process you accidentally invented punk.

Well it’s been interesting to me because we were starting to go to Europe on tour when that record came out and Kick Out the Jams never really found a foothold in Europe. But later, like after I came home from prison, and I went back to Europe as a solo artist, I started to meet the Clash and Nick Lowe and Billy Bragg and all those guys would tell me that Back in the USA was the record that inspired them. I think Kick Out the Jams might’ve been just too over the top for them or maybe they were too young, I don’t know. But Back in the USA was everything they were talking about. It was short concise songs that were direct and to the point that didn’t dilly-dally about with indulgent soloing and kind of faux theatricality.

GSTV: Why do you think America took so long to pick up on punk? You could argue that it really didn’t happen until Green Day in 1994.

Well I think the music scene in Britain is condensed compared to America. It’s a much smaller country with you know a handful of radio stations that really control what people hear and what gets exposed so if a trend does emerge, like punk rock, everybody knows about it right away. America on the other hand is massive, it’s a gigantic place and it takes a huge amount of effort and capitol to launch a comparable movement. So I think the only way it can happen is organically and it took what it took, it took 30 years.

GSTV: That puts you in good company with bands like the Velvet Underground who also didn’t sell many records but influenced thousands of bands.

Well that’s very kind of you to say and I think what’s interesting about records, a good record captures a moment in time and captures some original joy. And the MC5 never went on to fame and fortune (laughs) and now most of the band members are gone and now it’s kind of locked in amber. It’s locked in time, it’s a pure moment when those records were made and that seems to hold up pretty well down through the years.

GSTV: I’ll say. Are there bands you hear today that when you hear them, you think, “Oh, they must like our records.”

Yeah I suppose, I kind of, you know you gotta be careful with that kind of stuff, because grandiosity can creep into the picture there.

GSTV: Okay, let me let you off the hook for that and just ask you to name a couple bands out there that you like.

Yeah I mean of course I like Rage Against the Machine, they’re like my little brothers and certainly have carried on in a tradition of feed the homeless, fight the power and rock the fuck out!

(Laughing)

But you know I’ll tell you, they’re kind of dated now but the one band that I’ve heard in recent time that I thought at least was true to the spirit of the MC5 was Dirty Projectors. They don’t sound anything like the MC5 but the idea of really working hard to come up with you own sound, to have an original take on the form, I like them a lot. And I heard a new Prince track the other day that was just terrific and I was trying to find it on the Internet. I don’t know what the name of it was or anything but it was really stripped down with just funky rhythm guitar and drums, I’m gonna keep searching for it.

I like Skrillex. I think he’s kind of true to the spirit of the MC5 in taking all the tools that are available and converting them into his sound, his voice. I always felt like all the bands that came after the MC5 that bashed away on their guitars were kind of missing the point. The idea was don’t do what we did, do what you do!

GSTV: Speaking of guitars, you’re a guy who’s associated with one of the most iconic guitars in rock; the red, white and blue Fender Stratocaster. At the time MC5 was this anti-establishment, revolutionary, proto-punk group. Why’d you paint your guitar patriotic colors?

I’ve always been a great fan of Pete Townshend you know he was hugely influential on me when I was a young man with the kind of stuff he was doing and I noticed that he incorporated the Union Jack into a sport coat. And I thought that’s clever, I like that. But I’m an American, what can I do? I was always looking for a way to help the band have a look and a sound and a total assault on the culture.

So I thought I’m an American and the symbol, the flag, the stars and stripes, is my flag to, especially when I considered that the direction the country was going in was wrong that the Vietnam war was wrong, that the way people of color in America were treated was wrong, that the drug laws were wrong and you know, democracy is participatory and you know it’s out job to complain when things aren’t right so I felt like this was a way I could express my patriotism and my rebellion and my disgust with Richard Nixon and John Mitchell and that whole gang that lied us into those wars and J Edgar Hoover and the creepy shit he was doing. It was just a way as an artist to express my revulsion with these people and their immoral and unethical practices.

GSTV: Aside from the paint job, can you tell me what else was special about that guitar? Looks like it had a humbucker?

Yeah, the story on that was the MC5 emerged at the time when live sound reinforcement is nothing like it is today. We didn’t even know what monitors were until we played the Fillmore East, they just didn’t exist. So all the impact of a live performance came from these stacks of Marshall amplifiers, 100 watt Marshalls with two speaker cabinets or sometimes four speaker cabinets. Sometimes we used two heads each and four cabinets so we were unbearably loud. It was shocking how loud it was.

But as a two guitar band, I had a problem of how do I get my solos just a little bit louder so I can be louder than Fred Smith, at least for the solos. And the humbucker pickup, it’s a dual coil, it’s wrapped a little heavier, and it’s a little bit louder. So I had a guy I knew that worked on our guitars put that in the middle just so that when the solo came I had a little extra just so I could get people to hear me.

As it turns out, it really makes the guitar unique because you can combine, you can get that tone alone and you can combine it with the bridge pickup and the neck pickup to get a completely unique take on the Stratocaster, it opens the guitar up to a whole new range of tonal possibilities.

I was very proud of Fender for really putting the work in to get it right. We went through a lot of permutations and various prototypes and we’d send them back and I’d say no, it’s not right, it’s not right. Because I felt like if they’re gonna do this and I’m gonna put my name on it, it better be a good guitar.