WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Wayne Kramer from 2014

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

Marc's 2014 conversation with Wayne Kramer, co-founder of the legendary rock group MC5, covering the ‘60s, jazz, Iggy Pop, the White Panther Party, prison, drugs and more. Wayne died on February 2, 2024 at age 75. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wayne Kramer is on the show today. This is a very special episode for me because sometimes with musicians, I'm like, holy shit, I can't believe I'm talking to fucking Wayne Kramer. Are you fucking kidding me? Oh my God. I don't know how much you guys know about the MC5,

but the MC5 were the shit, man. They were three albums of the shit. Pure fucking rock and roll at a moment in history that will never come again. Three records of beautiful chaos. I mean, without the MC5, you get no punk rock. You get no Iggy Pop. You get no balls to the walls, rip it open kind of rock and roll comes right out of detroit man late 60s baby never going to be the same again the world is never going to be the same that was

a turning point and these guys were at the center of the hurricane the eye of the storm uh i i didn't even know what to do with Wayne Kramer. I had this opportunity to interview him, and I started listening to the MC5 records. You can listen to all of it, man. There's only a few records, maybe one bootleg. There's only a few records, and then it was over. It was fucking over, and lives went awry lives went rogue man wayne kramer's had at least three lives and and i'm thinking he might have a cat's disposition so i'm listening to the mc5 and uh yeah when wayne kramer comes up you know he drives up and you know wayne kramer's in his 60s now and i'm listening to kick out the jams loud like it's supposed to be listened to and uh i walk out i see him pull up i walk out into the driveway and you can hear the music

pouring out into the street the fucking first tune and i'm walking up the driveway wayne and i'm like do you hear that man do you hear that he's like yeah like you know what that is he's like i don't know what uh i don't know if i do like listen to it do you know what that is? He's like, I don't know. What? Uh, I don't know if I do like, listen to it. Do you know what that is? Uh, no, not, not right off. And, and, and we walk in, I'm like, it's you, man. It's you. He's like, oh, it is me. And then I thought like, it's interesting to sort of, you know, we wait, we put on, you know, entertainers or people that have made an impact on our lives through their art. It's like, you think they live in that. It's like, how could you be Wayne Kramer from the MC5 and not wake up every day thinking about fucking the MC5, man?

Well, in a few minutes, you'll know exactly why. You know, no matter what the fucking amazing, beautiful, fiery alchemy that manifested the music of the MC5. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, man. And, you know, I'm not sure you'd want to live in it. You know what I'm saying? This is a great one, folks. This is a great one. And if you don't know the MC5, go get all three records.

Just go and listen to them in order and enjoy some fucking rock and roll all right let's talk to wayne kramer i had um i had iggy in here sitting right there do you remember him when he was that young? And younger. Yeah. We go way, way, way back. Are you still friends? Very close. He was stunning to me. I had no idea what to expect, and he's incredibly lucid, and he remembers everything, and he's smart.

Very. Always has been. Yeah? Yeah, from back in the day. And he has a unique voice, you know? Oh, yeah. His speech is metaphorical and poetic. I think that he has a very strong distinction between Jim and Iggy.

Yeah. That when he's on stage, he's a performer. He's an entertainer. Yes. When he's off stage, he's an intellectual. He is. He is. That's right. It's fascinating. he is he is that's right it's

fascinating yeah do you ever go back to Detroit pretty regularly you still have family there not much family but you know many great friends and of course Detroit was the home of some of my greatest accomplishments and my most miserable failures uh-huh but what was it like when you were a kid I mean how did you grow up there? Because like, you know, you go, it's one of these, I'm sort of obsessed with the city now. And I'm reading this memoir by this guy that, you know, it's a city that just, it didn't just collapse a little bit. It collapsed completely. It got sucked into a black hole. It's the American Pompeii. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. An economic volcano. It's Katrina-level destruction. When I grew up, I was born there in 1948.

Yeah. I'm an archetypal baby boomer. Uh-huh. And I grew up in a boom town where everything was possible. And what business was the family in? I was raised by a single mother who was a beautician. Uh-huh. business was the family in? I was raised by a single mother who was a beautician. And we lived in two rooms in the back of the beauty shop on Michigan Avenue. And she went out in the day and

did the lady's hair. And she worked at night in the clubs as a barmaid and bartender. And that's how I grew up. And it was Converse sneaker wearing, all-American, sandlot baseball, ride your bike anywhere you want. Yeah. Walk the streets at night. Your dad was— Boys Club of America. Yeah, your dad wasn't around? No, he was an alcoholic, and he got fired.

He got fired from the job of father. Yes. Did you ever track him down? I did. Yeah, how was that experience? old were you about 40 you waited a little while i was i was pretty angry and my therapist tells me i was brokenhearted yeah i feel i think I feel that too, and I know mine. I saw mine last weekend. You try to love someone, they can't love you back. It breaks your heart. That's true, man. It's really that simple, isn't it? And sometimes they think they're loving you,

and they're not. Yeah. So what was it? I mean, what did it take to go see him? Well, I called him on the phone. You hooked him up. My sister found him. I have a younger sister. She was more diligent about it. She found him. So I called him up and I said, is this Stanley? And he said, yes.

And I said, this is Wayne. I think you're my father. Yeah, I am. And he was a very stoic fellow. He was diagnosed already with terminal cancer. So he was dying. Dying. Didn't complain.

Rolled with it. And, you know, it was very awkward, needless to say. Did you go see him or you just did a phone call? Well, I called him. We talked on the phone four or five times over the next year. And then he finally got sick and I thought, I better go see him

and damned if he didn't die on the way out there. No kidding. Yeah. I saw him in his casket. Abandoned you again. Fucker. One last time. And laying in his box, he had a full head of hair. Really pissed me off.

Damn it. So you're in the back of the beauty shop. When did it start to get, what was the moment where, you know, rock and roll corrupted and enlightened your brain there behind the beauty shop? Detroit was famous for its Coney Islands. It's a hot dog with chili and onions. A lot of Greek people in Detroit. I'm Greek. And the Greeks had the Coney Island racket. They had the racket.

Yeah. Was there a lot of Canadians too at that time? Yes. Yes, yes. Absolutely. My grandparents were Canadian. So on the way home from the Boys Club of Detroit, where I would go and being you know, being a latchkey kid and left to my own devices, there was a Coney Island and they had a Seaberg jukebox. And I'd go in there and get a hot dog on the way home and listen to this new music, rock and roll. And I would hear things like Dwayne Eddy's Rebel Rouse with this huge speaker. And Chuck Berry was a big hit then, and Elvis was a big hit.

And the music started to, it spoke to me in a secret code. And then at the same time, my mother was dating a fellow from the South who played the guitar. Oh, yeah? He would come over and sing to her. And I could see the reaction this was engendering. And I said, I want some of that. That guy's got it figured out. So I've been doing an informal poll amongst musicians,

and I find a great many of us were raised by single mothers. Is that true? Tom Morello. Yeah. John Coltrane. Yeah. And many, many more. I think there's something happens without a dad in the picture where we just needed more.

And music. I think that's in general. I know the cats that don't have, whose dads were absent, that made them almost overcompensate. Like push harder. push harder. There's something wrong with a guy that works really hard to put himself in front of 1,500 people and demand that

they show you affection. That's right. And then if you're me, defy that affection. Literally fight the affection. You like me? You still like me? How about after this one? I want this room full of people. Keep them away from me. They love me.

I hate them. You had a little of that, huh? Well, it also, like, when, how far behind the MC5 was, or before the MC5 was Mitch Ryder in that? They were our contemporaries. They were? Yeah. They were the band to beat. Oh, really? Mitch Ryder. Yeah. They were the band to beat. Oh, really?

Mitch Ryder. Yeah, they were the best white rock band in Detroit. And they were terrific. They were spectacular. But you guys, I mean, it feels to me that Mitch Ryder coming more out of that popular music realm, that at some point, whether it was the 60s or the momentum that was going on at the time, you guys wanted to blow it apart, right? Well, yeah, we did.

We were all influenced by the music we were exposed to on the radio and the great history, rich, deep history of music in Detroit. Very deep well of the history of jazz and musicianship in general in Detroit. There was a few high schools that had spectacular music programs. Did you go to one of them? I did not. But by the time the MC5 emerged, we had been exposed to the free jazz movement. I started – John Sinclair, my dear friend and mentor. Is he still around?

Oh, yeah. Now, that's an interesting story. He lives in Amsterdam, of course. Because he had to? Because he is the king of marijuana. And where else would one live? And he has his own brand of marijuana seed. So that's where he's ended up.

He's what he was born to be, which is a beatnik poet. And he has a band. He has a band that exists in a million forms all over the world called the Blues Scholars. And they all play basic blues forms, and he does his poetry over the blues. Okay. He calls it investigative poetry. Oh, that's exciting. Into the stories of the blues.

I like that there is part of the 60s sort of creative spirit that has become kind of trivialized over time and dismissed and mocked, but if there is heart in it, I think it exists in its own place, and the people that appreciate it get it, and the people that don't, fuck them. Yeah, yeah. But was Sinclair always a good force in your life? Yes, always. So when you were just hanging out and listening to music, how did you start playing music? I mean, who were you playing with, and what happened?

Oh, I started in, well, you know, I wanted to learn the guitar. Yeah. And so my mother got me guitar lessons. I think we paid $2.50. Yeah, and what was that first guitar? It was a K. Was that it right there? As a matter of fact, that is it.

That is it? How did you get my guitar? It wasn't an F-hole one? It was like that one? Nah. Is that wild or what? Actually, that one looks a little better than mine. Mine was so nasty, I couldn't even, I couldn't hold, I couldn't play an F-hole.

Like a bow and arrow? Couldn't play, I couldn't hold two strings down at the same time. An inch between the strings and the neck? And I kept studying, and I got more and more obsessed with music, and I would come home from school and just play the guitar until it was time to go to bed. So at a certain point, I decided I wanted to be in a band and I started answering ads for lead guitar player wanted, working, because there was all kinds of work in Detroit in those days. Auto factories went 24-7, a lot of clubs, a lot of bands. But I found that I was a little younger than most of the other guys

that were going on the auditions, and they could all play just a little better than I could. You had to be able to play hideaway. Right, right, right. What is that, Freddie King? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they could play that break in the middle a little better than I could.

So I finally decided to start my own band and started asking around at school, and that's the birth of the MC5. And who was the first one in? Well, it kind of all happened at once. Fred Smith was kind of in a rival band, and then we decided to join forces. Did you go see his band? We would play on the same party. Oh, really? So you had a band?

Oh, yeah, I had a band. What was that called? They were called the Bounty Hunters. Yeah, and what was your big, what was your closing number, man? We did all instrumentals of the era, Ventures, Johnny and the Hurricanes. And you were playing lead on those? Yeah. That was your thing?

That was my thing, yeah. And then you go see Fred Sonic Smith's band, and you're like, that motherfucker's got some chops. Well, I heard, I didn't know that know that he actually he didn't in the beginning i heard at school that this kid fred smith played bongos yeah and i figured a band could use a bongo player sure back then so he came over and then i found out his dad was from the south and they had a guitar at home and i said i'll show you it's easy oh really so one day uh for the one whole, I would go over to his house every day and I'd show him the rhythm parts and I'd play the melodies. Yeah.

That's how we started. And so all the other guys kind of came around from school? From school, yeah, in the neighborhood. The original crew. Who was the original crew? Well, originally it was me, Fred and I, a different rhythm section, a kid named Bob Gasper, a bass player named Pat Burrows. Yeah. And in the beginning, Rob Tyner was going to be our manager.

Yeah. That didn't work out. What was his name before Rob Tyner? Bob DeMiner. Okay, Bob DeMiner. Bob DeMiner was going to be the manager. The only manager that has the personality of a front man. Yes. Right? I think he kind of looked down at Rock. You know, he was listening to jazz and...

High-minded. Yeah. And then the Rolling Stones kind of turned him out. Oh, really? Yeah. So then he decided he wanted to be in the band. So you're like, what, you're how old? 16, 17? He wanted to be your manager? 15. 15. And he was, and Tyner's already like, you know, you guys are doing this easy music. So was his angle sort of like, there's no nuance to rock and roll. There's no, you know, it's for the rabble. Yeah, yeah. I think he just thought that he was just a snob about it, you know. Well, it's pretty impressive that a kid that age is like, you know, jazz head to begin with, isn't it?

And he's the guy that got you guys into jazz, or what? Well, he would go downtown to the artist's workshop and watch these beatnik poetry things with live music. And that's where he met Sinclair. So he said, man, you guys ought to come down and see these

beatniks, man. And we did, and then we met John, and of course these beatniks, man. Yeah. And we did. And then we met John. And, of course, the MC5 was insane. Yeah. And completely unmanageable. Right. Why? Like, in what way?

Well, because we were just defiant. And, you know, anytime there was a set goal, we would be sure to blow it. Uh-huh. As a group. Yeah. But you were jamming. But we rocked, yeah. Yeah, and you were playing your own songs.

Not yet. We're still figuring out how to do what we did. But sound-wise, I mean, because I listened to the newest record, the Lexington record, which is a jazz record for all intents and purposes. Yes? Yes. And the thing right away that I found spectacular was, you know,

you got this fucking dynamic horn section, right, that you've worked with before. And, you know, it's fairly classically structured jazz. It's a little avant-garde in places,

but it's fucking straight up. I mean, if you listen to jazz, it's all going to fall into place. There's nothing new on the record. Well, no, it's not, it's not like slow jazz, it's not groove jazz.

It's fucking hardcore. I mean, it's like, you know, we're going out there. Yeah, yeah. So they're going out there. You hear the horns going out there. You got good bass support. And then there's fucking Wayne Kramer tone. Here comes that fucking dirty guitar sound.

I'm like, oh, yeah. No matter what, you can make sure he stands out in this one. It's not going to be any... You can make sure he stands out in this one. It's not going to be any... Well, you know, that music, the music of Albert Eiler and Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane and Sun Ra spoke to me as the direction of the future. You know, if I could play my best Chuck Berry solo as fast as I can, what do I go next? Yeah. And the bebop guys were asking themselves the same question.

That's why we connected. We all lived in the sameop guys were asking themselves the same question. That's why we connected. We all lived in the same neighborhoods. We all had the same girlfriends. We all loved to smoke weed. We all hung out. We all were trying to move the music forward. You were hanging out with the bebop guys? Yeah.

All right. So, okay. So you guys are defiant in terms of at least cutting against the grain. When did you blow it out? I mean, when you guys started playing and you got all these influences, you got Sun Ra and you got Cecil Taylor, and all this stuff's coming into your head.

Chuck Berry, James Brown. Right, well, yeah, I mean, you can hear it. You can certainly hear it on Kick Out. You can hear it all the way through, really. It gets a little cleaner, but that first live record that I had on when you came in. Now, when I stand out in the driveway and you pull up and I'm going,

can you hear that? And you had to sort of bend your ear to hear it. What did it do? What does it do when you hear that? When you hear you singing on Ramblin' Rose in the first cut of that fucking Kick Out the Jams record and you're standing in my driveway, where does your head go? I don't know. You know, it's just like, I guess, a synapse fires somewhere. Do you have a distance from it?

Can you go back to that show? Do you know? Can you feel what was going on then, now? Well, of course. That's the magic of making records is you can capture that moment of original joy. Yeah. In real life, you can't. Joy passes you. You try to grab a kiss as it goes by because real life, you can't, you know. Yeah. Joy passes you.

You try to grab a kiss as it goes by because that's all you can get. But if you're lucky when you're making records, you can grab it. Well, that record was on fire, man.

I mean, like, you know, you're standing there listening to Tyner, right? Spew that stuff. Yeah. Like, you know, it's like, we got a purpose, man.

Railing at that audience. Yeah. Like, you know, it's like, we got a purpose, man. Railing at that audience. Yes. Imploring them. To what? Revolution. To take action. Take action. Was it clear what action needed to be taken?

I think so. Yeah. I think that, you know, I think what Tyner was railing at, what all of us, last night, Yeah. I participated in a panel discussion with Pussy Riot. with Nadia and Masha and the Great Shepherd Fairy, about arts, arts and corrections, prison, prison reform, and culture and the importance of art in general. And I believe, I have come to believe that art is the only defense we have against the industrial nature of the state on our bodies, state power and corporate power. It's the only portal to freedom. and corporate power.

It's the only portal to freedom. Yes, and it's a powerful one. It's not the most powerful, but it's the most powerful one we have. Because art, in a sense, as an individual even, can free your spirit. Yes. So on that basic level,

I think that when you have a conversation about art can break down or break down or art or the power of art against something so massive is in in and i just realized it just now as i said it is that you know i think the misconception is is that you know art as a movement necessarily uh is going to break down walls but art as something that can free the individual no matter where they are is an important thing. This is my experience working in the prisons today. When we can get guitars in prisoners' hands and task them with telling their story in a song, the barriers between prisoners come down. The gang differences vanish. Racial differences vanish. Class differences vanish.

Because now it's all music. Now we're talking about, how do you play that C chord? Right. Yeah, how does that work? Okay, and then you're trying to write your tune. I mean, that's, the goal of Jail Guitar Doors

is to use music as a tool for habilitation, that one can express themselves non-confrontationally. Right. You know, art is anger management. That's true. And I wish, quite honestly, that I played more guitar than I do. I'm not a professional guitar player. I enjoy playing guitar, but I need to play more. Don't we all?

I'm not a professional guitar player. I enjoy playing guitar, but I need to play more. Don't we all? Jail Guitar Doors is the name of the, what would you call it? It's an independent initiative. And you founded that. Me and Billy Bragg. I had him in here, too.

He was in here. Sweet guy. Very good. Big heart, that guy. I love him more than I can express. You know, when I went down, this new music emerged. They called it punk rock. When you went down.

When I went to prison. Yeah, we got to get there. Can we get through the good times? I'll make note of that. When Wayne went down, punk. And now let's get back to the fun. We're just starting to have fun. So here you guys are, you're just fucking balls of the wall.

And like, you actually, you created a tone. I mean, if you listen to Kick Out the Jams, especially, I mean, you're already outdoing mitch rider in terms of of the of the the the momentum of the music and i imagine you picked up some of that drive from whatever was going on in detroit at the time between the two of you sure sure but but the the pounding fucking tone and the you know blowing out the amps on that shit and you get that crunch going i mean you guys i think, invented that. I tried. Yeah, because without it, you get no Iggy.

You get no Johnny Thunders. There's a whole legacy that you would call punk, I guess, that came after you. So what was the impetus there? You guys are playing Chuck Berry songs, but you're like, fuck it. Turn it up. Well, I found that if I mess with the amp, the higher I ran it, now today I know it's called overtones. That they're harmonic overtones of a tube. A tube trying very hard to manage what you wanted to do.

A tube being asked to do way more than it was designed to do. Right. That all of a sudden I would hear things in a major chord like these overtones. It would sound like a whole symphony. This is fucking great. Listen to this. And then I'd go to recording sessions and I'd set my amp that way. And the engineers would say, turn that down.

It's all distorted. And I'd say, yeah distorted yeah yeah ain't it great no man you want it to go chink chink like a motown man that's a guitar tone you that's that's you punks geez that's awful oh jesus you're gonna blow up my gear and uh so you went through that and that's one of the things you were defiant against. Well, you know, youth wants to find its own voice. Every generation, you know, has to reject orthodoxy. So in retrospect, like, you know, now that you're sort of, you're sober, you're level, you have some peace of mind, you look back at your life, and you're, you know, the jail guitar doors and really sort of contextualizing art and the power of art. But at the time, during, you know, when you meet John Sinclair and the MC5 is coming around, the social climate,

you know, with race and rebellion on behalf of the youth. And this is probably, the Vietnam War is still happening. Big time. 68, 67, 69. Yeah, so you're seeing friends go down. Your body bags are coming back. Yep, yep. So what was the convergence? We were communists.

So when did that start to happen? You guys are a bunch of kids that are just like, fuck you, turn it up. And then all of a sudden, you have three wives or what's going on? Yeah. Well, you know, the communal thing really was pragmatism. I couldn't get the band together to show up at rehearsal. So I said, fuck this.

I'm going to move them all in together. We're all going to live in one place so we can say at three o'clock, we're going to rehearse. That was it? That was it. So that was the ulterior motive. The ulterior motive was it just stressed me out, man, to get these guys to show up to rehearse. So I moved everybody in together, and Sinclair took over the reins as the manager. We tried some show business type managers, and of course, that didn't work.

Fuck them, right? We didn't respect them. We respected John. Had he had any experience managing? No. And what was his fundamental experience as? A poet? As a poet. You know, he had spent six months in the Detroit House of

Corrections for his first marijuana conviction. And he was a walking compendium of popular culture and jazz. So rock and roll was a new thing for him then? We changed his mind. He didn't like the white rockers either. But when he heard the MC5, he thought, well, maybe something's going on here that I should check out. So then what was the sort of cyclone of social relevance that you guys got caught up in? Who brought you there? What was the White Panther movement? Well, you know, that time, the late 60s, was a polarizing time to be a young person in America. I think it's hard for our listeners to grab it unless they were there, because the divisions

were cataclysmic and they were right down the dinner table right you know right dad was all for the war because the world war ii guys were all for the right america and they believe the government yeah and they believe the hype right and we weren't buying it you know my attitude was when the vietcong are coming through the windsor tunnel i'm there right you know otherwise go fuck yourself right now right This is about shell oil. Right. Or something. I don't know, this Cold War ideological thing about the falling dominoes or something.

Yeah. Where is Vietnam? Right, right, right. How is it a threat to us? Yeah, we couldn't justify it. We felt it was an undeclared, illegal war, immoral war. legal war, immoral war. We felt people of color in this country were treated wrong, unfair, unjust.

We thought the drug laws were archaic and, you know, barbaric, medieval. Yeah. And when we – one of our guys was in the county jail and he found a copy of the Black Panther newspaper. Yeah. Which guy? Pun Plamondon. Yeah. Pun became our minister of defense. In the –

In the White Panther Party. One of your guys. In the newspaper, Huey Newton said there needed to be a white group doing parallel work to the Black Panther Party. And, you know, we liked the way they looked, you know. The berets and the sunglasses and the black leather. I said, that's a good look. I liked it. So we said, that's us.

And we got guns and, you know. I mean, we were kind of, they talked about us like we, they called us psychedelic clowns, you know. The Black Panthers did? Yeah. But, you know, we developed a relationship with them. And we were comrades. With Huey? Not with Huey, but with Sam Napier and Bobby Seale.

Oh, really? So you guys would go, you would hang out and go to meetings and talk about strategy? Well, some more than others, you know, because the bottom line was we really weren't Marxist-Leninists. We were rock and rollers. Right. You know, punning those guys would have community meetings and talk about Marxist theory and ideological purity and argue the fine points of the revolution. And you were listening to Sun Ra records. Yeah, and chasing girls.

Yeah. But your heart was in the right place. Yeah, and it all fit together. Right. It all made a whole. And, of course, we made a terrible mistake in embracing the concept of violence as a strategy. As a means to get— To positive change.

Right. Yeah. But how did you get—what was your involvement in that? I mean, did you— We got armed. Yeah. But, I mean, did you use your arms? Well—

If you're going to get yourself in trouble, don't say it, but— I didn't set any bombs. Right. Someone blew up the CIA office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mm-hmm. I didn't set the bomb. I get it. I don't know who, but... I didn't set any bombs. Right. Someone blew up the CIA office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I didn't set the bomb. I get it. I don't know who set the bomb. I get it.

But we embraced this idea of radical militant action. Revolution. And it was a terrible mistake. It was just, in hindsight, of course, it was, I wonder why, you know, did I see too many war movies on TV or cops shoot them up? You know, pow, oh, they wing me. Well, that's television. That's the movies. But also, but you were caught up in a very real, like, you know, cataclysmic social change.

Yeah. That, you know, I can't even, and I think you're right in saying that the people who live now or kids who live now or anybody that didn't really live through it or wasn't in the eye of the storm in that, you can't really imagine. Like, it was a real cultural shift in how people saw the government, how they saw themselves, how they saw music, how they saw, you know, what the country actually represented. And I can't imagine, you know, as a kid under 20 or, you know, in your early 20s, how, you know, just to have that much lack of foundation and that much, you know, radical sort of freedom and purpose with all that shit coming in. I mean, it might not have just been TV. It could have just been like, fuck, yeah. Well, it was a way to express our frustration with what we felt was a slow pace of change. We wanted shit to change and we wanted to change now.

So after Kick Out the Jams, you did the two studio records, but when did shit go bad? shit go bad well um the mc5's fundamental anarchy internal anarchy um didn't help uh sinclair was ultimately sentenced to nine and a half to ten years for possession of two joints fuck he was the glue that held us together right when john went to prison we were kind of left back on our crazy asses by ourselves and it wasn't too long after that that the band uh well let me say that i um discovered that you know this is really hard trying to sustain the level of uh excitement that the band originally came out of the box with yeah and uh with no business help and no real help inside the band itself um and ultimately the band broke up but like how much like uh how much did you know because i know at the time you know dope was around i mean

how much did drugs play a part in the the unwine you know the under the undermining of the band i i i i don't think that the drugs were really an issue in the breakup i think i think the political climate you know the music business yeah turned on the mc5 and in in what so okay so let's let's just track that record companies all right so the first distributors the first album was a mind blower right so everyone's like holy fuck yeah so then they're like well how do we wrangle these kids when when the first album came out uh everyone said oh this is this is the archetypal american this is where the real deal because the thing that set the mc5 apart from our, our contemporaries, was we spoke directly to our people.

Those kids in the audience, we talked to them about the things they cared about. Right. It wasn't, yeah, man, I've really studied Elmore James. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you're up against the draft. Yeah. So am I. Let's go.

Power to the people. Right, right. Fuck these motherfuckers. This shit's wrong. the draft. Yeah. So am I. Let's go. Power to the people. Right, right. Fuck these motherfuckers. This shit's wrong. Punk rock. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, when kids in the audience threw that fist up in the air at our concerts or that V sign,

that was a connection that the MC5 had with their audience. So this is a powerful thing. Right. had with their audience. So this is a powerful thing. Right. When the business interests saw this was going to get complicated. Yeah.

Complicated in what way? Well, the record got banned because of the kick out the jams motherfucker. Yeah. Over bullshit. Got banned over bullshit. Kids were getting arrested for selling an obscene record. Really? I know.

It's hard to imagine. And this is like, well, this is right at the same time Lenny Bruce is fighting for that shit. Yep. Same thing. Yeah. And Elektra said, we're with you. We back you on this. We'll defend your right to say whatever you want to say.

Yeah. And then when they found out that they were going to lose money, they changed their minds. We can't back you. We can't defend what you say. In fact, we're firing you you go be somebody else's problem but then you do an album on what atlantic which we did two albums for atlantic but by that time uh we didn't really have anyone to to uh to carry the water for us at the company and and uh you know they had they had new bands who were way less trouble i mean they had this new band called the allman brothers yeah who are they how'd they do they want they

wanted to boogie yeah the mc5 wanted something else destroy the established order so so being good capitalists they took the path of least resistance they took the boogie path yes take the boogie path it all worked out great for all of them but those records are great records

back in the USA and high time are great records they just tempered you they neutered you high time in particular I'm proud of I think it was

we had finally learned how to work in a studio and we were writing pretty good material and it was imaginative and forward thinking. Yeah. And then you broke up. Yeah.

I mean, that's when the drugs really entered the picture because, you know, my talent got me through as a young man and I achieved some pretty interesting accomplishments. You changed the course of rock and roll. I got to travel a little bit. I got to be in a band. Let me raise you to the height that you deserve. And you can minimize it with your humility.

That's fine, Wayne. You can frame it how you'd like. I'm going to keep you up on the pedestal. You want to be humble? That's fine. Well, let me tell you this. Yeah up on the pedestal. Okay. You want to be humble? That's fine. Well, let me tell you this. Yeah. Talent ain't enough.

Okay. All that was worth nothing. Yeah. When the shit hit the fan and all of a sudden I don't have a band anymore and it doesn't matter that I can play the guitar and I can dance and sing and write a song. Right. And I'm fucked. Yeah.

And I discovered the wonderful pain-killing properties of Jack Daniels and heroin. Yeah. Oh, so you did the heroin thing. Well. Why mess around? If you're going to go, go. It's way less toxic than alcohol. Uh-huh.

And not as dangerous as cocaine in some ways. That's correct. Yeah. So you got strung out. Yes. In 71. Yes. For how long?

For, well, all the way till I went to the penitentiary in 75. So long run, dude. And what were you doing during that time? If you weren't engaging your talent, you were just chasing the fucking high or what? Well, I think I fell in love with that movie, The Godfather. Yeah, how can you not? And I just wanted to go to business meetings and nice restaurants and drive a nice car and carry a pistol. So I thought I was a gangster. Okay. And I didn't have any trouble finding other people who thought they were gangsters too, except they all were gangsters and I wasn't. So you're hanging around with real mobsters. Real bad guys. And you're,

what, you're doing what? What did you go to the camp for? What are you doing? What's the business of the mobsters? You know, I was doing petty crime. I was doing a home invasion, burglaries, and fencing, stolen goods, and dealing drugs. This is after the three records. Yeah. And this is where heroin took you. In a way, yeah, because it puts you in a desperate situation because you can't afford it. Yeah, so you're broke.

Yeah, so you're broke all the time. You need money. And someone says, hey, man, I know how you can, we can get paid doing this over here. Yeah. Okay, what's involved in that? All right, can I do that? Yeah. Yeah, I know how you can, we can get paid doing this over here. Yeah. Okay. What's involved in that? All right. Can I do that?

Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. So you're broke, you're strung out, you're doing what's necessary to feed the monkey. Yep. Yep. And that goes on for four fucking years. Yep. And you're hanging out with real tough guys.

Yeah. That's the scary thing about drugs, because I always knew that when I used it. There was some line I thought I wouldn't cross, which is like, well, if start to lose my mind you know I'll stop like as if you're going to know that that you're going to like sit there and go like I think it's happening yeah you know the clarity of thought right but but also what I did realize and I think I I sort of came up with it by myself is that when you use drugs the the the you the the amount of ways you can die grows exponentially absolutely whether it's a a deal a bad dose you know the people you're hanging around with getting caught in the middle some bullshit yep yep so so there you are

with with real you know you're you're a good kid from Detroit that went bad and you're hanging around with hard guys I mean did you know that, but I thought I could handle it, you know. And what was the moment that you knew you couldn't? Well, in the MC5, we used to go down into Ohio to tour. You know, we'd go and play Cleveland and Cincinnati. And we'd go down I-75. Yeah. And I-75 goes past Milan Federal Prison.

And we'd be smoking joints and going down to the gig. And one day I looked over at the prison as we were passing it and I said, you know, I may do some stupid shit in my life, but I'd never do anything so stupid as to end up in that motherfucker. that motherfucker yeah and then one day i was inside myland prison in the kitchen working looking out at i-75 and said i've been waiting my whole life to fuck up this bad yeah yeah here it is welcome my worst fears realized and you just saw the image of the MC5 driving by, smoking joints. But what did you go in for? What did you get busted for? My federal case was a conspiracy to traffic in a controlled substance. And did you take a rap or was it really your deal?

It was my deal. I mean, I was in the middle. I was a middleman in between. Well, as it turned out, I was a middleman between some professional drug dealers and federal agents. Oh, okay. Wrong customer. Yes. I sold them a pound and a half of cocaine over some months.

Oh, so big time. And, you know, just to bring us into perspective for today, when I went, this was in 1975, and I went to court and the judge, I was indicted on 16 counts of 15 years each. Yeah. The judge could have given me 15 years times 16. That was the range of his options, or nothing. He gave me a four-year federal prison term followed by a three-year special parole term after. Because why?

It was your first offense? It wasn't my first offense, but— Oh, you've been busted before? Yeah. But, you know, he said, what am I going to do with you? Geez, you're—you know, I'm an addict. I'm an alcoholic. You're a trouble man.

You know, I was out of work, Your Honor. These guys had all these $100 bills. And all these guys from the music business had written these letters of recommendation. I went to a priest and got a letter. I said, I'll wash police cars. I'll work with orphans. Yeah, yeah. It's not jail. You'll be in federal prison at 6 o'clock tonight.

He gave me four years. Today, with mandatory minimums and these medieval sentences, my same offense carries a life sentence. Jesus. So for the same offense, I could be down all day. But when you went in for this, the other wraps were what? Just county So for the same offense, I could be down all day. But when you went in for this, like the other raps were what? Just, you know,

county jail for what? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Burglaries and... And you didn't have to do hard time. So now you're up against it. I mean, at that moment, you were still strung out?

Well, I cleaned up because I knew I was going. Going to court, right. But I mean, you know, you didn't ever think you'd get there. So now you're looking at hard time. I mean, were you terrified? Of course. It's a traumatic experience. Going to prison changes you and you never get unchanged from that.

In what way? I think I ended up less naive, more cynical, and I think probably more cunning, less trusting. Certainly, I was a complete total failure as a drug dealer. Now I know how to do it. They taught me in there how to really deal drugs successfully. Did the guys, were your suppliers go down too? No. Did they ask you to write them out?

Of course. You didn't write? No. I said, guys, I'm a public person. I'm a musician. I want people to know who I am. I said, well, you know, work with us. I'll tell you, this is the kind of deals they offer you.

They say, go out, get us 10,000 pills, get us 200 pounds of marijuana, 10 ounces of cocaine, and we'll go to the judge on your behalf. I said, what will you get me? And they said, well, we'll make sure that you don't get more than three years. I said, what kind of deal is that? I'm going to risk my life, ruin my future, and I'm still going to do three years? Fuck you. I only ended up getting four years anyway. Lucky deal. So there was the threat of your life if you were to rat somebody out in that situation. Yeah. My crime partner was actually kidnapped by our suppliers. And it was only that he was pretty persuasive that he convinced them that we wouldn't turn over on them. Wow. So that, you know, see, that's that whole thing.

You ever read Chet Baker's, not Chet Baker, Art Pepper's book? Sure. It's like, it's hilarious because like basically all he says about sax playing is like that was a natural and then it's 400 pages of prison and drugs and at the end of the book at the end of the book he says the only thing you learn in life don't rat and fuck chet baker that book was a killer oh and then he's laying on the gurney and he says honey honey, I'm hungry. Would you get me a candy bar?

She leaves the room and he gets out his bag. Finishes off his bag of dope while she's in the other room. In the emergency room. Oh, shit. Dope fiends. Yeah, man. How'd you kick it? Well, of course, I came out of prison.

I learned a few things in there. It was a programming institution, and I was in at the end of the era of rehabilitation. So I got to take some classes, group therapy, all that kind of stuff. Did you get your ass kicked? I mean, how did you find your way in prison? Were you diplomatic? How does one exist in there? What was your approach?

Yeah, well, my approach was keep my head down. Don't deal drugs. Don't get involved with homosexuals. Don't get involved with gambling. And just do my bit, you know, take my time and find my click. But I played music. Did you find other musicians in there? Well, that became the deal. Because there's always musicians in prison. And we had some pretty good ones. And so we had a band together. And my day job was the graphic artist on the prison newspaper. And then about halfway through my bit, Red Rodney was transferred to Lexington. Red Rodney is a trumpeter who replaced Miles Davis in the Charlie Parker Quintet. Wow.

And he's a career jazz musician, dope fiend, and had been to Lexington in the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s. That's where you ended up? Yep. After the one that you drove by in Ohio. Right. You were there for... I was there for a few weeks, and then they transferred me down to Lexington.

Okay. So Red Rodney shows up. And he became my musical father and schooled me at Berklee School of Music course in writing and arranging.

Really? Taught me how to read music. Really? Yeah, he was... He meant everything to me. And, you know, he was my idol. I mean,

he was the kind of guy I always wanted to grow up and be, a dope fiend jazz musician. And here he was my idol. I mean, he was the kind of guy I always wanted to grow up and be, a dope fiend jazz musician. And here he was. And I— He ended up at the same place. Yeah.

He said, Wayne, yeah, he said, you know, I like doing business with established institutions. He was like the mayor of Lexington. He knew everybody. So you were playing jazz in prison? Yeah. Was that—but that was— Best I could. I mean, I can't play on the level that Red Rodney can. Right, but was that your real introduction into

sort of understanding and moving through jazz? Yes. Because like this record that you made, this new record, Lexington, is a real jazz record and it's good and it's solid. But like you couldn't have done that in 69 or 71, no matter how much you liked that music, could you? I don't think so because i didn't have the the comprehension you know the theory so okay so you do four total three parole and what do you what are you doing for for

work after that did you get right back into the music yeah i i paroled back to detroit and some guys heard that i was back and asked me to join their band as a special guest. Who? They were called Punch. And they had a job in a bar. And if I came in and did like 15 minutes twice a night with their band as their special guest, they gave me money. And they were a punk band? Sort of.

Not punk in the truest sense. To jump back quickly, what was the relationship with Iggy? Iggy was a drummer before he invented Iggy. Jim Osterberg was a great

drummer. Really? Yeah. Because the way he puts it, he said, I said, why'd you start singing? He said, I got tired of looking at the singer's ass. Yeah. We tried to hire him for the MC5.

To drum? Yes. And he was what, 16, 17? Yeah, I think we were all about that age. Yeah.

Because you knew him. Ann Arbor was close enough to where, yeah. Yeah, we heard about him and so we went up to see. Yeah, we heard about him. So we went up to see him and talked to him about him.

He wasn't interested in quitting the band he was in and joining our band. The band he was in had gigs. We didn't even have gigs yet. So, you know, we became friends. And then when he went off on his mystery sabbatical and came back as Iggy Pop, we all lived in the same area in Ann Arbor. The MC5 had to leave Detroit because the Detroit Police Department was just up our ass too deep. And plus our neighborhood, our gear had been robbed. Our women were getting raped.

And the neighborhood was getting worse than it was and uh so we moved up to ann arbor and and we were close to the stooges we all listened to the same music we all listened to the coltrane and listened to ascension all night on acid you know yeah yeah and then we'd get together and smoke hash and jam for hours and hours and hours so and and you so you had a relationship from that point on. Yeah. And him and I were always kind of like the two sea captains, you know, the band leaders, and we still are. Yeah. And could you,

like, when you listen to that first Snooze's album, can you hear the influence of the MC5? I can hear, yeah, that there's a time and a place there. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. That must be nice. The bells, you yeah, that there's a time and a place there. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. That must be nice. The bells, you know, that's all Pharoah Sanders. Oh, yeah?

Yeah, Albert Eiler stuff. So it's so weird that you guys were all so conscious of integrating really avant-garde jazz into this music. I don't know how many people hear that, but you were all very aware of it. Yeah, and consciously trying to play it. You know, playing free is harder than playing in structure. Right. Because, you know, freedom isn't free. You got to know structure first.

Yes, freedom is like a coin. On one side it says you're free, on the other side it says you're responsible. Yeah. You know, so when you're free. On the other side says you're responsible. So when you're playing free, you have to use everything you know about music without any, depending on any structure, you've got to play what the other people are playing right now, respond to what they're doing appropriately, musically, using all your musical skills, just without a beat

and a key. Exactly, exactly. Right. With no net. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So you go back to Detroit, you're on parole and you're sober? No. No. No, no, no. I came out of prison still a sick man and didn't really know enough about what the hell was wrong with me. What's wrong with me? That wasn't available in prison at that time. I don't think the state of the art was there yet. We talked a lot about behavior modification and rational behavior and positive mental attitude. But none of that really gets to the core of what is addiction.

How does this thing rob my life from me without my permission? And how long before you got that wisdom? Long time. I'm not sure I have it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're sober. Today? But it's only lunchtime. But for how long, though?

Well, 15 years. That did take you a while, huh? I didn't get sober until I was 50. Yeah. I was 66 this year. Were you strung out, though, or just fucking chipping and what? No, I moved to New York. Dope was, in the 80s, New York City was like Disneyland for adults.

Cheap, dude. Cheap. $10 bags. $10 bags of snortable dope. It was so fucking clean. Sometimes I wouldn't even have to leave my building. I'd run into somebody in the hallway. Hey, man, what's good today?

Oh, well, I got a couple. You want two? Yeah, give me two. And all those weird names. Well, addiction is such a complex mental condition. You know, we can call it a disorder. Yeah. But I don't know. that might be pejorative you know it's just there's something in our human makeup that we we alter our

consciousness we change how we feel because we can and we always could and we always will yeah uh the trouble is uh you know really, really, it's not the problem. It's the solution. The problem is I don't feel good. Right, right, right. The trouble is it comes with these side effects. Yeah, like ruining your life. Yeah.

It's the side effect of stealing things. Homelessness. Jail. Yes, jail. Hep C. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. But so what was the moment?

I mean, what was the bottom? I mean, you'd already hit the bottom. Well, I hit it a few times. I mean, I'm an old hand at this stuff. And to come out of prison and get in a band with Johnny Thunders and pick up again. And they moved to New York. What was the band with Johnny? It was called Gang War.

Uh-huh. I got to get that record. It was a disaster. Well? It was called Gang War. Uh-huh. I gotta get that record. It was a disaster. It was. Well, he was a disaster. Yes, he was. And the whole project was doomed from conception.

Great tone, though, dude. Yeah. Johnny Connery's great tone, man. Yeah. So I joined a methadone program in Manhattan.

And I was in that program for six years. And finally detoxed from methadone and replaced my methadone with alcohol and then replaced the alcohol with cocaine, then shifted over from the cocaine to pharmaceutical narcotics. And by the time I landed in Los Angeles in 94,

And by the time I landed in Los Angeles in 94, I was living with a woman who I taught her how to work croakers. The doctors. Yes. They don't even call them that anymore. Yeah. Now they're just called pain management clinics. Yeah. So ultimately.

Why don't you lay some wisdom on some of our aspiring junkies? How do you work a croaker? Well, you go in with this cough or this back pain or this migraine headache, and you go for the Academy Award. Yeah. And he writes you a prescription. For oxys or Dilaudid or whatever. Narcotics. Percodan. So all we care about is, is it a narcotic?

The flavor doesn't matter. It's the narcotic part. Good, clean, professionally made drugs. That's right. USD. Yes. We don't want any of that street crap. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It gives that pharmaceutical grade. I don't want to have to go down to the hood and stand around with a bunch of hoodlums. We're older people. Yeah. I want to go to a nice doctor's office and go to the pharmacy and get my medication so you ran that record for a while ran that record for a while and then and then finally you know um uh i met this fellow bob timmons and he invited me to this support group and um i walked in and know, it was a bunch of men, professional men, and I knew some of them going back to Detroit.

Really? Some of my homies. Musicians. Musicians, yes. And I hung out in the group for a while, and I just, I was still using and drinking, and I was lying. Mm-hmm. And I was telling everyone I was sober. Mm-hmm.

still using and drinking, and I was lying. And I was telling everyone I was sober. And then finally I couldn't take it anymore, and I told them that I was going to be the only living person to retire. From that group? From the group, yes. And I went back, and little by little I started to dabble again, and, of course, everything. You've got to be tired at that point.

Well, yeah. And then I was on a plane coming back from a European tour. And I figured, well, I can get loaded because I'm in the air now. We're not even on Earth. And I got a couple boxes of codeine at the airport in London and drank seriously. at the airport in London and drank seriously and came to with a young female black flight attendant standing over me, advising me that she was having me arrested when we landed in the United States.

And she had warned me about the cursing and the yelling. That you don't remember. Disrupted the whole, I look around and everybody's moved away. There's a security ring of empty seats around me. A little MC5 concert. Yeah. So, you know, in that moment, I saw who I really was, which is a drunken, stoned-out rock and roll asshole.

Yeah. Just the kind of guys that I will cross the street to avoid. Yeah. I hate these guys. You know, we all know hundreds of them. And that's who I am, a complete fool. And then it hit me. This is what they were talking about, about that bottom thing and that moment of incomprehensible demoralization.

I was embarrassed. I felt, oh, man man I'm going to land everyone in the music business is going to know Wayne's a big fraud oh yeah the chump got a yeah fuck him this entire house of cards that I'd built up with the record company

and the press and everything it was all going to collapse and I got back and I went back to my friend and I asked him if he could help me. And he told me that they didn't shoot the wounded. And so I tried to figure out what was wrong with me and I did what people suggested I do. And I got a chance to see what living a life without drugs and alcohol might produce. Uh-huh.

And I like it. Yeah. It's pretty fun. Well, you seem pretty good. Most of the time. Well, yeah, I know. Life is hard, but I mean, you seem pretty good. Yeah, you seem clear.

You seem grounded. You seem humble. You seem happy to be alive. Well, I'll tell you the greatest thing for me is I'm a father. When did that happen? In August. I have a seven-month-old son that is the love of my life. And listen, I don't think kids get people sober. I mean, look at poor, dearly departed Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Beautiful family, unbelievable career, one of our greatest living actors, wasn't enough. Destroyed himself. That's part of the human condition. We can't undo that. But I'm telling you, I sure dig my kid. My life has turned out to be more fun than I could have ever imagined. This kid is the coolest thing I ever did.

How old are you? I'll be 66 this month. That's amazing. You know Jerry, right? Jerry Stahl? Yes. He's a good kid too. You guys got to start hanging out. He needs somebody to hang out with with a kid. We can compare diaper changing. Yeah, he just had one, man.

Really? How fantastic. I love it. We have an MC5 movie property, and Jerry was going to write it for us. And what's going on with that? Well, I think we're going to write it for us. Uh-huh. Yeah. And what's going on with that? Well, I think we're going to revive it. We made a round of pitches with it. Who's we?

Who's left? Well, we is me and my wife. Okay. But I mean, how many of the guys are left? Only one. Who? The drummer. Which one?

His name's Dennis Thompson. He's still around? Yeah. You guys tight or what? No. Okay. We're not tied. We went our separate ways after the band broke up, and he still lives in Michigan.

We played together when I put together a new version of the MC5 a few years ago. Was that the one with Gilby? Yeah, yeah. And how'd that go? Oh, it was a ball. It was unbelievable. We're way bigger now than we were then. We played Glastonbury and Reading and Japan and Australia.

Who sang? A different guest artist, Mark Arm from Mudhoney's thing. Handsome Dick Manitoba. Wow. From The Dictators? Yeah. We had Lisa Kokala from the Bell Rays. She tears it up.

She's wicked. She channels Rob Tyner. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did you, now Rob passed in the 90s, what, in the 90s? Yeah, in 91. Did you remain friends with him? Nope.

Oh, really? So nobody really. No, the band ended, you know, like, I mean, this is not new. Bands almost always end badly. Right. But you and Fred Smith lived, you know, he lived a while. I mean, you know, were you the guy that, like, you know, like, it seems like Fred, you know, he married Patty Smith and, you know, he was living life. But were you the guy that they didn't want to talk to anymore?

Were you like a persona non grata or how did that go? I think everyone was so traumatized by being in the MC5 that we all had a kind of PTSD. Right. And the loss was so painful that everyone covered it up and denied it as best they could. Drinking was and is an efficient painkiller. pain killer. Sure. And I think my colleagues

succumb to Yeah. the Yeah. ravages of alcohol abuse and drug abuse.

Yeah. I don't know why I'm not six feet under. I did more than all of them. Yeah. I don't know. I think going to prison

saved me actually. Yeah. Because I got two years of clean living in there, two and a half years, where I probably got drunk twice and got high three times. And you were working. I was working out. I was on the yard. I ran five miles every day. I went in.

I was Big Wayne. I went in at 235 pounds. Holy shit. I came out at 165. Yeah. I was hard. Yeah. I hit the street hard. All right. I came out at 165. Yeah. I was hard. Yeah. I hit the street hard.

All right, so you got a new baby. You got the MC5 property. Now, why don't we talk about the backdrop of the new record? Because this was an interesting process for you, correct? Yes. What was the birth of Lexington, which is where you were imprisoned? Yeah. FCI, Federal Correctional Institution at Lexington.

I got hired, I got interviewed for a documentary about Lexington. Filmmakers, ABC News guy, independent filmmakers, heard about the institution. It was the United States Public Health Service Narcotics Farm. It was built in the 30s in the progressive era when America could fix its problems. We're going to put our best people on this. We're going to get to the bottom of it. We're going to fix it. They built these institutions, one at Lexington, one at Fort Worth, and here at Terminal Island, three actually.

And they were designed to get to the core of what is drug addiction as a social problem and fix it. Like I said, all the jazz musicians went there. All the junkies in the world went there because the federal prison wardens didn't want addicts in their prisons ruining their good prisoners. Right. Bad influence. You can't trust them. These junkies, they'll tell you one thing and then they'll go do something else. We have the prison code and everyone adheres to the code except for these damn junkies. They won't work within the system even in here. Right.

So in the course of the interview about my time there, I said, who's doing the music on this movie? And they said, we hadn't thought of that yet. And I said, I'll do the music. So I wanted it to be a jazz score. And I got great players together. I called my old friend Charles Moore. I said, let's write this music. This is what I want to do.

And working on it and watching the film, when you're scoring, you watch the movie 10 million times. Yeah. And it just started dredging up my penitentiary experiences. Really? Uh-huh. And it just caused me to go inward and face it, you know. I mean, I always could talk about it pretty easily, but I would rather not, you know.

rather not. And then, you know, for 30 years, I've been watching as people just like me have gone to prison. First thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and today millions, 2.3 million of our fellows in prison in America, 10 million under direct state control, parole, probation. And I started to wonder, what's going on here? How come nobody's saying this is fucked up? Nobody's saying anything about this. This is just, this is out of fucking control. We're locking people up at a pace that has never been seen in the history of the world. And I got angry and madder and madder.

And so I'm doing this score and I decided I needed to do something. What could I do? I'm a musician. I'm a formerly incarcerated person. I don't know. Could I play music in a prison? Would that help at all? And some friends of mine in New York, I said, set it up if you can. And they set up a concert for me at Sing Sing. So I called a bunch of musicians I knew and said, you want to come with me and play in a prison? They all said, great. One of them was Billy Bragg. Billy had his guitar. We were backstage getting ready to go on. It said Jail Guitar Doors on his guitar. I said, what's up with that, Jail Guitar Doors? He said, oh, it's Old Clash B-Side. You ever heard it?

I said, heard it, Bill. They wrote the song about me. What do you mean? I said, what are the lyrics? Right. Let me tell you about wine and his deals of cocaine. Oh, bloody fucking hell, it is about you. So he tried to tell me he wanted to do something to celebrate Joe Strummer's life's work.

The Clash inspired Billy to combine his activism and his love of music. A guy had written him from a prison in England saying he was trying to use music as a tool for rehabilitation. They had no guitars. Could Billy find them some guitars? He said, great. This will be my tribute to Joe. I'll call it that song, Jail Guitar Doors, and we'll raise money with my rock star friends

and we'll buy guitars for prisons. By the time we'd finished the concert at Sing Sing, I said, you know, this is a brilliant fucking idea. And it's good that you're doing that in England and for Joe and all that. But I'm an American. I live here. I'm an ex-offender. I'm a musician. I want to do this in this country. And he said, good, because I was just about to task you with it. You're the only guy that can do this, because you know how the system works. So we started, my wife Margaret Kramer, Billy Bragg, and I founded Jail Guitar Doors USA. Today, our guitars are in over 50 American prisons.

We have a waiting list of 60 more. We work on a political level to advocate for prison reform and sentencing reform. I go to Washington every few months and hold those fuckers' feet to the fire. Yeah. What do you take, a lawyer, or you just get up in front of them? I just go. You can have meetings, you know, constituent meetings. And you meet with them or you meet with staff and you say, hey, what are you guys doing?

So I had a good meeting the last time with Senator Leahy's staff. And they're really working to undo some of these mandatory minimums. They're just, they're indefensible. They're unsustainable. And, you know, it's very hard to change bad laws. It's very easy to pass them in the heat of the moment. Sure. And then we work on the personal level of getting guitars in the hands of prisoners and tasking them with using, meeting the challenge of we're going to give you a guitar. You have to use this as a tool to figure out how to express yourself

in a non-confrontational way. We have songwriting workshop programs in the Cook County Jail in Illinois, Chicago, in the Travis County Correctional Complex in Austin, Texas. At Sing Sing, we have one. And we're starting one now in the L.A. County Jail, the Twin Towers downtown. Wow.

And do you work with a guitar company? I work with anybody. Anyone that wants to give me guitars, I'll take the guitars. Mostly with Fender. Fender sells us the guitars at a no-profit basis. So they're very fair with us. tells us the guitars at a no-profit basis. So they're very fair with us.

And people are a little leery of lining up if you advocate for prisoners. You know, like if you say, I want to cure cancer in children, the money comes flying out of people's wallets. Prisoners, not so much. They already took my money. Yeah. Not so much. They already took my money. Plus, there's a whole aspect of the psyche of Americans that wants to see people suffer.

They want to see retribution. They want to see people hurt. It's profound and it's real. And, you know, changing that, I don't know how that's done. I mean, I think that's done over millennia, our whole idea of how do you hold someone accountable for breaking the social contract? Personally, the trouble with prisons is prisons. Yeah. I think there's ways to hold people accountable in their own communities without shipping them off to some fucking Pelicanican bay or you know down to chino or

you know 800 miles away from their family you know family connections are the most important things for offenders you know those are the things we need to nurture not not and there's worse and there's always the the sort of indication that that prisons actually harden criminal resolve. Well, this is our position. My position is if we don't do something to help people that are in prison, we do it at our own peril. Because if we don't help them change for the better, they will most certainly change for the worse. Well, it's amazing work, man.

And in that all, so like in the new record Lexington, this became a project of the heart because of what it brought up for you in doing the soundtrack of the documentary, The Prison You Were Involved In. And during the recording of this, you met Billy? Or before? No, after. I'd already recorded it. It just, all the parts started, I found it as a way to connect the dots, you know, and to be able to talk about

hyper-incarceration, to be able to bring in my love of free jazz and how important I think it is to move music forward and move the art forward, to talk about the generations of jazz musicians

that went through this facility, and to connect up this whole national disgrace of mass incarceration and prisons for profit. It's something that needs to be in our national discourse and is just now trickling in a little bit. It's funny, the political right is lining up now. Yeah. Of course, for slightly different reasons.

Yeah, it's costing too much money. Yeah. The libertarians see it as big government, government overreach. They're coming into your bedroom. And also, it's these private jails. I mean, they're contracted out. It's a big business. It's a money drainer.

Yeah, it's really offensive. Well, I'm glad you're doing the work because you're doing the big work, and it was a fucking honor talking to you. And I'm glad you're doing well. Well, thank you so much. It's been a thrill to be with you. I'm a huge fan, and I watch your show religiously. I appreciate it. I appreciate it, Wayne.

You're doing good work, too. You, too. All right, buddy. Thanks, man. Take care.