Psych-Out: Actor Dean Stockwell Tries To Remember What He Was Doing In This Cheesy Cinematic Wonder

Originally published in Rave-Up #11 (1986)
By Devorah Ostrov

Promo poster for Psych-Out (which oddly features the Voxmobile)

Released in 1968, Psych-Out was an unapologetic cash-in on SF’s already over-hyped (not to mention extinct) “hippieville” (as the press kit called it).

The flick’s convoluted plotline was ridiculous, and none of the adult Hollywood cast (which included Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Susan Strasberg) made convincing hippies.

However, after a rare viewing of the film, I had the opportunity for a quick exchange with famous actor Dean Stockwell who played Dave (a “truth-seeking hippie” according to the press kit, who lived in an air-conditioning unit).

It turns out, Dean barely remembers Psych-Out. Although, he does recall not liking the film or his character very much. “It was one of the exploitive teenage movies of the time,” he says. “It didn’t represent what was going on in the scene. I thought my character was an idiot.”

Jack Nicholson, Susan Strasberg & Dean Stockwell

While the film’s producers (Dick Clark Productions) weren’t concerned with improving the script or characters, Dean took it upon himself to give Dave a bit more dimension, even wearing a wig so he’d look cooler.

“I wanted my character to do more than just sit and contemplate his navel,” Dean remarks. (Although his dialog still runs along the lines of: “Reality is a bum trip.”)

He also reveals that (in some cases) the drugs used in the film weren’t props. “There was a big party scene with me and Jack Nicholson,” Dean comments. “We were walking around smoking pot. It was real! We couldn’t function for the rest of the day.”

The MC5 And The Problem With Actually Kicking Out The Jams: An Interview With Guitarist Wayne Kramer

Originally published in American Music Press (August 1993)
Interview by Devorah Ostrov

MC5 (publicity photo)

"Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!" The introduction to the second track on the MC5's debut album — the thunderous tune that was surely destined to become a hit single — was loud, mean and clearly enunciated. It was the battle cry for a teenage revolution, a real-life Wild In The Streets.

But the MC5 weren't stupid. They knew that version of the song wouldn't get radio airplay, and as much as the band wanted to lead a revolution, the guys also wanted to be rock stars. They had a plan: the less offensive "brothers and sisters" would replace the expletive on the single. If you wanted to hear lead singer Rob Tyner shout an obscenity, you'd have to buy the LP. It was a good plan, but it didn't work. And the ensuing brouhaha ripped the group and its fan base apart.

* * *

MC5 on the cover of Circus magazine

September 1969

Detroit, Michigan, is an automobile factory town with all the charm that implies. The sky is eternally shrouded in grey smoke; the buildings scarred and ugly (a friend who grew up there remembers broken windows in every building from countless kids throwing countless rocks for countless years through them). Life is bleak and racial tensions run high.

All this somewhat explains why when the rest of the country was mellowing out with folk-inspired pop, America's "motor city" was generating high-energy, hard-driving rock 'n' roll groups like the Stooges, the Amboy Dukes, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, Grand Funk Railroad — and toughest of 'em all, the MC5.

Rock historian and Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye expressed it best in a feature for Cavalier magazine: "Where other cities have always had a collection of cultural currents to distract and push them in certain directions (both San Francisco and New York, for example, have had long intellectual and Bohemian traditions), Detroit had had practically nothing. Composed almost entirely of factory workers (and in Detroit, everybody works for the factories), there was little but television culture around to divert the minds of its inhabitants…

"Since Detroit was not an intellectually inclined city, Detroiters shied away from any ideas of technical excellence or elaborate joinings of musical forms. Their music was primitive, built more on vibrations than on actual arrangements of notes. There was no art-rock here, no baroque trumpet breaks in the midst of sedately chorded songs, no classical rock, no raga rock, no Blood, Sweat and Tears jazz rock. Nobody could write long Musicology 101 theses on the parallel themes of love and death in the lyrics of any of the Detroit bands...

Gary Grimshaw-designed poster for A Dance 

Concert at the Grande Ballroom with the MC5

& the Chosen Few - October 7/8, 1966

"Simply, what they were playing was loud, straight ahead, pile-driving music, performed with one finger in the air at all times. It was hard, and it was brash, and it was naïve, and it was strangely futuristic."

In 1962 (or maybe '63), Wayne Kramer's parents moved the family from Detroit to the blue-collar suburb of Lincoln Park ("downriver" as the locals called it). According to the guitarist, who was 14 or 15-years-old at the time, the relocation was part of his parents' "never-ending search for the American dream."

Over the phone, the now 45-year-old self-described "anarchist/ revolutionary/intellectual/rock 'n' roller" recalls how the move to Lincoln Park led to the formation of the MC5.

"I had already been playing music," he tells me, "so I started asking around if anybody knew anybody who played any instruments. And I discovered that there was a happening little rock 'n' roll scene, a lot of neighborhood bands, very competitive..."

In 1964, the seeds of the MC5 were sown. "I met this juvenile delinquent named Fred [Sonic] Smith," says Kramer. "He had a band that he was in [the Vibratones], and I had this band called the Bounty Hunters. We decided to form a supergroup with the best members of both bands — that's when Fred and I started playing together."

MC5 - publicity photo

"I'd known Rob Tyner..." he continues. "I used to hang out with his younger brother. Rob was a beatnik; he was into jazz. I used to try to explain to him how exciting rock 'n' roll could be: 'You're up there on stage with the lights! And the amps! And the kids!' He'd say, 'No, man, jazz is where it's at. You gotta be cool. Jazz and poetry.' One day I ran into him in the White Castle parking lot at one in the morning. He was drunk as a skunk playing the harmonica. I said, 'What are you playing the harmonica for? I thought you were a jazz guy.' He said, 'I've discovered this band — the Rolling Stones! Man, this shit is happening!' I said, 'I'll come around and see ya tomorrow and we'll talk about it.'"

Rob Tyner on the cover of Rolling Stone

January 1969

"Rob was gonna play bass in the beginning," adds Kramer, "but that turned out to be a little too complicated. So, we got a bass player and Rob became the singer."

Tyner also came up with their moniker. "He said it sounded kind of like a serial number," observes Kramer, "the whole industrial thing. MC5 was like XL7 shock absorber!"

(While it's generally accepted that the initials MC stand for "Motor City," Kramer reveals there are some other options. "We also filled in Morally Corrupt, Much Cock, Mustard and Catsup, Marijuana Cigarette, Mostly Cosmic... You could go on forever, y'know.")

An early lineup included drummer Bob Gaspar and bassist Pat Burrows, but the two almost immediately disagreed with the group's musical divergence into Free Jazz. "We had started to discover feedback," mentions Kramer, "and this concept we called Avant Rock, where we found we could go beyond the beat and beyond the key of the song into pure sound. Bob didn't like that at all, he thought it was noise. Pat wanted to do Motown."

In 1965, Michael Davis, an art student and friend of Tyner's from Wayne State University, replaced Burrows. "He could play folk guitar and sing Bob Dylan songs," says Kramer. "I said, 'If he can do that, I'll teach him how to play the bass.'"

"I Can Only Give You Everything"

 b/w "One of the Guys"

AMG Records (1967)

Gaspar's replacement was high school sophomore and former Bounty Hunter drummer Dennis Thompson. "We awarded him the official token of our esteem," laughs the guitarist, "which was the bathroom plunger."

(In a 1979 interview with Goldmine, Thompson said that he and Davis joined the group just after they opened for the Dave Clark Five at Cobo Hall, which dates it to early December 1965.)

With a setlist that contained Chuck Berry, Little Richard and John Lee Hooker covers, the teenagers "played any place that a band could play," says Kramer. This included teen-clubs and parties at friends' houses, as well as gigs at the Crystal Bar on Michigan Avenue and local Battles of the Bands.

"We played in a few really exciting Battles of the Bands," states Kramer. "We had a great rivalry with another neighborhood band called the Satellites, and this culminated in a big playoff where we'd play a song, then they'd play a song, and then we'd play another song... They ended up declaring it a tie."

The MC5 & fellow Detroit bands Frijid Pink
& Up play a benefit for John Sinclair at the

Grande Ballroom - Thursday, July 29, 1971

But as they began writing more original material and heading, as Kramer puts it, "towards outer space," finding an audience that appreciated them became a challenge.

"They hated us!" exclaims Kramer when asked about the group's early audiences. "We'd save up our Avant Rock thing for the last song of the night, and we knew when we'd cleared the room that we were on to something. If we could force 500 teenagers out of a room, we knew it was just a question of turning it around and we'd be forcing 'em into the room!"

The summer of '67 found the Five still looking for an audience and beginning to flounder a bit. However, things picked up when they met John Sinclair. The charismatic 26-year-old had graduated from the University of Michigan-Flint College in 1964. He wrote for Downbeat and was a self-styled poet-philosopher as well as a fervent admirer of saxophonist John Coltrane. "Sinclair was in charge of the beatnik community then," Thompson told Goldmine. "He was the head man."

Sinclair became the MC5's manager because "he was the only guy that any of us would listen to," says Kramer. "We were basically unmanageable. We were such maniacs! We'd had disc jockeys try to manage us; we had one woman who was an international archery champion; my mother tried to manage us. [Apparently, even Tyner gave it a go.] But none of it worked 'cause we weren't good little soldiers that lined up and did the right thing. We were a little more … volatile! John could break things down and make it all make sense for us: 'There's a good reason to do this.' John explained it, 'Bing bang boom it works like this.'"

Gary Grimshaw-designed poster for the MC5

show at the Straight Theatre in San Francisco.

March 14-16, 1969

Some years later, while he was in jail on a marijuana conviction, Sinclair detailed this chapter of the band's career in letters written to ZigZag magazine: "When I first started working with the MC5 as their official manager in the late summer of 1967, they had just had all their equipment repossessed (all except for Dennis's drums) due to their failure to make any payments on it for an eight-month period … They rarely worked jobs, since few club owners would risk hiring them for dates; they had a reputation for not showing up, showing up late, playing too loud, not playing long enough, playing stuff the audience couldn't relate to, and so on. They had to borrow equipment and con somebody into driving them and their equipment to the gig, and when they got there they'd be wiped out, drunk, or otherwise incapacitated — although I must say that when they did get all this shaky shit together, they played the most exciting music in the history of rock 'n' roll..."

The band moved into Sinclair's communal house, dubbed Trans-Love Energies, which essentially became a support system for the Five: the commune accommodated publicists, graphic artists, the equipment crew, girlfriends and clothing designers. In addition to handling the group's business and instilling his rhetoric of a cultural revolution, Sinclair also turned the guys onto the music of John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Archie Shepp — "The entire wonderful world of angry black music," enthuses Kramer.

MC5 - publicity photo

Over the following months, they put out a couple of locally released 45s which, Kramer says, "never did anything." AMG (the initials of owner Arnold Mark Geller), a short-lived Detroit label whose entire catalog can be counted on one hand, issued the MC5's first single — a cover of "I Can Only Give You Everything" b/w "One of the Guys." (AMG later reissued the A-side b/w "I Just Don't Know.") Another single, featuring early versions of "Looking at You" and "Borderline" was released on Jeep Holland's A-Square Records in 1968.

Atlantic advert for Back in the USA

Of the "Looking at You" recording session, Kramer recollects: "John produced it. He had never produced a session before, but he kept the engineer from emasculating us. The way we played... In those days, people didn't record at that volume. We'd set up our stuff and get engineers going, 'Ooooh nooo! You jive rock 'n' roll punks! Turn that shit down! You can't record at that volume!' We'd say, 'No, this is how we get the sound. This is where the sound is.'"

At the same time, Sinclair hooked the Five up with Michigan disc jockey "Uncle" Russ Gibb, who was operating a Fillmore-style concert hall in Detroit called the Grande Ballroom. The MC5 became the Grande's house band, opening for nationally known acts almost every weekend.

According to Thompson's Goldmine interview: "First time we played the Grande Ballroom there were twenty people out there, bowl haircuts, frats, greaseballs … But week by week, it steadily built and built."

In his letters to ZigZag, Sinclair wrote of the Grande: "It was a good situation, because to put famous recording bands on the same stage as the Detroit groups was enough to let the kids in the audience see that their own bands were as good, if not better, than well-known star bands — and the local bands were able to develop reputations and followings of their own, even though they had no records out on major labels."

"Kick out the Jams" b/w "Motor City is Burning"

Issued through Disques Vogue France (1969)

Of the MC5 performances, he added: "They blew other bands away completely … The biggest boost to the 5 and their fans was when the legendary Big Brother & the Holding Company rode into town on the biggest myth in the business and got wiped out by the 5 on the first night."

In Cavalier, Lenny Kaye painted a picture of an MC5 show from this era: "Like a flash they're all onstage, guitars weaving, snatching at their amplifiers and letting out rumbles and howls of feedback, lots of hair and beautiful clothes. All in their places now, they stop for a moment, just standing there, holding the crest of energy until it breaks and when it does the electricity sort of cascades down like an avalanche, bass rumbling through the floor, the drums pounding pounding and the git-fiddles on each side of the stage wailing out, playing all notes at the same time. And that's not all, 'cause there's this vocal thing that comes over the roar, not really words but maybe sound patterns launched into some kind of cosmic space..."

The summer of '67 was particularly hot and turbulent in Detroit. For several days during July, race riots raged downtown, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people and the destruction of many businesses in the area around 12th Street.

"Fuck Hudson's!"

Advert published in The Fifth Estate

While San Francisco basked in the Summer of Love, Kramer remembers watching tanks roll down his street. And whereas up to now, things had been pretty loose and fun ("We smoked a lot of reefer, and given our ages and a lot of hormones, there was great humor in everything we did"), it was now time to organize.

"We had a fan club that we called the MC5 Social and Athletic Club," says Kramer, "and one day somebody came up with the idea of calling it the White Panther Party — kind of as a tribute to the Black Panther Party."

The White Panther's early manifesto advocated for rock 'n' roll, dope and fucking in the street. "And we went with that for a while," he muses. "But those were very scary days. The city was at war for a week. John was being prosecuted for a reefer conviction and was being set up on another one. There were undercover agents all over the neighborhood. There was the war in Vietnam; a lot of our friends were coming back dead or crazy. So, what started out as kind of a joke became more serious as we became more militant."

How much control did Sinclair have over their political activism?

Kramer: He didn't have any control because we were uncontrollable, much to his dismay. But he had a great influence on us inasmuch as... What we knew about America being fucked up was from a gut level. We knew it was fucked up and we didn't like it, and we were ready to do something about it. John could put it in an intellectual perspective. He could explain why it is that things are the way they are.

Advert for the Detroit Pop Festival featuring the MC5,

the Amboy Dukes, Sweetwater, Bob Seger System, the Frost

and SRC, among others - Monday, April 7, 1969

The months preceding the recording of the MC5's debut album in October 1968 were punctuated with violence.

The Fifth Estate reported that on July 23, Sinclair and Smith were "brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police, the Oakland County Sheriff's Department, and the Michigan State Police while performing at a teen-club in Oakland County."

MC5 - publicity photo

And in August, the MC5 provided the soundtrack for the infamous Democratic National Convention riots, which saw thousands of young people swarm the streets of Chicago in protest of the Vietnam War. Playing on a flatbed truck, they were the only band that showed up that day, and they had to cut their set short and flee for fear of being arrested.

"We knew that while we were playing everything would be cool," states Kramer, "because the crowd had something to focus on, but the minute we stopped playing all that energy had to go somewhere."

Rock hustler Danny Fields had talked Elektra Records into signing the MC5 (along with the Stooges). "It was the classic thing," points out Kramer, "they offered us lots of money! We were in debt up to our asses. No matter how much we made, we still couldn't meet expenses. We had the five musicians, the wives and girlfriends, roadies and trucks, reefer, and everybody's gotta eat. They offered us $10,000 [other sources put the figure at $25,000]. We said, 'Yeah, that'll just about get us up to zero.' Plus, Elektra came off as being fairly hip. They told us we'd have complete control over our music and complete control over advertising."

Did they actually get complete control?

Kramer: No.

Advert for the MC5 & the

Stooges at The Pavilion in

Flushing Meadow Park, NY

September 3, 1969

Recorded live at the Grande Ballroom over two nights (October 30/31 — Devil's Night and Halloween, or Zenta New Year should you belong to Brother J.C. Crawford's Church of Zenta), Kick Out The Jams was a raucous heavy metal rampage even by today's standards.

And for the most part, the rock music press was keen. The January 1969 issue of Rolling Stone featured Rob Tyner on the cover (a month before the record hit the shops) with an article written by Eric Ehrman that advised: "If you hear of some notoriously freaky band coming to your town with a trail of policemen, narcs, freaks and guerrillas, it'll be the MC5."

But reviews were, to say the least, mixed. CREEM editor Dave Marsh continued to praise the LP for several years after its release. In the October 1971 issue of the magazine, he wrote: "Those who were prepared for a total assault on the sensory culture to which they had been accustomed were delighted … Those who weren't ready were aghast, horrified in a way they'd never been before by a mere rock 'n' roll band..."

However, Lester Bangs was a prime example of someone who (surprisingly) didn't get it. In his first published piece for Rolling Stone (April 5, 1969), the now-revered rock critic declared that Kick Out The Jams was a "... ridiculous, overbearing, pretentious album." (Kramer still sounds a bit hurt when he paraphrases Bangs: "He said we were snot-nosed white boys that couldn't tune our guitars.")

The criticism might have stung the guys on a personal level, but that didn't stop the title track from reaching the very top of Detroit's local rock charts and the LP going Top 30 in the US. And believe it or not, therein laid the problem.

July 1970 issue of the counterculture newspaper

 it, announcing the MC5's first-ever European 

appearance at the Phun City Festival 

To ensure airplay and get their message of revolution to the people (and become rock stars), Tyner recorded two different versions of the song's introduction.

The 45/radio-friendly rendition opened with the nonincendiary: "Kick out the jams, brothers and sisters." Meanwhile, the LP (or "true") intro had the vocalist clearly hollering: "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!"

"Our plan," states Kramer, "was to make sure the single was firmly in the charts. It was already #2 in Detroit; it was on in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. We told Elektra to wait until the single was a lock smash hit, then we'd put out the album. Of course, the shit would hit the fan, but nothing could be done about it because it would already be a hit."

The one thing they hadn't considered was record company greed. Once Elektra saw the single making money, they couldn't wait to release the album.

"And of course, people started hearing the real version of 'Kick Out the Jams,'" he emphasizes. "Parents started calling the radio stations saying, 'My kid came home with this MC5 record and there's swearing on it!' So, the radio stations had to back off playing the single because it would encourage sales of the album."

"Back in the USA" b/w "Tutti Frutti"

Atlantic Records (1970)

Some record distributors and store owners were arrested for selling the LP to minors. While many records were banned prior to Kick Out The Jams, to Kramer's knowledge, this was the first time that arrests had been made. Hudson's, one of Detroit's largest department stores, refused to sell the album. In retaliation, Sinclair took out an ad in the underground press which proclaimed: "Fuck Hudson's!"

"We put the Elektra logo on the ad and sent them the bill," chuckles Kramer. Elektra, for all its hipness, did not find it amusing. But before the label dropped the MC5 like a hot potato, Kramer asserts: "They came to us and said, 'All these records are getting returned. Can we put the clean version on the album?' We said, 'Absolutely not! We have to stand by our guns!' They said, 'Okay,' and went and did it anyway."

(In its rush to sanitize the LP, Elektra also deleted Sinclair's politically-charged liner notes which read in part: "We are free men and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves. The MC5 is that force. The MC5 is the revolution in all its applications...")

Two Gary Grimshaw-designed posters for MC5 gigs at the Grande

(Left) With Wicked Religion and the Maxx - April 4/5, 1969 

With PG&E and the James Gang - April 6, 1969

(Right) With Southbound Freeway and Bossmen - November 4/5, 1966

Naturally, all this fuss caused a schism the size of the Grand Canyon to open between the band and its counterculture fan base. Rolling Stone handled the controversy by sardonically captioning a photo of the group: "The MC5, kicking out the, uh, … "

But at least Rolling Stone printed both sides of the story. (In the label's defense, President Jac Holzman was quoted as saying, "Elektra is not the tool of anyone's revolution.") Other editorials — like the one headlined "Rock For Sale" — just assumed they'd wimped out.

MC5 - publicity photo

"In a way," laments Kramer, "it broke the back of the MC5 because it made us look like we were waffling. Like, 'Yeah, we're for the revolution, but we want the money too.' The thing is that [wanting the money] was never in question to begin with. But when Elektra went ahead and put out the clean album, it made us look like we were copping out."

Thanks again to Danny Fields, the band wasn't label-less for long as full-page ads in the music press soon announced: "Atlantic Records Welcomes MC5!"

Too bad Fields couldn't make all their other troubles disappear as easily.

Before the group had even begun to work on its Atlantic debut, Sinclair was busted for giving (not even selling) two joints to an undercover officer. Rolling Stone threatened: "If John Sinclair gets sent up the river, Detroit will burn." Nevertheless, he was still sentenced to a ten-year prison term (of which he served two).

In the meantime, the Five were growing up, developing attitudes and political opinions of their own, which often put them at odds with the Panther's increasingly more dangerous agenda. For instance, Kramer realized that killing everyone who didn't see eye to eye with him would mean killing half the world. And that, he says, "wasn't the revolution we were talking about. We were talking about a revolution of ideas."

Advert for the MC5

 at Friars in Aylesbury, England

Friday, February 11, 1972

When the band finally insisted on having something to show for all their work and drove up in brand-new Corvettes (financed by their parents!), the Panthers saw it as the ultimate Star Trip and purged them from the party.

It was an emotional period, with hurt feelings all around.

Sinclair lashed out at the Five with an outrageous soundbite: "You guys wanted to be bigger than the Beatles, but I wanted you to be bigger than Mao." Kramer struck back at Sinclair in the pages of Rolling Stone, saying: "He was just getting his ideas over through us, and we were getting tired of that."

Through it all, with an undeterred sense of allegiance, the MC5 carried on paying Sinclair a percentage of their earnings, contributed to his legal defense fund, and played benefits on his behalf.

Into the fray stepped Jon Landau, a recent graduate of Brandeis University and music editor at Rolling Stone — "Mr. Rationality," as Dave Marsh called him.

Landau recalled his first MC5 gig in an interview with Fusion magazine: "The kids were in an absolute frenzy. Rock 'n' roll hysteria for the first ten minutes … And then the power failed. This winds up being the highlight of the evening. Rob starts yelling at the club owner that the power's gone. And then he starts screaming 'Power! Power!' as a chant … And the whole place was screaming 'Power!' — all these kids. They're just shaking their fists and chanting, 'Power! Power!' It was scary, and then the power goes on. I personally did not interpret it as a mystical intervention of the Lord, but I think a lot of people there may have."

My autographed copy of Wayne Kramer's solo CD

The Hard Stuff (Epitaph)

On the basis of a 30-page "memo" he wrote analyzing the group's music with no mention of its politics (and with no prior experience), Landau was hired to produce Back In The USA, the MC5's first Atlantic release. And with his help, the band made a tight, cohesive, very listenable, almost pop record with songs about "High School" and "Teenage Lust" bookended with Chuck Berry and Little Richard covers.

Albeit a strong undercurrent of militant politics runs throughout the LP. To quote Dave Marsh: "... tunes like "American Ruse," "Human Being Lawnmower" and "Call Me Animal" are probably the finest examples of politics in our music since Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' album."

In the more than two decades since its 1970 release, Back In The USA has proved to be one of the most influential hard-rock albums of all time, but in '71, Marsh logged its initial lukewarm reception: "Back In The USA bewildered most Five fans. Some reacted bitterly, some hostilely, others were just confused."

Advertisement for the High Time LP

(illustration by Rob Tyner)

In Goldmine, Dennis Thompson summed up what everyone was complaining about: "He [Landau] took too long, and as a result the album came out more studio-sounding than it should have, and we alienated many of our original fans because it wasn't as … wild and crazy as the first."

Thompson also grumbled that Landau (who went on to produce Bruce Springsteen) was a "greenhorn [when] what we needed was a pro."

Gary Grimshaw-designed poster for Big

Brother & the Holding Co. and the MC5

 at the Grande Ballroom - March 1968

Kramer agrees that Landau "didn't know what he was doing." And he admits that "in hindsight, you could say that maybe he did clamp down on our craziness."

On the other hand, Kramer also stresses that the producer "didn't hold a pistol to our heads; this was what we wanted to do." 

(One oft-cited gripe is the album's lack of bass, which set off rumors that Landau wanted to replace Mike Davis with a Nashville studio musician. By all accounts, the proposal was strongly vetoed by the band.)

Despite poor sales (Landau once speculated that Back In The USA had sold 60,000 copies, while the group guessed 100,000), the MC5 recorded a second album for Atlantic. Released in 1971, High Time left the Five to their own devices — "Cut loose from all the gurus," as Marsh quips in the liner notes to the CD reissue.

"We made the best record of our career," states Kramer regarding High Time. "At that point, we were no longer intimidated by the process of recording. We were producing it ourselves. It was our decision making, and we understood what we were supposed to sound like, who we were supposed to be."

And the rock press gave the LP a big thumbs up. In his CREEM review, Marsh raved: "Listen to 'Sister Anne,' which Greil Marcus says is the first song in seven years to remind him of Them's 'Mystic Eyes,' to Fred Smith's 'Baby Won't Ya,' which is the third generation tradition of Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry's songwriting … to Wayne Kramer's beautiful Beatles' parody 'Miss X,' which is what every band who ever tried to sound like the Beatles ever desired to accomplish."

Flyer designed by Edward Barker for the July 1970

Phun City festival in Sussex, England.

Lenny Kaye was equally enthusiastic in his appraisal for Rolling Stone: "It's all there — the precise breaks, the madly screaming dual guitars, the fanatic drive and energy … For this we can only praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

Yet this album, too, failed to take off (despite a truly amazing advert drawn by Tyner) and Atlantic dropped the MC5, citing a $128,000 debt that could not be repaid. Kramer contends that the label is still trying to recoup the debt with sales of the CD reissue.

How disappointed were they when High Time didn't sell?

Kramer: We were crushed. My heart was broken. From the time I was ten or eleven-years-old, all I'd worked for my entire life was in this band, and it all collapsed.

But he maintains that the MC5 didn't collapse by itself. "It was helped in great measure by the [government] authorities and the music industry. Every time we did something that had political significance, it incurred a larger, stronger political reaction. There was a prevailing attitude of, 'When is somebody gonna do something about the MC5?' And, of course, they did. We had constant problems with the police. We were beaten, fined, jailed, concerts were canceled..." (When he was arrested in the mid-seventies for dealing cocaine, Kramer was not surprised to find that the FBI had a file on him going back to 1966.)

MC5 - publicity photo

After the failure of High Time, the band was unable to secure a new US deal. "At that point," says Kramer, "the music industry wanted absolutely nothing to do with the MC5. It was too volatile a situation to get involved with."

The group made some forays to Europe, where they found a ready audience (they'd made their European debut in 1970, playing for free at England's Phun City festival). However, "between the lack of response in the record industry and the band's own burgeoning substance abuse problems, we just couldn't quite make it through," remarks Kramer.

When the end came, it wasn't pretty.

Kramer: We had a tour [of England] booked, and two days before we were supposed to leave, Rob said he wasn't gonna go. He had been unhappy for some time; he wanted to stay home and write and be with his children. Dennis said he wasn't gonna go either because it would interrupt his [drug] treatment. So, me and Fred did the tour without them — and of course, it was hideous. We didn't even know some of the lyrics. The songs were all in the wrong keys. We met the drummer in the dressing room on the first night of the first gig.

The final performance featuring all the original members of the MC5 took place (fittingly) at the Grande Ballroom on New Year's Eve 1972. "It was terrible," says Kramer.

Gary Grimshaw-designed poster for a 

1967 MC5 show at The See in Detroit

Because they didn't like each other?

Kramer: I don't know if it was that we didn't like each other... We didn't like ourselves. We didn't like the band. We had been beaten down to where we had no pride left."

"The worst part of the break-up," he adds, "was that we lost each other. I lost my brothers. These were the guys that I had gone through the fire with. And all of a sudden, we weren't there with each other anymore."

It would be twenty years later when Wayne Kramer, Fred Smith, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson once again joined forces, and it was to pay tribute to Rob Tyner, who died last year of a heart attack.

The group's three-song set of "Kick Out the Jams," "Ramblin' Rose" and "Black to Comm" (a wild show-stopper which they never recorded) drew 8,000 fans to the Michigan Theatre and raised over $30,000 to be used as a scholarship fund for Tyner's children.

"I used that show as an opportunity to reclaim my brothers," reflects Kramer. "Sadly, it took the death of Rob Tyner to bring us all together."

* * *

* Many thanks to Metal Mike Saunders, who supplied me with copious magazine clippings when I initially researched this article.

* Thanks also to Loren Dobson, who recently fact-checked the article for this blog.

The Ramones Turn 20 & Release An All-Covers CD: A Conversation With Joey About "Acid Eaters" & Rock 'N' Roll

Originally published in American Music Press (March 1994)

Interview by Devorah Ostrov

Promotion for the Acid Eaters tour

Denmark - June 25, 1994

When the Ramones got together in 1974, rock 'n' roll was, if not dead, at least comatose. The great one-hit-wonder garage-rock bands of the mid-sixties were a fading memory. The late-sixties heavy metal attack of the Stooges and MC5 had never really caught on in the States. And the early-seventies promise of a glam future with the Dolls, T. Rex and Slade had waned.

In '74, listening to the radio was something to think twice about. On the phone from New York, Joey Ramone runs down the list (within a year or two) of what you might have heard...

Radioactive Records publicity pic

"Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Journey, Toto, REO Speedwagon… all those wonderful bands. That was our competition. There was us and there was them. We stood alone. There was nobody like us. And there's still nobody like us!"

Joey continues: "We wanted to save rock 'n' roll. We stripped it down to the bone and put the excitement back into it — the attitude, the guts, the fun, the spirit, the raw energy and emotion!"

This year the Ramones — Joey, Johnny, Marky, and newest recruit C.J. — celebrate the group's 20th anniversary with the release of Acid Eaters, an all-covers CD showcasing their love of rock 'n' roll. And with a successful world tour underway, they find themselves in the enviable position of being more popular than ever.

* * *

Not only is Joey Ramone the coolest person on the planet, but he's also a huge rock 'n' roll fan, and he gets super excited when we talk about one of his favorite groups. I ask him what it was like the first time he saw the Who...

"It just blew me away!" he exclaims. "I saw them when they first played America in 1966. They were so charismatic and exciting and wild, all this aggression and excitement and great songs!"

Poster for Australia's Big Day Out - January 21, 1994 

And he enthusiastically recalls a recent meeting with Bob Dylan in Tokyo, where the Hard Rock Café threw a blow-out party for the Ramones' 2000th show.

"After the party, me and [noted rock photographer] Bob Gruen went to see Dylan at Budokan. We went backstage, and Dylan said 'Hello' to me. I freaked out! He said, 'Hey, Joey, how ya doin'?' I gave him a copy of Acid Eaters and said, 'This is for you. We covered one of your songs.'"

Acid Eaters

Radioactive Records (1993)

The Ramones' latest offering is a tribute to the music of the 1960s (with one exception: CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" was issued in early '71). A bit strange, you might think. But you'd be wrong because their passion for the genre is what makes the concept so appealing.

After two decades of inspiring — by Joey's calculation — millions of bands themselves, the guys get to pay homage to some of their own musical heroes.

And maybe it'll give the MTV generation a rock history lesson to boot. (Although that could be a chore as the liner notes only list who wrote the songs, not who performed them — and how many kids are gonna know what outfit Reg Presley fronted?)

The Ramones almost always include an impeccable cover or two on their records — "California Sun" from Leave Home, "Do You Wanna Dance" and "Surfin' Bird" from Rocket To Russia, "Indian Giver" on the B-side of "Real Cool Time." But the idea for Acid Eaters came about when they recorded "Take It as It Comes" (a lesser-known Doors' tune) for 1992's Mondo Bizarro.

Acid Eaters
All Access pass

"The Doors' song was really well-received," remarks Joey, "and our manager, who is also the head of our label [Radioactive Records] said, 'Why don't you guys record five of your favorite songs from that period and we'll make it into an EP. Kind of a treat for the fans.'"

Understandably, with so much material to pick from, the progression from five-song treat to full-length CD didn't take long.

As well as Dylan's "My Back Pages," many garage-rock nuggets are contained amongst the 12 tracks: the Amboy Dukes' "Journey to the Center of the Mind," Love's "7 and 7 Is," the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," the Troggs' "I Can't Control Myself," and the Animals' "When I Was Young."

And almost everything makes sense within the framework of what one might imagine the Ramones listened to as teenagers.

However, the freakish inclusion of an over-played classic-rock standard like the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" begs for speculation. Since it's hard to believe that anyone in the Ramones was ever a big Airplane fan, I have to presume that some nervous record company executive shouted, "Don't you guys like anything people have heard of?"

Promotion for the Acid Eaters tour & the Ramones' 2000th show

Tokyo, Japan - February 9, 1994

"The Jefferson Airplane song was our manager's idea," admits Joey. He diplomatically adds, "But after taking it on, it actually became kind of challenging."

While we're on the subject, "Somebody to Love" also features one of three "special guests" who popped round during the recording sessions. In this case, it's a former porn star who isn't normally associated with the Ramones (or any sort of music, really).

"7 and 7 Is" promo CD single

"Somebody called from the office and said, 'How about a guest vocalist?' remembers Joey. 'We have this woman and she's great!' I was like, 'Who? Tina Turner?' And they said, 'No... Traci Lords!' I said, 'Oh...'"

He laughs and says, "I'll leave it at that."

Luckily, the two other guests are saner choices: Skid Row's Sebastian Bach does something on "Out of Time," and Pete Townshend joins in on his own "Substitute." Let's talk about Pete first...

Q: So, Joey... recording "Substitute" while Pete Townshend looked on — you must have just died!

Joey: I was in total awe! I mean, Pete Townshend is my hero! He'll never know just how significantly he's influenced me, how he's enhanced my life. The Who were such a big influence on me as far as songwriting. You can't really tell someone that stuff. The best thing was just watching him sing the backing vocals. And I think the song sounds great! It's really exciting!

Wonderful Japanese advertisement 
for Acid Eaters

Q: And Sebastian Bach... Did he get lost on the way to the Guns N' Roses sessions for The Spaghetti Incident?

Joey: Haha! I was talking to him on the phone, and I told him what we were doing. He said, "Wow! I'd like to do something." I mentioned it to John, and we tried to find something for him to do. Y'know, some people might think, "Skid Row, yech!" I even thought that myself at one time. But they're cool rock 'n' roll kids.

Q: I have to mention your cover of "7 and 7 Is." Somehow your version is played even faster than the speed-of-sound original! But I wish you'd done the trippy ending.

Joey: We're not gonna do that shit! It was too psychedelic for us. But I do think our version is exciting and powerful. As a matter of fact, it's gonna be the next single.

Q: I've heard that [Love vocalist] Arthur Lee has written a song especially for the Ramones. Is that something you'll be recording?

Joey: He wrote a song and he gave me a cassette of it. It was good... it was called... I dunno what it was called. I dunno where I put it. I'm sure it's around here somewhere. Uhmm...

Lux Interior has a starring role in the video for "Substitute."
Click here to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIWpfS_MFHw

Q: Okay... There's probably no danger of it turning up on a Ramones' CD anytime soon. So, were there other songs that you wanted to include on Acid Eaters that didn't make it?

Joey: Yeah, I would've liked to have done a Kinks' song, and we listened to "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" [by the Electric Prunes], but a lot of people have done that song. We also mentioned doing "It's Cold Outside" [by the Choir]. Stiv Bators turned me onto the original, and I used to love it. But it didn't sound that great when I went back and listened to it.

Chrysalis advert for Acid Eaters

Q: Did any of the songs on Acid Eaters pose a problem for you vocally?

Joey: Y'know, you might think it's easy to just cover someone else's song, but it really isn't — especially the way I went about it. I wasn't just trying to cover the songs. I wanted to bring my own style to them. Some of them I stuck a little closer to, like "Can't Seem to Make You Mine." I love Sky's voice and his mannerisms, the way he utilizes his voice. But then a song like "Out of Time"... I wanted to give that one more of an R&B feel.

Q: Do you hope that kids will be inspired to check out the originals after hearing your versions of these songs?

Joey: Hopefully... I mean, there's so much great music out there. Especially if you're a musician yourself, it's totally inspiring to delve into the past. You have to go backwards in order to go forwards. Y'know what I mean?

Q: Sadly, kids don't know anything about rock history.

Joey: It's really pretty pathetic, people's knowledge of music. They haven't got the slightest idea — especially kids in America for some ridiculous reason.

Q: MTV...

Saint Joey painting by Vicki Berndt

https://vickiberndt.com

Joey: Maybe. But even before there was MTV it was like this. I don't know what it is. I remember the first time we went to England in 1976, all these young kids knew all about Little Richard, all the '50s artists, everything! I was blown away! They were totally on top of it. But that's why music sucks in America. Well... it doesn't completely.

Q: C.J. is such a young kid; did he know any of these songs beforehand?

Joey: He knew some of them. His father listened to a lot of that stuff.

Q: Great, my dad likes these songs!

Joey: Haha! I know! Things are so different from when I was a kid. My dad listened to Frank Sinatra records.

Q: I noticed that C.J. is making some sneaky inroads into your territory. He sang lead on two songs from Mondo Bizarro and three more on Acid Eaters ["The Shape of Things to Come," "My Back Pages" and "Journey to the Center of the Mind"]. His vocals are great, but what gives?

Joey: He's pushing me out. I'm gonna let him be the singer!

Radioactive Records publicity photo

Q: What are you going to do? Play tambourine?

Joey: Nah... I'll get a job at Wendy's, or something. No, actually I think it's great. Initially, I was supposed to sing "My Back Pages," but C.J. was doing it at the rehearsals and it was so perfect. He gave the song so much attitude. I just told him, "You should sing it."

Q: Is it true that Dylan was rehearsing next door while you guys were learning "My Back Pages"?

Joey: I wasn't there, but I called the rehearsal studio, and Monty [longtime Ramones' tour manager] told me that Dylan's tour manager was on the phone next to him. Later on, I found out that they were back-to-back rehearsing. Apparently, when John heard that Dylan was right next door, he said, "Uh... let's move on to something else."

Q: I know you've only been back home for a few days...

Joey: Yeah, we just got back from a big tour of Australia and Japan. We were co-headlining [with Soundgarden] this major festival that goes all over Australia called Big Day Out. It's something like Lollapalooza, but much larger — a 12-hour day with 50 bands and five stages! There were some really great bands on the show: the Breeders, Smashing Pumpkins, Teenage Fanclub, Urge Overkill... all the new alternative bands.

Promotion for the Acid Eaters tour - Uruguay 1994

Q: Were you aware of how well Acid Eaters was doing while you were away?

Joey: Not really... I came home to find that the album's been #1 for three weeks straight on CMJ [a "what's hot" industry report], and it's #1 on all the major college charts. The single ["Substitute"] was #1 the first week too! And this week it went to AOR radio. We've always had a problem with AOR radio, but everybody's playing it. It's really exciting! It feels like something's happening here.

"Substitute" CD promo single
Photo: George DuBose

Joey is explaining how the video for "Substitute" being shown on MTV is the edited version — "There's a real wild scene at the end. I mean, maybe it is a little over-the-top but..." — when his doorbell buzzes. It's an Argentinean journalist who's come to do his interview. But Joey "likes the flow of our conversation" and asks me to call him back later! When we talk again, it's about a range of different topics...

Q: How did the Ramones' sound come about?

Joey: Our sound came about... it came from scratch! At least as far as John and Dee Dee [original bassist] and Tommy [original drummer]. Tommy wasn't even a drummer. He was an advisor and a producer; he was just helping us out. When we were auditioning drummers, Tommy would show them what to play, and he'd never played drums in his life! In those days, everybody was very, let's say, self-indulgent. Everybody was trying to impress us with their flashiness. But what we wanted was a basic drummer, like a Charlie Watts. So, Tommy just wound up sitting down and playing the drums.

Q: Could you tell me a little about the Resistance, your politically oriented sideband?

Car 54, Where Are You? starring David Johansen

and John C. McGinley (and featuring the Ramones)

Joey: Oh, okay! Initially, I was asked to do three songs for a Rock the Vote benefit at CBGB's. I wanted to create a unique and exciting situation, so I pulled together a bunch of different musicians and artists: Ivan Julian [ex-Voidoid] and Fred Smith [ex-Television], C.J. and Marc, some people from the Living Theater... And each song was played by a different grouping of people.
     Then I was asked to play a benefit for Jerry Brown's campaign. I had just seen a debate between Brown and Clinton. I was really impressed by Brown; he seemed to be on top of it. So, I said I would do it. It felt really good to do something constructive in support of someone I believed in.
     I got together with Andy Shernoff [ex-Dictators] and Daniel Rey [ex-Shrapnel and writer of cool songs] and did one show in Washington Square Park. Then we played uptown on one of those flatbed trucks for about 50/75,000 people! The last thing we played was a benefit for Rock for Choice on the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
     The Resistance was a stimulating project and it was a lot of fun! I liked getting behind some causes that were important to get behind, like the cause of censorship. The song "Censorshit" [from Mondo Bizarro] was inspired by the Resistance. And I wrote a song for the Rock for Choice benefit called "Fascists Don't Fuck They Just Screw."

Promotion for the Acid Eaters tour

Santiago, Chile - May 16, 1994

Q: Haha! Will the Ramones be doing that song?

Joey: No... John's a Republican! Musically the Ramones are united; politically we're not. We share some views, like John's for a woman's right to an abortion. But we're not in sync with everything.

Q: I understand you've cleaned up your lifestyle lately. Is it true you're a vegetarian these days?

Joey: Yeah, and I stopped drinking and using drugs about four years ago. It was time for a change. I saw the light when I hit...

Q: Forty?

Joey: Ground zero! It wasn't hitting 40. I just got disgusted with my lifestyle; it was becoming a big bore.

The Ramones eat cake and promote Acid Eaters on 

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H-3N0jNbDI

Q: Did you do any shopping while you were in Japan?

Joey: Y'know, Japan has the best record stores! They've got everything! Most places, you're lucky to find one or two records, but over there I had to choose from like five or six. I got the Best Of T. Rex — it has everything on it, all the early stuff. I also found this rock 'n' roll video store. The whole store was just tapes, rare collectible stuff from shows all over the world. I was flippin'! They had a tape of the Who from '66. Pete Townshend's about 18; he's like a rail with a big nose. It's so great!

Promotion for the 1994 Acid Chaos tour

featuring Sepultura and the Ramones

Q: So, tell me about the film Car 54, Where Are You? starring David Johansen. The Ramones appear in it...

Joey: Did you see it?

Q: Er… no. Entertainment Weekly gave it an "F."

Joey: Haha! I never saw it either. I'll wait for it to come to cable. I just heard that "Rockaway Beach" is going to be used in the new Martin Scorsese film, Naked In New York, and there's a film coming out in March or April called Airheads — we have the title track in that. It's about a band that takes over a radio station. It sounds like it has the makings of a good movie; it's something I've thought about a few times myself!

Q: Did you go to or play at CBGB's 20th Anniversary party?

Joey: No, we were on tour. We were in Germany at the time. I was kind of pissed off because there were a lot of shows I wanted to see, and we were talking about playing, but it didn't come together. Now that it's our own 20th anniversary, we might do something like an off-the-cuff show at CBGB's. It would be an event!

Q: Twenty years... Who would've thought?

Promo poster for Acid Eaters
Radioactive Records (1993)

Joey: When you care about something... What other people think doesn't really matter to us. Y'know what I mean? We work hard. We've always worked our asses off and stuck to our vision!

* Follow these links to read my other interviews with the Ramones:

blogspot.com/the-ramones-this-january-1978-interview

blogspot.com/the-last-time-i-talked-to-joey-ramone

blogspot.com/in-1992-i-talked-to-marky-ramone