http://www.staythirstymedia.com/200909-037/html/200909-curt-kirkwood.html
Curt Kirkwood, guitarist and vocalist, founded the Meat Puppets in 1980. Accompanied on bass by his brother Cris and drummer Derrick Bostrom, the trio were a leading force in Rock and Roll throughout the ‘80s and 90’s, influencing such groups as Soundgarden and Nirvana. Now reunited and recharged, with Ted Marcus substituting Bostrom on drums, the Puppets drop another classic album, Sewn Together, to add to their repertoire of rock legendry. Jarrod Dicker speaks to the “Master of Puppets” himself about the new album, their long musical history and where we will see them in the future. Let me please introduce, Curt Kirkwood.
THIRSTY: Was there any specific influence that piloted your musical direction while growing up? Anything in particular your parents played around the house?
CK: Well...I’m sure my parents had some influence just by being my parents. They weren’t very into music. My mom had some Les Paul/Mary Ford records that I liked. I was mostly into what was on the radio, you know? I liked Elvis, I liked the Beatles, and I liked Frankie Laine singles when they came out. I liked Bobby Sherman...The Monkees, Petula Clark. Just basic stuff that you heard commonly.
THIRSTY: Who were your musical inspirations?
CK: I always liked “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” I don’t know who’s version it was (Johnny Cash/Ramrods)? My grandmother used to play it on the jukeboxes when we would be at restaurants, for me, and it was a big treat. I’d say “Day Tripper” was also a big one when I first heard that, when I was real young. I just loved that.
THIRSTY: Sewn Together is your twelfth studio album. It’s your first one since the 2007 reunion album, Rise to Your Knees. Did you start Sewn Together immediately after the completion of RTYK? Was there just an overflow of ideas that needed to be put down on paper?
CK: There was a lot. It was concurrent. I had songs...too many songs, you know, enough for a couple albums. And there was some hold-overs from way back on Sewn together, at least one or two. Rise to Your Knees was easy and then we had a year of touring and then Sewn Together was made. That was pretty easy too. I hadn’t done any band stuff for a while. I had done a lot of solo stuff which left me with a lot of songs and ideas. We didn’t put a whole lot of work into either record.
THIRSTY: How was this album (Sewn Together) influenced?
CK: It didn’t really come from anything in particular. I don’t think any of my stuff, well, the songs ever really do. Not for the most part. Occasionally I have some stuff pertaining to one subject or something, but, it’s pretty arbitrary really. No main theme in it or anything like that. It’s just another collection of songs. Just about all I ever do.
THIRSTY: Was there a specific direction you had in mind for this record? Was it meant to grab the attention of a new audience, or was it another treat for the Meat Puppet faithful?
CK: I really don’t think about an audience. When I’m playing guitar, ill think, “you know this may look pretty cool.” Or when I’m writing, I think, “hey maybe people will think this sounds pretty cool.” But, by in large, I’m just writing down ideas that I have...that’s pretty much the only way I can do. I can probably, or probably have, tried to write to a certain or from a certain perspective. Like, this is going out for what I would consider to be the group of people that listen, but I don’t know if that’s been successful. I don’t think it really works for me to try that kind of thing.
THIRSTY: How would you compare Sewn Together’s style, to say, your first self-titled album Meat Puppets (1982)? Did you think 29 years later you’d still be doing the music thing?
CK: Yea....it was pretty obvious. I just really felt like this is what I had to do. It wasn’t an overnight thing. I was messing around, thought about doing a lot of different stuff that I liked. I wasn’t trying to find an occupation, I was just trying to press through things that I enjoyed. I knew I liked being in the outdoors so I moved to Canada when I was 17. I worked on a fly plane base/float plane base that took fisherman around. And I went to Northwest Territories for work. Then my brother and I traveled to Alaska for 6 weeks, and we’d be on the Yukon a couple weeks. While I was doing all that stuff, I’d always drag an acoustic guitar along with me. I kind of fancied myself to be a musician. I played with my friends in Phoenix and really wasn’t very good...But then you know all along, you’re just kind of saying, “wow we’re musicians.” I had gravitated towards those kind of people actually, musicians. The people I grew up with weren’t really getting me. There wasn’t anyone in my neighborhood, but I had to find people around to play with. Once I kind of got the outdoor thing out of my system, I realized that I was just trying to escape responsibility of any kind. I realized it wouldn’t work. That I’d have to be a tracker or miner or something... so I moved back to Phoenix and decided to keep going to school. I did college courses and that way I could keep the support coming from the family. And I funded my early music endeavors by telling the family I was in school but I never went to classes. So I could live... if I hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t give me any money. They would send me enough money to eat in the cafeteria and live in the dorm...it gave me a lot of time to play. I went to school in Tucson (AZ) for a whole year and never got any credits. I went and jammed all the time.
THIRSTY: When you reunited the second time, it was rumored that you were bringing back original drummer Derrick Bostrom. Was this true?
CK: We asked him, he said he didn’t want it. My first thing upon reuniting was that I wanted to do the Meat Puppets, so I asked Cris and Derek right off the bat. Cris was well (clean), so that’s what I did first thing.
THIRSTY: How was it jumping on board with your first record company SST? Was it comfortable being in that label while it was at such a young age?
CK: Yea... yea it was like nothing else. It was just like magic. You make a record, punk/rock record, with no thought to how much it will cost. It was just no time worries, no money, but it wasn’t required. There wasn’t any production. You just go in and play. It was like you were doing a gig. Then we kind of figured it out...how to mess around with production when we produced Up on the Sun (1985). But even that was done in three days...all the records done at SST were done really cheap. No one was trying to figure out how to make things sell, they were just letting you do it. We were all friends, run by the guitar player from Black Flag, Greg Ginn. We love those guys, we toured with them, did gigs with them. It was really a boy’s club scene...like THE LOST BOYS, becoming a club house. If there was a Peter Pan it was probably Greg, who was signing all these bands. He seemed to know. He was a little older and Black Flag was his band. And everybody worshipped Black Flag. Nobody told anybody what to do... nobody said, “this sucks.” It was more like “this is your new thing, haha cool send it out.”
THIRSTY: Did it pay off financially?
CK: I don’t know. I’m sure somebody made some money. We never made any money there.
THIRSTY: Any lifelong connections you still have from SST? Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.?
CK: Sonic Youth opened for us the first time we played New York City in 1982. I’ve known those guys ever since then. They’re really good friends. We’ll do shows with them. The first time I ever played solo in 2001...the first gig I ever did that way was opening up for Sonic Youth. I see Henry Rollins. He was at the Sewn Together release party we had in Los Angeles in May. I still see Mike Block, I see a lot of those people still. That’s the core of my friends in LA.
THIRSTY: Kurt Cobain was a huge fan of your music. He invited the Meat Puppets onto Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session. How did that come about?
CK: We were on tour with Nirvana and he just thought it would be a good idea to have us join the Unplugged session.
THIRSTY: Did he approach you with the idea that you guys would be playing notable Meat Puppet tunes? Lake of Fire, Plateau, Oh Me...
CK: It was all about Kurt wanting to do those three Puppet songs. They wanted to learn how to play them right. We rather have them played the way they were supposed to be played. We had pretty different styles in a way. But the guitar playing...we just wanted to have it be correct.
THIRSTY: Did you maintain a relationship with Cobain post the Unplugged show?
CK: I didn’t really keep in touch with him at all. He was pretty elusive at that point. We were actually supposed to open for them in Prague, two days after he tried to kill himself in Rome. That’s where that tour was gonna lead (Prague). We were already over there in Europe and were told the tour was cancelled. That Kurt had a mishap with pills. But, I didn’t think that was a very good sign. I thought that he seemed kind of depressed anyway. I just minded my own business, generally people that play music can be a little enigmatic, so I just minded my own business. But when that happened I thought, “oh man that’s not a good sign.” That would have been my last time with Kurt, being on tour with him for a number of weeks. That whole thing got cancelled. Not too long after that, he was dead.
THIRSTY: You later formed a band with Nirvana bassist, Krist Novoselic and Sublime drummer, Bud Gaugh. Did your relationship with Krist start while on tour with Nirvana?
CK: Well we had gotten close on the tour, preceding the Unplugged thing. We had become buddies, Krist and I, and kind of kept in touch pretty loosely when we’d see each other and what not. I was in Seattle in 2001, and October I was strolling around for the first time on my own...no album just doing acoustic Meat Puppets stuff. Krist came and saw me play and said, “hey we should start a band.” That was the last show of my solo tour, so I had to drive back to Austin right after. While I was driving along, Bud’s brother Jason called me and said that Bud was out of the Long Beach Dub Allstars. He said it’d be cool if we [Bud and Curt] could jam together, and that he [Bud] wants to do something. I just thought about it for a little. When I got back to Austin I called him up and said it’s a pretty cool coincidence that you and Krist contacted me today. They didn’t know each other at all. Bud was familiar with Nirvana of course...Krist not as familiar with Sublime. I was pretty big fan of Sublime and Nirvana. I could see how this could be kind of cool. This band dropped in my lap just like that. These guys had the resources to do it. We could get hooked up right away.
THIRSTY: So this sparked the creation of the trio’s album, Eyes Adrift?
CK: We met the beginning of December 2001 and just immediately set to recording that album. A couple weeks later after doing that, we got to know each other as a band. I had met Bradley Nowell when I was visiting in Austin before I lived, here while they were doing the self-titled, Sublime record. I went over to say hey to Paul and Brad came out. I shook his hand, but I never met Bud. It was interesting, in kind of a cool way, that we three got together on faith and just went for it. I knew how they played; I knew they could do it. We’ve all been through our “ups and downs” and tragedies at that point. We had the sensitivity to respect each other and the space.
THIRSTY: Backwater was a huge it in the early-mid 90’s. What was the feeling of that song in the Meat Puppet camp? Did you guys like it?
CK: I didn’t like it that much, but there were people at the record company that were saying, “hey that’s a cool song.” So I took the time when we made the record to make sure that the arrangement on Blackwater was right. As far as I knew, that would be what was contemporary...At that point we altered the version we made. The original version of Backwater was very organ heavy. I did it at my brother’s place by myself and it was a lot slower and more of a gospel song. When we went in the studio to do it like it produced, I made it sound like bottle rock.
THIRSTY: The first reunion (2000) and second reunion (2006) had to drive from some inspiration to bring the band back together. Where did that brew from?
CK: It’s kind of interesting. It wasn’t really a breakup. I write all the songs in the band, I pretty much call all the shots. The first record (Meat Puppets) we were equals to a large degree and none of us knew anything. I started writing a lot, and felt motivated to make records so I had them follow that. My brother didn’t want to play for a while so I figured I’d give him a break. We cancelled some tours we had setup in the beginning of ‘96. Cris just wasn’t responding and was way too far out. We had a lot of money so we could take the time and not do anything. It wasn’t supposed to be a breakup but...I had moved to Venice Beach and lived out there and sort of ignored the whole thing. Chris didn’t get better, he actually got worst. And Derek just kind of faded away. I kind of knew he would if he got the opportunity; got married and started doing his own thing. I don’t think his heart was really in the band anymore. So it wasn’t really a breakup so to speak, it was just what was happening in between records.
THIRSTY: So you truly didn’t think that this would be such a long hiatus?
CK: I figured there’d be another record. It was a time to relax, and ended up taking a long time to come. I was in Austin, playing with other people, trying to get a record done like that. We were gonna do Curt Kirkwood and the Meat Puppets, but I never wanted to do a solo thing. I wanted to be in the band. It didn’t feel the same. I never put down the Meat Puppets. I just started taking my time more. The solo record came up and then Eyes Adrift so it took me a while; the last Meat Puppets records came out in 2000 (Golden Lies) and then Rise to Your Knees in 2007. It took a good amount of time but it’s also a time frame dictated by people’s taste. If you fall out of that pond, it’ll get filled up real fast in the pop world. So you have to shit a record out BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! or they’ll forget who you are. And then you can take 2-3 years and then they’ll say that’s a long time. A lot of it is predicated by people’s attention span and clarity, memory, freshness of things. Dictated by that because in reality it’s like you’re only as good as your last gig. Then you’re nothing ‘til the next one. You’re not a band...just a stooge...just nothing. You’re only a band when you’re playing, it’s a weird thing. I’ve tried to kind of define it myself because I didn’t anticipate it. I’ve never broke it up in my mind.
THIRSTY: Should we keep expecting more albums from the Meat Puppets? Another 30 years of awesome Rock and Roll? Or are you looking towards the solo thing again?
CK: Well no... I’m not trying to branch off. I have some other ideas. I kind of learned to separate the band thing and the solo thing, once I finally did a record by myself. It was just straight up like no band, solo record. So I worked on that on one side of my mind. Now I’m working on more Meat Puppets stuff. I always figured I’d get the band up, I want to keep it together. It was the thing that I liked. Even as a kid in the 70’s I liked to see bands put out albums and always know that you can go see them. So I always wanted to have that for us and our audience.
THIRSTY: Anyone you’d love to jam with in the scene?
CK: There are tons of people for sure. Two names just to mention right off the top of my head....ohhh...jeez! I’ll just put it this way: I’m pretty open minded. I just like to do stuff. I don’t have any plans to call anybody up and ask them. I do think, from time to time, wow that’s a cool voice that would sound good if we sang together. If Dave Matthews called me and asked if I wanted to sing some duets, Id say “hell yea.” And if say Katy Perry asked, I’d say “hell yea.” I’m just pulling shit out of my ass now, you know what I’m saying... I love to play. I can see the value in just about any collaboration. I’m pretty positive about anything that comes my way, thinking “that’ll be pretty cool, that’s a good idea.” I’ve never really asked anybody myself. I’m always just so caught up in my own crap, I haven’t really asked anyone on an album to put a track down. Like on Sewn Together I got recommended this guy William Joseph who’s this piano guy that played on some tracks. He just opened Josh Groban’s last tour...I just heard him and thought, “hey this guy is a piano prodigy from Phoenix, that’s fucking wild.” To open Josh Groban too. Wow.
THIRSTY: It has truly been a pleasure. I really hope to hear some more Meat Puppet stuff in the near future.
CK: Well I’m working on it. We got another record to put out with Megaforce so that’s already in the works
THIRSTY: Great! Expect my call when that album comes out...
CK: Cool, alright dude, talk to you soon.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Interview with John Sinclair (StayThirsty)
http://www.staythirstymedia.com/200909-037/html/200909-john-sinclair.html
It ain't fair, John Sinclair
In the stir for breathing air
Won't you care for John Sinclair?
In the stir for breathing air
Let him be, set him free
Let him be like you and me
- John Sinclair by John Lennon
John Sinclair was sentenced to 10 years in prison after offering two joints to an undercover narcotics officer in 1969. The ridiculous sentencing of a known cultural revolutionist sparked a nationwide upheaval, leading renowned left wing fundamentalists to charge to Ann Arbor and form the notorious, “Free John Now Rally.” Above are the lyrics sang by John Lennon at the Crisler Arena in December of 1971 where he stood on a bill with other attendees such as Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and many others. Eventually, the ten year sentence was shortened to three and a half years, and the movement forever now symbolizes the necessity of people to stand against the wrongdoings and persecution by the government, even in these more modern times. But why did a movement form for this specific person? Why did all these “left-wing luminaries” venture to Ann Arbor to protest the sentencing of one man? Who is this, John Sinclair? Well, why don’t we hear the history from the man himself? Jarrod Dicker and John Sinclair...
THIRSTY: What kind of music would you say fed your artistic appetite growing up? Rock and Roll? Classical?
JS: No, it was Rhythm and Blues...on the radio. I grew up in a little country town about 60 miles north of Detroit. What happened was, I grew up in the ‘40s, born in 1941. That was way before television, if you could imagine that [chuckle]. Well, in1950 T.V. started taking over, but before that all the entertainment was on the radio. Variety shows, detective shows, dramas, comedies...all that kind of stuff. When television came along, all that when off the radio and they started just focusing on records. Then around 1948, they had the first black oriented station. A few years later, they had them all over the country. So this was what I listened to on the radio because television never got to me. I didn’t like it...a whole lotta shit [haha]. But, I found these black oriented music stations and started listening to them. It was the greatest stuff I ever heard in my life! So I just stuck with that.
THIRSTY: Great. So your time in the forties and fifties was spent indulged in Rhythm and Blues, then you ended up doing poetry?
JS: Yes
THIRSTY: You wrote for an underground newspaper in Detroit called, “The Fifth Estate.” Tell me a little about your time there.
JS: I was a columnist for The Fifth Estate. I wrote an arts column, starting with their second issue. As far as the underground was concerned, it was fairly influential. It was the only place you would get that kind of information. It was jazz, poetry, painting, film and other stuff like that. The paper was public, but underground...they just sold it on the streets. They don’t have the papers now like they did back then. I still remain in contact with Peter Werbe who was editor for most of the time.
THIRSTY: How you got involved in the MC5? Were you guys in a similar Detroit scene?
JS: Well we lived in the same neighborhood in Detroit. They were younger than I. I had heard them play and thought, “these guys are really good.” So I would go see them play every time they were around. I became really close friends with the lead singer Rob Tyner and Wayne Kramer. For about a year we were really close and somehow I ended up handling the affairs because no one else wanted to.
THIRSTY: Did you hold any more responsibilities in the MC5 beside managing? Were you a contributor to their lyrics, music, etc.?
JS: No, not really. I wrote one tune and that was it. We were all growing and developing the MC5 concept. We talked about it all the time. We were totally focused in terms of developing talent and ideas. So I worked with them to help move things to a higher level [chucke]. I also played saxophone on the last number, every night for the last couple of years. They always closed the show with an improvisational number, “Black to Comm,” so they let me play the saxophone on it.
THIRSTY: You were a renowned cultural revolutionist. Did any of these ideas/feelings contradict those of the MC5?
JS: No, not until they fired me.
THIRSTY: Because of your involvement and creation of The White Panther Party?
JS: Well, we all did that together. It just came from them not wanting to do it anymore. The White Panthers came to the call of the Black Panther party to aid them in their movement against persecution. We wanted to say something to young white people that the Black Panther Party was a good thing. It was wrong for the government to harass and attack and persecute them. We responded to the call!
THIRSTY: So it basically did end because of contradicting beliefs about “The Revolution” and The White Panther Party?
JS: After the release of the MC5 album, “Kick Out the Jams” in June 1969, the band decided that this wasn’t what they wanted to do. So that built a lot of confusion amongst the fan base. It created confusion about what exactly a white panther was. What does it mean? The next thing was that the main three people in our organization were in prison. So that had somewhat of a damper, but at the same time it built a lot of national interest because people were trying to get us outta prison.
THIRSTY: Did you ever come in contact or protest with Black Panther leaders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton?
JS: After a while we spent some time together. Neither of us were really too much about the protest...but we WORKED together, yea.
THIRSTY: In your book, Guitar Army (1972), one of the major quotes is that, “Rock and roll is a weapon of cultural revolution.” What are your feelings on that statement in these modern times?
JS: To what cultural oppression [haha]!?!? Pop culture in general is the main thing they use to keep young people from developing any ideas or activities that would threaten the status quo. It’s a charge into full sale of consumer society. Once they had Woodstock festival and the merchandisers realized that this was a new market and not just a bunch of dope fiends they learned to profit. Everything started to change and become worse. And it gets worse every day.
THIRSTY: Do you think the state Rock & Roll is in right now is a reflection of culture and society?
JS: The fact is that if you give people enough money, they’ll do whatever you tell them to. They bought them off. Now all these musicians are millionaires. It’s not their interest to overthrow the social order...it’s in their investments and making them grow.
THIRSTY: So now to your infamous imprisonment. You were sentenced ten years for two joints, correct? Did you hope this would further propel the cultural revolution?
JS: I hoped this would indeed. We fought back hard. That’s why I got out in 3 ½ years instead of 9 ½. We fought tooth and nail. After I was released, it was about 1975. I knew what was going on inside the prison, that there was a huge gathering and movement taking place outside.
THIRSTY: Did you have contact with any of the White Panthers while incarcerated? Or any of the musicians such as John Lennon?
JS: The White Panther Party among the principle persons were my brother and my wife. So they were also the people that were allowed to visit me and correspond freely with. So even in prison, I was active in the organization, I sort of directed everything. I was the stereotypical Mafioso in prison, directing the criminal “underprise” from his cell. It was different back then also in prisons. They didn’t have the millions of people locked up for weed and drugs. They were mostly criminals who hurt other people and took their stuff.
THIRSTY: Yea, now America jails are filled with culprits of petty and stupid crimes.
JS: It’s all under the control mechanism. Like Disney Studio and MTV...Rolling Stone...controlling their branch of the media. It’s sickening.
THIRSTY: So once you were released, where did you center most of your time?
JS: Ann Arbor is where I spent most of it. We kind of morphed from the White Panther Party to the Rainbow Peoples Party. We decided that rather be a national radical organization, we would rather organize in our local community and try to take over and reform institutions. The ultimate goal was to gain elective office like the sheriff or city council, stuff like that. We eventually elected two people to the city council in the Human Rights Party, but everything fell apart when we tried to campaign for sheriff. The most academic campus based leftists had a moral dilemma with that...being sheriff.
THIRSTY: Ahh, c’mon. We needed a change!
JS: I know. We were psychedelic Marxists/Leninists. Maoists on ACID! [chuckles] So I thought controlling the sheriff’s office would be the best possible place to start. We’d be able to arrest the landlords! We were trying to be revolutionary, so we were studying Lenin and Maoism and figuring out how to make it work in America. Of course, we didn’t figure it out, but we definitely tried pretty hard. We might have been wrong but we tried pretty hard.
THIRSTY: John Lennon made his voice clear in coming to your aid while you were in prison. Did you maintain a relationship with John after incarceration?
JS: We were going to do a big project together in 1972. He got into trouble because he came and helped me out in Ann Arbor. After that, we were going to have a coalition and put on concerts all around the country. And kind of follow Nixon around. We planned to have free concerts outside wherever he was going, ending with a 3 day outdoor festival in front of the Republican National Convention. That was the idea. But they [management] put so much pressure on him and drove him out of the plan. He was all for it, he just couldn’t sustain it because he didn’t have any rights. He was a British subject. Eventually we lost touch. He retreated from public life for quite a few years.
THIRSTY: You currently reside in Amsterdam. When did you decide to venture overseas?
JS: I was in the states until 2003, then I left for Amsterdam. After the Rainbow Peoples Party folded, some of us moved back to Detroit. There, we were active in support of the administration for Coleman A. Young, the first black mayor. Then I went back to the Detroit artistic community and worked with jazz artists, poets and people like that. We would develop projects, produce concerts, record, do radio shows, all that kind of stuff for the Detroit Jazz Center. When Ronald Reagan (1980) came in, that was all over [haha]. Then I worked with a Rock and Roll band for a few years. I was with my second wife at this time and had two daughters...and she had two daughters...so I worked in the music business in Detroit to feed my kids and get them through school. I managed bands locally, booked clubs, etc. Later, I worked with the Detroit Council of the Arts. I edited the city’s arts magazine and was on the radio at WDET. And then, in 1991 I moved to New Orleans.
THIRSTY: Wow. That must have been an exciting move for such a music enthusiast. What did you do there?
JS: Well I moved there in ’91 and ended up being there for the next twelve years. I loved it there and was on the radio at WWOZ. I formed my band, “The Blues Scholars” there. We performed a lot. I also spent time writing for music magazines and newspapers.
THIRSTY: So since you left in 2003, you weren’t lucky enough to escape the Bush-era.
JS: Bush came in. That was what made me think about leaving. I always liked America, until then. But then, you could see that it wasn’t going to be right after they stole the election and nobody said anything. That’s what blew my mind. I happened to have been in Amsterdam for the Cannabis Cup during the 2000 election. We watched it on television. We watched them take the election and saw Gore pitch away to the Republican goons who were doing the same stuff they’re doing now with healthcare and energy. You know...the phony town meetings. And in 2000, the Republican Party sent all these operatives down there [FLA] to pose as irate local citizens. They stormed the place where the recount was going on and demanded that it stop. So then Gore just said, “ok” and that was it. I said, “wow, this isn’t gonna be fun after this. It’s gonna get kind of ugly.” Then they had the 2002 congressional elections where the right wing took over every fucking institution in the country, After that...I was terrified. I was in New Orleans having a ball but I was starving. I couldn’t make a living properly. And I finally concluded that if I’m gonna starve here, I might as well starve in Amsterdam [chuckle]. So I did.
THIRSTY: How are you liking it over there? Easier to make a living?
JS: I write, I perform, I travel a lot. I’m a popular informant for documentary films. I’m not just about the ‘60s but am also a first class expert on New Orleans and R&B music. So I often perform and do poetry (John recently joined The Black Crowes onstage in Amsterdam to read his original poems) and a lot of writing. My new book, “It’s All Good,” is out on paperback and my new CD from Detroit, “Detroit Life” just released. I maintain a blog regularly and have a free radio station in Amsterdam. So as you can see, my time is being spent well.
THIRSTY: Thanks John. It has been a pleasure.
JS: Thank you
It ain't fair, John Sinclair
In the stir for breathing air
Won't you care for John Sinclair?
In the stir for breathing air
Let him be, set him free
Let him be like you and me
- John Sinclair by John Lennon
John Sinclair was sentenced to 10 years in prison after offering two joints to an undercover narcotics officer in 1969. The ridiculous sentencing of a known cultural revolutionist sparked a nationwide upheaval, leading renowned left wing fundamentalists to charge to Ann Arbor and form the notorious, “Free John Now Rally.” Above are the lyrics sang by John Lennon at the Crisler Arena in December of 1971 where he stood on a bill with other attendees such as Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and many others. Eventually, the ten year sentence was shortened to three and a half years, and the movement forever now symbolizes the necessity of people to stand against the wrongdoings and persecution by the government, even in these more modern times. But why did a movement form for this specific person? Why did all these “left-wing luminaries” venture to Ann Arbor to protest the sentencing of one man? Who is this, John Sinclair? Well, why don’t we hear the history from the man himself? Jarrod Dicker and John Sinclair...
THIRSTY: What kind of music would you say fed your artistic appetite growing up? Rock and Roll? Classical?
JS: No, it was Rhythm and Blues...on the radio. I grew up in a little country town about 60 miles north of Detroit. What happened was, I grew up in the ‘40s, born in 1941. That was way before television, if you could imagine that [chuckle]. Well, in1950 T.V. started taking over, but before that all the entertainment was on the radio. Variety shows, detective shows, dramas, comedies...all that kind of stuff. When television came along, all that when off the radio and they started just focusing on records. Then around 1948, they had the first black oriented station. A few years later, they had them all over the country. So this was what I listened to on the radio because television never got to me. I didn’t like it...a whole lotta shit [haha]. But, I found these black oriented music stations and started listening to them. It was the greatest stuff I ever heard in my life! So I just stuck with that.
THIRSTY: Great. So your time in the forties and fifties was spent indulged in Rhythm and Blues, then you ended up doing poetry?
JS: Yes
THIRSTY: You wrote for an underground newspaper in Detroit called, “The Fifth Estate.” Tell me a little about your time there.
JS: I was a columnist for The Fifth Estate. I wrote an arts column, starting with their second issue. As far as the underground was concerned, it was fairly influential. It was the only place you would get that kind of information. It was jazz, poetry, painting, film and other stuff like that. The paper was public, but underground...they just sold it on the streets. They don’t have the papers now like they did back then. I still remain in contact with Peter Werbe who was editor for most of the time.
THIRSTY: How you got involved in the MC5? Were you guys in a similar Detroit scene?
JS: Well we lived in the same neighborhood in Detroit. They were younger than I. I had heard them play and thought, “these guys are really good.” So I would go see them play every time they were around. I became really close friends with the lead singer Rob Tyner and Wayne Kramer. For about a year we were really close and somehow I ended up handling the affairs because no one else wanted to.
THIRSTY: Did you hold any more responsibilities in the MC5 beside managing? Were you a contributor to their lyrics, music, etc.?
JS: No, not really. I wrote one tune and that was it. We were all growing and developing the MC5 concept. We talked about it all the time. We were totally focused in terms of developing talent and ideas. So I worked with them to help move things to a higher level [chucke]. I also played saxophone on the last number, every night for the last couple of years. They always closed the show with an improvisational number, “Black to Comm,” so they let me play the saxophone on it.
THIRSTY: You were a renowned cultural revolutionist. Did any of these ideas/feelings contradict those of the MC5?
JS: No, not until they fired me.
THIRSTY: Because of your involvement and creation of The White Panther Party?
JS: Well, we all did that together. It just came from them not wanting to do it anymore. The White Panthers came to the call of the Black Panther party to aid them in their movement against persecution. We wanted to say something to young white people that the Black Panther Party was a good thing. It was wrong for the government to harass and attack and persecute them. We responded to the call!
THIRSTY: So it basically did end because of contradicting beliefs about “The Revolution” and The White Panther Party?
JS: After the release of the MC5 album, “Kick Out the Jams” in June 1969, the band decided that this wasn’t what they wanted to do. So that built a lot of confusion amongst the fan base. It created confusion about what exactly a white panther was. What does it mean? The next thing was that the main three people in our organization were in prison. So that had somewhat of a damper, but at the same time it built a lot of national interest because people were trying to get us outta prison.
THIRSTY: Did you ever come in contact or protest with Black Panther leaders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton?
JS: After a while we spent some time together. Neither of us were really too much about the protest...but we WORKED together, yea.
THIRSTY: In your book, Guitar Army (1972), one of the major quotes is that, “Rock and roll is a weapon of cultural revolution.” What are your feelings on that statement in these modern times?
JS: To what cultural oppression [haha]!?!? Pop culture in general is the main thing they use to keep young people from developing any ideas or activities that would threaten the status quo. It’s a charge into full sale of consumer society. Once they had Woodstock festival and the merchandisers realized that this was a new market and not just a bunch of dope fiends they learned to profit. Everything started to change and become worse. And it gets worse every day.
THIRSTY: Do you think the state Rock & Roll is in right now is a reflection of culture and society?
JS: The fact is that if you give people enough money, they’ll do whatever you tell them to. They bought them off. Now all these musicians are millionaires. It’s not their interest to overthrow the social order...it’s in their investments and making them grow.
THIRSTY: So now to your infamous imprisonment. You were sentenced ten years for two joints, correct? Did you hope this would further propel the cultural revolution?
JS: I hoped this would indeed. We fought back hard. That’s why I got out in 3 ½ years instead of 9 ½. We fought tooth and nail. After I was released, it was about 1975. I knew what was going on inside the prison, that there was a huge gathering and movement taking place outside.
THIRSTY: Did you have contact with any of the White Panthers while incarcerated? Or any of the musicians such as John Lennon?
JS: The White Panther Party among the principle persons were my brother and my wife. So they were also the people that were allowed to visit me and correspond freely with. So even in prison, I was active in the organization, I sort of directed everything. I was the stereotypical Mafioso in prison, directing the criminal “underprise” from his cell. It was different back then also in prisons. They didn’t have the millions of people locked up for weed and drugs. They were mostly criminals who hurt other people and took their stuff.
THIRSTY: Yea, now America jails are filled with culprits of petty and stupid crimes.
JS: It’s all under the control mechanism. Like Disney Studio and MTV...Rolling Stone...controlling their branch of the media. It’s sickening.
THIRSTY: So once you were released, where did you center most of your time?
JS: Ann Arbor is where I spent most of it. We kind of morphed from the White Panther Party to the Rainbow Peoples Party. We decided that rather be a national radical organization, we would rather organize in our local community and try to take over and reform institutions. The ultimate goal was to gain elective office like the sheriff or city council, stuff like that. We eventually elected two people to the city council in the Human Rights Party, but everything fell apart when we tried to campaign for sheriff. The most academic campus based leftists had a moral dilemma with that...being sheriff.
THIRSTY: Ahh, c’mon. We needed a change!
JS: I know. We were psychedelic Marxists/Leninists. Maoists on ACID! [chuckles] So I thought controlling the sheriff’s office would be the best possible place to start. We’d be able to arrest the landlords! We were trying to be revolutionary, so we were studying Lenin and Maoism and figuring out how to make it work in America. Of course, we didn’t figure it out, but we definitely tried pretty hard. We might have been wrong but we tried pretty hard.
THIRSTY: John Lennon made his voice clear in coming to your aid while you were in prison. Did you maintain a relationship with John after incarceration?
JS: We were going to do a big project together in 1972. He got into trouble because he came and helped me out in Ann Arbor. After that, we were going to have a coalition and put on concerts all around the country. And kind of follow Nixon around. We planned to have free concerts outside wherever he was going, ending with a 3 day outdoor festival in front of the Republican National Convention. That was the idea. But they [management] put so much pressure on him and drove him out of the plan. He was all for it, he just couldn’t sustain it because he didn’t have any rights. He was a British subject. Eventually we lost touch. He retreated from public life for quite a few years.
THIRSTY: You currently reside in Amsterdam. When did you decide to venture overseas?
JS: I was in the states until 2003, then I left for Amsterdam. After the Rainbow Peoples Party folded, some of us moved back to Detroit. There, we were active in support of the administration for Coleman A. Young, the first black mayor. Then I went back to the Detroit artistic community and worked with jazz artists, poets and people like that. We would develop projects, produce concerts, record, do radio shows, all that kind of stuff for the Detroit Jazz Center. When Ronald Reagan (1980) came in, that was all over [haha]. Then I worked with a Rock and Roll band for a few years. I was with my second wife at this time and had two daughters...and she had two daughters...so I worked in the music business in Detroit to feed my kids and get them through school. I managed bands locally, booked clubs, etc. Later, I worked with the Detroit Council of the Arts. I edited the city’s arts magazine and was on the radio at WDET. And then, in 1991 I moved to New Orleans.
THIRSTY: Wow. That must have been an exciting move for such a music enthusiast. What did you do there?
JS: Well I moved there in ’91 and ended up being there for the next twelve years. I loved it there and was on the radio at WWOZ. I formed my band, “The Blues Scholars” there. We performed a lot. I also spent time writing for music magazines and newspapers.
THIRSTY: So since you left in 2003, you weren’t lucky enough to escape the Bush-era.
JS: Bush came in. That was what made me think about leaving. I always liked America, until then. But then, you could see that it wasn’t going to be right after they stole the election and nobody said anything. That’s what blew my mind. I happened to have been in Amsterdam for the Cannabis Cup during the 2000 election. We watched it on television. We watched them take the election and saw Gore pitch away to the Republican goons who were doing the same stuff they’re doing now with healthcare and energy. You know...the phony town meetings. And in 2000, the Republican Party sent all these operatives down there [FLA] to pose as irate local citizens. They stormed the place where the recount was going on and demanded that it stop. So then Gore just said, “ok” and that was it. I said, “wow, this isn’t gonna be fun after this. It’s gonna get kind of ugly.” Then they had the 2002 congressional elections where the right wing took over every fucking institution in the country, After that...I was terrified. I was in New Orleans having a ball but I was starving. I couldn’t make a living properly. And I finally concluded that if I’m gonna starve here, I might as well starve in Amsterdam [chuckle]. So I did.
THIRSTY: How are you liking it over there? Easier to make a living?
JS: I write, I perform, I travel a lot. I’m a popular informant for documentary films. I’m not just about the ‘60s but am also a first class expert on New Orleans and R&B music. So I often perform and do poetry (John recently joined The Black Crowes onstage in Amsterdam to read his original poems) and a lot of writing. My new book, “It’s All Good,” is out on paperback and my new CD from Detroit, “Detroit Life” just released. I maintain a blog regularly and have a free radio station in Amsterdam. So as you can see, my time is being spent well.
THIRSTY: Thanks John. It has been a pleasure.
JS: Thank you
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