Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll

26. 1970

26. 1970 In the GM Studios on Nine Mile Road in East Detroit, Jon Landau was feeling his way through the sessions for the MC5’s second album, his ‹rst shot as a rock producer. The band seemed more than pleased to have him at the helm. Wayne Kramer referred to Landau as “the killer catalyst of all time.”1 According to Kramer, Jon Landau was “the ‹rst person they had met who had a working knowledge of rock and roll music that could relate it to the band.”2 The “5” were now buying completely into the Landau hype, calling their days with John Sinclair “amateur.”3 Landau himself rubbed salt into the wounds of the White Panthers, saying he “related to rock and roll a lot more than political things.”4 Landau told the press that the new MC5 record would be a “rock ’n’ roll album” but not one “pretending” that it was recorded twenty years ago. While the band would record “Tutti-Frutti,” they would make it more contemporary, while at the same time “retain the energy” of the Little Richard classic.5 Aside from Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA,” the rest of the album would consist of originals such as “Call Me Animal,” “Tonight,” “Teenage Lust,” “High School,” “American Ruse,” “Shakin’ Street,” and the band’s take on society as “The Human Being Lawnmower.” Although the MC5’s split with John Sinclair was discussed by many people in the rock community and criticized by some, most fans remained loyal to the band and were looking forward to the release of their second album. Meanwhile, on October 7, 1969, the already imprisoned Sinclair had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit, along with fellow White Panthers Pun Plamondon and Jack Forest, with conspiring to bomb the head of‹ce of the CIA in Ann Arbor on September 29, 1968. Plamondon, who was also charged with carrying out the bombing, was printing ›yers in the basement of the White Panther headquarters when he 228 heard the news about the indictment broadcast on WABX. He immediately went underground, making his way to Europe.6 The MC5 had stayed busy both in the recording studio and onstage, joining the Stooges on September 1, 1969, for a bene‹t concert at the Grande Ballroom for the Fifth Estate. Peter Werbe had assumed the editorship of the radical paper following the departure of Harvey Ovshinsky. On September 14, the MC5 traveled down the road to perform at the Toledo Pop Festival along with the Amboy Dukes, Frost, SRC, the Rationals, the Früt, and L.A.’s Alice Cooper band, which was starting to play more frequently in the Detroit area. Folk-rockers the Turtles, of “Happy Together” fame, headlined the concert. On October 25, the MC5 were back on the East Coast, opening for Led Zeppelin and Johnny Winter at Boston Gardens. A single, “Tonight,” from their forthcoming Atlantic album, had been released on the ‹fteenth and spent four weeks on the WKNR Music Guide, reaching number 21. Having been forgiven by Bill Graham, the “5” headed back out to San Francisco for a four-day stand at the Fillmore West, sharing the bill with Jethro Tull and Sanpaku. Back in Detroit, they played the Eastown on January 9, 1970. Connie White, who covered the concert for Creem, reported that while the MC5 had “tightened up and gained a degree of polish,” their tunes were not as “progressive ” and “sophisticated” as in the past. She also felt that the band had lost some of their “rapport” with the audience.7 The MC5’s Atlantic LP Back in the USA hit the store shelves on January 15. Despite the single released earlier, fans were still taken off guard when they put the needle in the grooves of the band’s second album. The big, powerful, high-energy sound everyone had been expecting had been replaced on every cut by a tight, thin veneer that lacked “bottom.” Dennis Thompson placed most of the blame squarely on Jon Landau, calling him a “typical brilliant liberal intellectual” who loved R & B but had a “tin ear.”8 Because of Landau’s lack of experience as a rock producer, and the MC5’s lack of experience in the studio, Thompson says, the Back in the USA album came out “balls-less, thin sounding, sterile and too fast.”9 Wayne Kramer said that in the studio the band had listened to the playback “full...