DENNIS THOMPSON INTERVIEW PART TWO

K: [Black To Comm fanzine editor] Chris Stigliano mentioned a band called the Secrets from about '81; was that you?

D: That was my band. I had a trio. It was Bob Slap, who was the guitar player/singer for the song...remember "Farmer John"? "I'm in love with your daughter?"

K: The Premiers? I thought they were from California. Then again, Question Mark was from Michigan.

D: No...the Tidal Waves! (Thanks, Patrice.) And Charlie Bell, who worked with Rob before he died in one of the MC5 imitations, and myself. We had a brief stint of local popularity; we got a single out. It was a damn good band, but at that particular point in the Detroit scene, it was really, really lame. And then I got the offer to go to Australia to do the New Race tour. So I said to the band, "I'll be back in six weeks, and when I get back, we'll pick up exactly where we left off." The first show we did was at Uncle Sam's club, and after being treated with some respect down in Australia, to come back to this particular venue, which was I don't know, about an 800-seat club, and Johnny Thunders was playing, I forget the name of the band, and we just got treated like shit by the club owners, by the booking agents, they wouldn't even let us eat from the buffet, and I quit that night. I was throwing shit around, trashed the kit, and I said, "Fuck it, I don't need this shit." Which was probably a mistake, because that was a damn good band, damn fine band. We had about 20 really good songs.

K: What about Sirius Trixon and the Motor City Bad Boys?

D: What are you laughin' for?! I heard a giggle there.

K: I remember reading a piece about them in Creem a long, long time ago, and Stigliano told me some stories about the drum riser with the car.

D: Pink Caddy. That was a good group. There's been like maybe50 incarnations of that band. That's Sirius' baby, right? He calls himself The Legendary Sirius Trixon. He's had versions of the band going back to the early '70s.

There was a period when I was just hanging around Ann Arbor at the Second Chance club, and I got to talking with Trixon, and he says, "Hey Dennis, why don't you come to New York and play a couple of gigs with us?" So I said, "Sure. What's up?" "We're playing Max's Kansas City." So I rehearsed with the guys and then I went and did it and I liked it.

The thing about Trixon was, he could get more P.R. than a band that had a big record deal. 'Cause he would just go and talk to anybody. He had balls as big as a buffalo. I got a P.R. kit from that band, just from playing with them for a year and a half, that's two inches thick. I'm talking about color centerfolds from the Rock Scene magazine and whatnot, so it was a lot of fun. We never got signed because the record labels were behind once again. Now he'd fit right in! He wanted to come back this summer and do a Motor City Bad Boys reunion, and he asked myself and a fella named Greasy Carlisi, a guitar player.

K: He's with Dark Carnival now, right?

D: Yeah, well, Greasy plays with the Carnival, but they don't play that often. So Greasy works hard; he plays in three other bands. He's doing the R&B club circuit around Royal Oak.

We also had that benefit concert for Greasy that I was pretty much instrumental in putting together for him; he had a doctor bill of 35,000 bucks for three heart attacks. So we got the forces together. We got the State Theater people to give us the building for free; they got the bar money. And I went out and did a P.R. schmear on the radio stations, talked to Ted Nugent on his show; everybody. And we raised about 20 grand for him. Since then, I spoke to him a couple of days ago, and I think he's finally paid his bill off. I don't want him to have another heart attack! The poor kid's got three stints in three veins, and he's got one more vein left, y'know? Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink; it's probably just a genetic thing.

So Greasy's part of the Bad Boys, and Trixon wants to do it, and Greasy and I are kickin' it around. If he can get the money, we'll do it. I don't have time to do the work for him. I've got my own project taking up all my spare time.

K: I'd like to talk a little about the MC5 recordings. On the Ice Pick Slim CD, there was a [Kick Out the Jams outtake] version of "Motor City is Burning" that was kickass, I thought it was better than the one Elektra released. Is there anymore stuff like that?

D: I'm sure there's one or two versions that are gonna be popping up at you yet, coming down the pike, 'cause I know a couple of people who are putting together some packages that are going to go out on a brand new independent label being created, so keep lookin' in music stores, 'cause there'll be more. There's a lot of stuff that was recorded. A lot of it, the quality of the recordings is terrible, and I'm not just getting excited about a lot of shitty-sounding bootlegs, but there's some better stuff coming down the road. I happen to know the people who are involved, and they're gonna make sure that there'll be a sign-off. In other words, we'll be able to listen to it beforehand and give it our stamp of approval. Most of the bootlegs you hear have never gotten the approval of the remaining members, including Becky [Tyner] or Patti [Smith]. They're just bootlegs. A lot of it's just off of shitty boomboxes, crappy four-tracks, and there's not much you can do to clean that up. It doesn't mean anything about the performances. That was a good period right there. That was when we were trying to become legitimate.

K: That definitely comes through. Some of these long tracks are like a rock version of 'Trane's Meditations.

D: Yeah, there you go. Which for most people is too intense. I've had a lot of people, when I play them the 'Trane stuff, they tend to gravitate more towards the more Broadway, the more lyrical, the classic tunes. Because when they hear Impressions and Meditations, it scares the fuck out of people. They think, "These people are nuts!" But I tell 'em, "Hey, you can still count the 6/8 in there, buddy. You can still count the 9/4, or the 5/4; it's still there." That's for us musicians to learn from. A guy like 'Trane to me, musically, is like Rembrandt is in the art world. He's a guy that just gave it all. There aren't many of those around.

K: Talk about Back In the USA a little bit. I understand that before you guys got dropped by Elektra, you were cuttin' out in L.A. with [producer] Bruce Botnick. Is that true?

D: That's correct. Those tapes, right now, are trying to be located by a certain person that I know. By a couple of people, more than one or two people, actually. And we don't know whether they exist or not. The last I heard was that they do have them. These were cut in Los Angeles. It's most of the material, not quite, maybe three quarters of the material that was released on Back In the USA, but done in the old MC5 way, before Jon Landau came and cleaned us up. Mr. Titanic man himself.

K: Talk about what is really one of my favorite records of all time, High Time.

D: My favorite. It was the first record that we produced ourselves. We had a producer who was a "stable" producer for Atlantic, Geoff Haslam. He had an English background, so we recorded a couple of tunes in England. We were touring; at that point in time in our careers, we were spending a lot of time in Europe. And we did, I believe, "Sister Anne" and...two tunes in Europe. But Geoff would sort of work with us and not tell us what to do, and let us sit behind the board and play with the dials and the mix, and let the whole group sort of work at it together, and then when it came down to a mix-down, we all would defer to Fred...let Fred and Wayne and Jeff do the mix. And finally we came up with a product that should have been released as our first one, 'cause that's pretty much how we played when the band started.

Hey, the story on our first record [Kick Out the Jams] is that we were told by Jac Holzman, the president of Elektra, when they came out to record us with a 24-track mobile, we were told that if we didn't like it, we could do it again. Well, after we heard it a few days later, we all said, to a man, "We wanna do this again." But we had a big poster made, and a big event made, "the MC5 recording," so Holzman sort of had us in the bag. He sorta figured out, "Well, if you do this again, you'll look like amateurs." We said, "Well, we'll do it in the studio." John Sinclair and Jac Holzman decided, "This is good stuff. This is capturing the MC5. We don't give a flying fuck if it's a little sloppy."

During the second album's period, we tightened up our playing, realized that y'know, we're not gonna get a second chance, because we were told we'd get a second chance [on the first album] and we learned from that mistake. So the second album, well, John Sinclair went to jail, excuse me, we had new management, the record company shitcanned us, we were stuck with an accountant as our manager (Danny Fields in the interim sort of managed us for a little bit), then they signed us to Atlantic Records and Jon Landau, as producer, was Jerry Wexler's favorite son. He'd already produced Livingston Taylor, his first project, and his second project was us. His third project was to be J. Geils, but J. Geils and our band had become friends from playing Boston, we got to be buddies, and after they heard Back In the USA, they went shopping for another producer to do their debut record, and the rest is history, as you know.

In this business, especially back in those days, no one wanted to touch us. The corporate state hated our guts because we were rallying against them. But you have to rely on them to get your product out. It's really a ridiculous twin paradox. It's like, "bite the hand that feeds you"...you gotta play ball with these people. And what they'll do is, they do have the upper hand, 'cause when we hit, we hit hard and fast and strong, but we didn't have our business acumen in order. We had John Sinclair and the White Panther Party, and basically we were in conflict with his agenda. He wants to legalize marijuana and then have a revolution and get rid of all the pigs, y'know, and we really didn't buy that. We just wanted to be bigger than the Rolling Stones. We wanted to be just a big, big, big rock and roll band. You know, and just be players. And be stars. And get laid. And have fast cars. We believed in politics, we believed in philosophy, but we didn't wanna teach, we didn't wanna make it like here we are out there preaching and banging a gong or being on top of a lectern saying, "Well, here's what you gotta think." That was all Sinclair's influence. More or less.

So it got mucky when he went to jail. Then we go to Atlantic, and we didn't have the leverage to say, "No, we don't like this Jon Landau guy," because he was picked by [Jerry] Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun, so we had to go with him. And the relationship...well, the guy's brilliant, but trust me, by the time we woke up, we'd bought ourselves a nice home in Hamburg, Michigan, and it was about ten acres. It was nice. And we had a big huge practice room, and things were going pretty well there.

But here's Jon Landau, who's an intellectual, right? He's your typical brilliant liberal intellectual, used to be a journalist for the Rolling Stone, etc., etc., good writer, [and] he loved R&B, he loved rhythm and blues, he loved Motown, he loved rock and roll. But he'd never produced anything before. So it's great that you love music, and that you can actually figure out the New York Times crossword puzzle before we even wake up in the morning, that's pretty cool; but when we get to the studio, he doesn't know nuthin' -- he's got a tin ear. So that album came out balls-less, thin sounding and sterile and too fast. Basically from our response to Landau, and his lack of experience at that time -- that's why that music came out that way. Now if you look back in retrospect, twenty years later, you say, "This stuff's not bad, it's a cool record," but it's a cool record that doesn't have the MC5's fuckin' punch to it.

K: You compare that version of "Looking At You" to the single version and it's like night and day.

D: Oh, yeah. It's a 180. Well, that's how much a producer can affect a group. Seriously. He wouldn't let Mike Davis play on one of the songs, the bass player, unless he could learn his part perfectly. We had to do 36 takes on "Tutti Frutti" because he dropped one fuckin' note. So you're talking about essentially an excellent journalist, who is now in the driver's seat to produce the hottest band in America. And boy, what a clash of the titans.

So if you take that bit of information and tie it into High Time, you can see that what we did on the first album was a little bit too...it's like under-compensation and over-compensation. The first album was a little bit too rebellious, a little too pirate-shippy, a little bit too much rum and grog and acid; the second album, all of a sudden these guys became priests and nuns, right? Or we joined the Webelos or the Boy Scouts. Then the third album we sorta got a nice blend of who we really were -- creative, strong, and tight.

K: The playing on that is so great and the songs still stand up really well.

D: Yeah. A lot of the songs were written by Fred. Bless him. And at that particular point in time, we were playing really solid. So, finally, the reason High Time came out as a good record...I think we gained experience, we gained studio experience, and we learned to steer away from certain situations. It was a maturation process.

But by that time, we'd alienated two different factions of our audience, the industry didn't like us, the kids didn't know what to think about these guys, but Europe appreciated us, so we stayed in Europe. But then we were having other problems. There was just nothing but constant harassment because of the obscenity, because of what we stood for. So we were always gettin' harassed, everyplace, by the police; it drove guys into situations where we did too many drugs. Had we been able to maintain stability, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally, we would still have been a band together today. But the times...I can't describe to you, it's like five people and take them from a normal life and then throw them in the middle of a fucking hurricane. And if you survive it, God bless you.

You ever heard the "Gold" stuff, off the Gold album?

K: Just that one track that was on Babes In Arms.

D: There's another one that's a little bit hipper than that. That's on the Gold soundtrack; you probably can't get that here, I doubt it's even in CD form. I don't even know how to get it myself. I still have the album, but I don't even have a turntable anymore.

K: One more question about High Time. Talk a little bit about the division of labor between Wayne and Fred on guitars, 'cause Fred was always ostensibly the rhythm guitarist, but I understand you actually wrote "Gotta Keep Moving" to showcase his ability to play 16th notes.

D: Thirty-second notes. I wrote that 'cause Fred could play it really well, but see, Wayne was the flash, he would do most of the solos, and Fred held down the rhythm chords. 'Cause Fred was incredible in terms of rhythm and having an original feel to rhythm guitar playing. But he could also play lead like a badass sonofabitch. So I just made up my mind, "I'm gonna write a venue for Fred to show off his 32nd note dexterity."

K: So that's actually him on the record then doing all that hairy stuff?

D: The first stuff you hear, you're gonna hear swapping back and forth, you're gonna hear...when you hear that one particular guitar sound, that's Fred, you can tell it's Fred. Fred will take off into Thirty-Second Note Land and play through all these breaks -- that's what I wanted to do, 'cause that's how good he was -- then Wayne would take the next break and do the same thing, right?

I got together with Fred after I got an idea for it -- "Hey Fred, we're gonna do a real fast fuckin' song, and I want you to play that thirty-second note thing that you got down so pretty" -- 'cause him and I used to be pretty good friends. And we worked on it and put it together and then Wayne, when we started doing it live, first, Wayne said, "I'm not gonna let that fucker show me up." So that's exactly what I wanted, was a battle of the two guitar players, and it turned out pretty damn fine.

Fred was a player, and before he died, Fred was getting to be a really good guitar player, and he was really moving into a spiritual kind of place. Fred and I also had a band together and here's a great, great story that no one knows. After the MC5 broke up, about six months later, I was living in Detroit. Fred and Michael and myself got back together again, and we rehearsed in my attic in an old-fashioned two-story brick house, the old well-built ones. The attic was like a hundred and twenty-five degrees. Well, that's where we rehearsed, 'cause I lived in the upper fucking flat. Well, we put out the word to Rob, "Would you like to join our band?" And Rob declined. And we put the word out to Wayne, and Wayne declined.

So Michael, myself, and Fred found a bass player named John Hefti, and we had a band called Ascension, and we probably played like two or three shows. Now there's another little CD that'll be coming out, 'cause this music here is really out there, it's really good stuff. It's Fred [pictured below] playing the best Fred, and me doing my little jazz stuff, and a real good, solid bass player, and Michael was doing the vocals. You're gonna hear a whole new version of the "MC3" that no one's ever heard.

But we did make an attempt to put the band back together again. And the three of us were up there sweatin' our balls off in the middle of a hundred and twenty degrees because we all wanted to do it again. Everyone was free and clear of all drugs, all alcohol, nothing, we were completely ready to go again, okay? Rehab city, let's go. And they declined, so it never happened. So that's a story not too many people are hip to.

K: I'm still really confused about the chronology, 'cause the date you always hear for the breakup is New Year's Eve '72 at the Grande, but didn't you guys do a tour over in England in March of '72?

D: Yeah, they did a tour as the MC5, but not with me, not with Rob and not with Michael. Fred and Wayne went over as the MC2 and hired all pickup musicians in Europe. And they fell flat on their fuckin' face. They did three or four dates and they were back.

K: After the Dodge Main show in Cleveland when Jimmy Zero from the Dead Boys got up and played with you, he did an interview with one of the magazines there [Scene] where he compared the experience of musicians from your era with that of the Vietnam veterans. Would you care to comment on that?

D: What did he mean?

K: He said, "We do have a lot in common with Vietnam veterans. Not to demean or play down what they went through or to compare our experiences to theirs, but we went through some things together and turned into comrades. We survived that thing, and some people didn't survive that we were all friends with. So there's a spirit that will last the rest of our lives that people who are investigating it or are curious about it or ar fans of it will never quite get that same spirit."

D: Okay, I understand. Well, yeah. Our Vietnam was here. Our brothers, cousins, best friends went to this crazy ass war in the 'Nam for no, absolutely no reason. It was insane. We in the Five remained in the U.S.A. and played the music. Now, we got to meet a lot of vets. And a lot of kids would come up to us all over the country crying their eyes out, saying "I just got my notice from the draft and I don't wanna die. What can I do?" And we'd tell them from the benefit of our experience, "Here's what you gotta do to beat the system...just prove to them that you're crazy." Essentially. And we started losing a lot of friends at that point in time and the reason that we would say, that anyone would say that we were like Vietnam vets is that we were veterans of Vietnam, but we were here on the home front, defending the right of America to say, "No, this has to stop."

Remember the Chicago Democratic National Convention, the riots in Chicago? Well, at that show that we played in Lincoln Park, there were supposed to be six or seven other groups showing up...and no one showed up but us. And we went into the first five songs, I think we got to "Starship," and that's when the police with the batons and the horses in the back, and the crowd started throwing bottles, and that's how that particular riot in Lincoln Park took place. There were five or six different riots, and a lot of people got really fucked up, really hurt. And we got our little blue Chevy van with a big "MC5" on the side, and we got off the stage and everyone shuttled us off and out of there straight away, and then at that particular point they cleared out that whole park, maybe 3,500 people.

So...you could compare us to being, in a sense, a Vietnam vet, 'cause we weren't in Vietnam, we weren't getting shot at, but we took the bullets here for the guys taking the bullets there. So they could come home.

People gave it a lot of lip service, y'know, but when push came to shove and you maybe had to get your head cracked for believing in it and [taking] a stand, well, we took a stand. And if they wanna crack our heads again...fuck it. Someone had to do it. And actually the MC5...excuse me, Stooges, and excuse me Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, all the rest of you fuckin' putzes, when it came down push to shove, and actually when interviewers would say, "What do you think about this," we told the truth.

K: I think there's a whole bunch of kids out there today who would be real receptive to the music you guys made if they could hear it.

D: Yeah, if they knew about it. It's in the archives. Whenever I get an opportunity to speak to someone like you, or anyone who wants to do a decent job of letting people know that this band did exist, I'm always here to help. I just spoke to Becky [Tyner], and she said that her daughter Amy was in Europe with Chumbawamba, and they're MC5 fanatics. So you've got Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana, Pearl Jam; y'know, the crosshairs sorta center on whatever you hear...these musicians are aware of the Five. Which makes me very, very proud.