Reunion tour opens wounds for rock group

The MC5 risked everything to make great music, even their lives and careers.

As businessmen, they were epic failures. Now, a fresh flurry of ugly business squabbles swirls around the MC5, even as the band’s three surviving members are touring together for the first time in more than 30 years.

A three-month world tour (including June 29 at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood) by the DKT/MC5, led by original members Wayne Kramer, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson, was designed to showcase the band’s seldom-heard but strikingly influential music and promote a new DVD, “Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5,” due out July 6.

But it arrives against a backdrop of controversy and infighting, subjects the band became intimately familiar with in its first go-round. A seven-years-in-the-making documentary about the band’s exploits, “MC5: A True Testimonial,” has been derailed in the eleventh hour because of music licensing issues. Once again, the band is a house divided, with the families of the late Rob Tyner and Fred “Sonic” Smith pitted against Kramer, Davis and Thompson.

For such a fractious bunch, the reunion tour is something of a miracle.

“I never thought we’d get together again,” Davis said, his gaunt frame sprawled across a couch in the second-floor foyer of MuscleTone Records.

The label and office, on a scruffy patch of Fairfax Avenue several blocks removed from the glamour of Sunset Boulevard, are owned by Kramer.

In the crucible of 1965-72, the MC5 forged a soundtrack for the Vietnam era and the street riots in the band’s native Detroit. Their forward-looking fusion of free-jazz improvisation, rock ‘n’ roll raunchiness and us-against-them politics provided a template for metal and punk and prefigured the confrontational stance of bands such as Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine.

Yet the quintet remains a footnote at best in most of the rock history books. Like drunken gunslingers, they shot themselves in the foot countless times, and their careers seemed doomed from the start. The opening proclamation on their first album managed to offend just about everybody, including their own record label, which soon dropped them. Two studio albums failed to produce anything close to a hit single, and the band collapsed after its manager, began serving a prison sentence for marijuana possession.

The five went their separate ways after the MC5 imploded. Kramer and Davis spent time in prison as they fitfully tried to make a living playing music.

“That kind of loss, you go through these terrible lows and incredible highs with a group of guys, and then one day, it’s all gone,” Kramer said. “I know for me in my life, I never grieved over the loss until years later, until the death of Rob Tyner [from a heart attack in 1991].

“When I finally made my peace with it, I could go on and do the stuff I do today, which brings us to a really interesting spot, to go back out and play this music again. It’s the last thing I thought I’d be doing at 55.”

Two nights later, Kramer is helping pay the bills for his label and office by playing a gig at a farmers market a few blocks south of MuscleTone in Hollywood. Even in this unlikely environment, Kramer musters some of the old MC5 brio.

“It’s bomb day in Paris,” he declares in a deadpan sing-speak voice. “It’s bomb day in Sri Lanka. Two bombs kill 50. Train interior littered with blood and paper.... It’s bomb day in a restaurant interior where people are gathered.”

Anyone who hadn’t been paying attention is now.

“It’s bomb day in New York; it’s bomb day in Fallouja.... Oh, say, can you see when it’s bomb day in Los Angeles?”

A woman flees with her lollipop-sucking grade-schooler. Others break into applause, and the crowd thickens.

By the end of the set, the crowd swells to more than 100, a mix of old MC5 fans, friends, passersby and street people.

In 1996, three Chicagoans -- David Thomas, Laurel Legler and Jeff Economy (who dropped out from the production a few years later) -- approached Kramer about doing a film based on the MC5’s short, destructive career. He agreed and cooperated to such an extent that he’s the charismatic star, the de facto narrator of “A True Testimonial.” It tells the band’s story, portraying the MC5 as a band of hoodlums who changed the face of rock music.

The performance footage, including scenes from the band’s concert in Chicago during the riot-scarred 1968 Democratic National Convention, is jaw-dropping. It makes the case for the MC5 as the greatest live band in rock history. But the movie also demonstrates how the quintet collapsed beneath the weight of forces outside the band and carnage within it.

“It has good parts, bad parts, gritty stuff, ugly stuff, happy stuff -- it’s all part of the story,” Kramer said. But Kramer now is standing in the way of its release. He said filmmakers broke their oral promise to make him the film’s music producer, while the filmmakers said they agreed only to let Kramer release an accompanying soundtrack on his label.

“As far as the actual music content and how the music was used in the film, those were storytelling and editorial decisions right from the beginning,” Thomas said. “For Wayne to say at this late date that he thought he was going to be music producer.... We never discussed that. It was always about him being producer of an accompanying soundtrack.”

The film has been showing at festivals around the world and was on the verge of opening in 20 theaters across the country a few weeks ago when the guitarist instructed the publisher of the MC5’s songs, Warner/Chappell Music, to deny filmmakers one of the licenses needed to use music in the film. The filmmakers countered by filing a motion in federal court in Los Angeles to reopen Kramer’s 1999 bankruptcy case to explore whether he still holds a share of the MC5 licensing rights, a move that infuriated Kramer.

At the core of the disagreement is that the sides never had a written agreement defining their roles. “That was my mistake,” Kramer said.

Thomas said he repeatedly tried to reach a signed agreement with Kramer but was constantly rebuffed. He said things turned sour when the surviving band members reached a deal to play a one-time reunion show in London last year. Kramer, Davis and Thompson decided to videotape the concert and later announced plans to release the performance as a DVD called “Sonic Revolution.”

“At that point they saw the opportunity to do their own thing,” Thomas said. “It was said to us at one point about distribution of our film, ‘There are too many mouths to feed.’ ”

Kramer said the projects would have complemented each other, and he would have allowed “A True Testimonial” to be released had filmmakers held up their end of the deal with him. Although his surviving bandmates, Davis and Thompson, signed away their share of the music licensing to filmmakers, they now support Kramer in his effort to block “A True Testimonial.”

Kramer’s battle with Thomas and Legler’s corporation, Future/Now Films, has divided the MC5 camp. Tyner’s widow, Rebecca Derminer, agreed to license her husband’s share of the songs to filmmakers and joined in their motion against Kramer in bankruptcy court. Also upset is Patti Smith, the second wife of MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, who died of heart failure in 1994.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “These things are always a shame, when someone is trying to do something good and it gets tainted by greed.”

Thomas acknowledged that his company sold the film to BMG without all the requisite license agreements -- namely Kramer’s -- in place, but he needed to sell the film to acquire the cash to pay for the licenses. He said his corporation faces losing nearly $1 million and a possible breach-of-contract suit from BMG. But he vowed that the documentary eventually will be released.

“We didn’t spend seven years working on this to roll over at the end because things got sticky,” Kramer said. “What matters is what we do now, what we do next.” Now, more people than ever before may be paying attention. Kramer’s in good shape physically, he’s still a formidable guitarist, and his music has never been in more demand. Last year’s reunion show with Davis and Thompson was by all accounts a triumph.

“It was validating,” Davis said. “With the crowd singing along, it was an awesome experience for all of us.”

Separated for years by bitterness and geography, Davis and Kramer look back on their youth with a kind of bemused pride.

“When I was 18, 19, 20 and in the best band in the world, I was certain that I was absolutely correct about everything and I was going to live forever,” Kramer said as Davis smiled and nodded. “Today, I am certain about almost nothing. I am certain that I am not going to live forever and that after 31 years, it feels pretty good to do a whole event built on the music of the MC5.”

It is somehow fitting that the survivors’ celebratory tour will be accompanied by a new round of legal squabbling, financial stress and emotional bitterness. Sadly, it wouldn’t be true to the legacy of the MC5 without them.