MC5
An Oral Biography of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band
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MC5
Narrated by:
Fred Berman, Jeremy Arthur, Justin Price, Peter Berkrot, Kellen Boyle, Fleet Cooper, Angèle Masters, Widdie Turner
Buy Now for £19.79
About this listen
Few bands have dared to ignite a revolution through their fusion of activism and art like MC5. Managed by the charismatic radical and hippie spokesman, John Sinclair, MC5 wasn’t just a band; they were a thunderous proclamation of dissent, amplifying the voices of the marginalized long before it was fashionable. From championing Black Lives Matter to rallying for cannabis legalization, they fearlessly thrust their beliefs onto the world stage. For their efforts, the rabble-rousing musical arm of the White Panther Party, the scourge of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and other defenders of public decency, were often beaten with clubs, threatened at gunpoint, tossed into jail, and even unceremoniously dumped by their record company, right as their album was storming up the charts—and all while the Sex Pistols were still on training wheels.
What has been lost amidst this notoriety is MC5 itself, a band worth remembering not because they were bad boys, but because they were so damn good. In MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band, music journalists Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki invite readers to reconsider this legendary group. Centered around a series of interviews with MC5, their manager, and their inner circle—many of whom are no longer with us—that Tolinski and Uhelszki inherited from CREEM Magazine founding staffer and Mojo's US editor Ben Edmonds prior to his death, this book presents a genuinely candid, funny, and moving portrait of rock’s most uncompromising and articulate band. MC5 also features a virtual “who’s who” of 1960s rockers, including Iggy and the Stooges, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, promoter Bill Graham, John Lennon, the Jefferson Airplane, and political firebrands like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver.
As innovative, insightful, and inspiring as the band itself, MC5 is a fitting testament to the legacy of these iconic rock pioneers—told in their very own words.
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Critic reviews
“Our band moved to Detroit because we saw that MC5 and the Stooges were part of an incredible rock & roll scene with plenty of places to play and a community of real rock & roll fans, radio and press. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the USA. MC5 would just explode onto the stage, amps and energy dialed-up way beyond 11. A tight rhythm section supporting the two guitar attack of Wayne Kramer and Fred Smith and then frontman Rob Tyner, who was a force of nature onstage. MC5 were synonymous with Detroit rock, and always will be. And this book is a true testimonial to that.”—Alice Cooper
“The MC5 were a revelation when I first saw them in 1969, kicking out jams with a commitment I hadn’t seen from any of the other peace-and-love bands of the day. The future of rock personified! Fuck, they were great, and so is MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band.”—Billy Idol
“With MC5, Tolinski, Uhelszki, and from his writing desk in the great beyond, Edmonds, have created the definitive work on a band that more than a half-century after its dissolution, is still undeniably—and perhaps terrifyingly—relevant.”—Tom Beaujour, New York Times bestselling author of Nöthin' But a Good Time
“An unruly jumble of Detroit proto-punk, radical politics, censorship, hard drugs, and music business machinations, the sadly short-lived saga of the MC5 was among the wildest and most intense in rock history. MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band captures their careening story with a candor and blunt force worthy of the band’s legacy.”
—David Browne, Rolling Stone, author of Fire and Rain and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
—David Browne, Rolling Stone, author of Fire and Rain and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
“A loving but unflinching account of how the magnificent beast that was the MC5 was laid low by its two conflicting imperatives: to be the greatest rock band in the world, and to righteously serve and further a counterculture revolution against the American Ruse. Like The Clash almost a decade later, they fought the biz and the biz won.”—Charles Shaar Murray, author of Crosstown Traffic, Jimi Hendrix and Post-War Pop, Ralph Gleason Music Book Award winner
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