Interview by Rick Happy This is one of the most interesting interviews I’ve done to date. The legendary Wayne Kramer who as you’ll all know was guitarist for the excellent 60s pre-punk band the MC5s who recorded some awesome tunes like Kick Out The Jams. They’ve been a constant reference of influences for many leading punk bands past and present and his music continues to be as cutting and innovative as it was back then and his new solo album Citizen Wayne is amazing. This chat I had with Wayne took place over the phone on 7/5/97 at 6.30pm he had such a lot of interesting things to say that I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did talking to him. HH: How are you doing ? WAYNE: I’m good, thank you and yourself ? Oh I’m great thanks. I was hoping to get your new CD through this morning but Chrissie obviously couldn’t get it to me in time for this interview, so we’ll have to do this a bit cold. Well, we’re gonna have to beat Chrissie Yiannou... (laughter) Mercilessly! It’s a dereliction of duty... We’re gonna have to demote her. Yeah, don’t let her get away with it. Anyway I’m gonna start with a couple of oldie questions... Sure. So how did you feel when the MC5s split up and how did it affect you ? I was devastated. Really ! That bad ? It was more than just a rock band breaking up it was the explosion or the implosion of all those dreams of the 60s. You know, that there could be a new politics, a new lifestyle and there could be a new music, a new way to answer, you know, the problems of the world and it all seemed to turn into a giant pile of shit in front of my eyes. It was like erm... it was a great loss because in the end we all walked away from it and denied each other. We denied each other and our brotherhood and pretended like that it didn’t really happen and of course it happened. To just lose it all was a great loss and you know it was a loss that I found a way to cover up that pain with crime and drugs.
Yeah, I Believe you spent some time in prison, what kind of experience was that for you ? I was a big drag. I bet it was, were you in for a long time ? Just over 2 years - 26 months. Err... I don’t recommend prison to anybody, it’s not romantic, it’s not glamorous, it’s not a lot of fun... I bet it isn’t. You know it’s what you get when you play the game of cops and robbers. Part of that game is you’re caught and you have to go to jail. This is where serious organised criminals don’t play cops and robbers they play business man and it’s all about doing business. For me, I was playing a very dangerous game and I was lucky that I just ended up in prison. Many of my business associates ended up dead. But it was all part of a process that I had to go through, it was a long walk into the woods and it’s a long walk back out. But you came out the other side ? Yeah, so finally by the middle of the 80s I’d found my way back out of the woods and found out how to live without being stoned everyday and so now in the 90s I’m out in LA, I record for Epitaph Records and I fell better than ever. I look forward to getting up everyday to do this work and you know to have a band and be able to tour and to know that my records are recorded and distributed properly and to know that there’s some people out there who appreciate what I’m trying to do. Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, this is a really exciting time for me and you know it’s interesting because this is a time for "kiddie culture" (Laughter) and rock and roll music is still my idiom and I’m determined to stay something of meaning with it. I’m not trying to be a kid you know, I’m a grown man. I think you can do this kind of work with passion and with humour and it can be sexy and vital and have meaning - you can do this in your 30s, in your 40s, in your 50s and in your 60s - Pablo Picasso made great art in his middle and last period, Howlin’ Wolf was on the stage at 74 tearing it up! Yeah, I mean in rock and roll people tend to have you written off by 21... They do. Maybe what we’re going through now is like, err looking to the people that are in some cases kicking it better than some newer bands. So much in fact that the older bands become the inspiration to the 13 and 14 year olds. Yeah, I think the question becomes "to do this work of meaning in an era that honours the Spice Girls" ! (laughter) Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I mean there has always been shit-hop music, you know light weight fluff and of course in the grand scheme of things there’s a lot more evil in the world than the Spice Girls but not much! (laughter) To me, they were Tory supporters I mean what does that tell you ? (laughter) Well it tells you a lot dosen’t it ? It says it all really. (laughter) It’s this kind of thinking that makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most definitely. It’s really everything that I stand against. Yeah too right. Moving on with the MC5, Stooges, etc being the inspiration for the US punk scene, with the passage of time how do you see things have changed ? Well... it’s always great to be recognised for your work and I think the explosion of punk into international consciousness with Green Day, Rancid and the Offspring proves that this sound that we all pioneered back in the day. We were right about, that this is a great sound and the love of electric guitars and heartbeat drums. Unfortunately being an influence and a legend doesn’t pay shit (laughter) and none of these bands give me a dime (more laughter) so I have to make records today that I feel are important and I have to sell records right now to pay me rent. It’s nice to have this chequered past but it actually doesn’t pay me anything, I get paid for making records for Epitaph and the other labels that I record for. Really what I’m talking about is the value of work and of being able to do this work as an adult and believe me it’s not easy. It’s a hard road to be a musician and try to pay your rent playing music - this is hardly glamorous! Yeah, but it’s made out to be like that though hasn’t it ? Getting in a van with 3 or 4 other stinky men... (laughter) ...and driving 500 miles to the next gig is not what you think about when you think of being "On Tour". No I know, it’s falling out and beating the hell out of each other and desperately trying to get on together. Yeah, this is not exactly what you think about in terms of the glamour of it all. So how did it feel when you got back on stage, you know after the MC5s and your period in prison - you came through all that and like you got back on that stage for the first time again, how did it feel? The same way I feel every night when I go up - I love to play. I’m a musician and to me what happens to me on stage in the music itself is the pay off. I’m not interested in the party after the gig, the gig is the party for me. I’m thrilled to death to get on stage every night. We’re playing tonight, we’re doing our record release party at a club called the Dragonfly here in Hollywood. My good friend Nells Klein and his trio are opening tonight and then we’ll play a set and they we’re gonna combine both bands together with two drummers, two bass players, two guitar players and some additional guests and make a joyous noise. Yeah, sounds like you’ll create a great wall of sound with all that and two drummers ? Yeah. But you know I love performing, I love touring and I love the fact that I have the opportunity to work. Work is the key in anything, well for me and for everybody else I think. The problem is when people don’t have a sense of meaning for work, I mean some of these Government Economists here like L and Greenspan are all talking about how we’re in the lowest period of unemployment in 15 years - I don’t see it that way. I see neighbourhood after neighbourhood in Los Angles where people don’t have jobs, don’t have the possibility of jobs and don’t have health care. Poor people who have children starving in America which has unbelievable wealth, you know. Wall street and big business make more and more money every year, but the gap between who has the money and who doesn’t seems to get wider each year. That’s interesting you say that because in the job I do I help unemployed people develop co-ops, you know like we help people who want to do something they want... like we have some jugglers and they make a living going around schools teaching juggling and performing. They don’t make masses of money but they can pay the rent and bills and they make a living from it and the fact is that they don’t have a boss and they all co-operate together and run the business themselves. That sounds like a way more forward thinking approach than the kinda situation in this country. If you look at the history a little bit you see that the Spanish ruled the world for a minute, the Dutch ruled the world for a minute, the British Empire ran the world for a minute and all these countries kinda had their moment there. Then you know, they had to kinda re-group and say well let’s look at our own situation and try to do something for ourselves. You know the idea of America not having health care for everybody is just unbelievable I mean I don’t have health insurance and if something catastrophic happened to me I’d just be destroyed. Yeah, especially for you. You ‘ve got the added risk of say being on stage and getting an electric shock... You’re not to mention that. (Laughter) You could have accidents in cars and vans while you’re on the road. You’re really helping build up my enthusiasm (laughter) But it’s all worth it in the end! (more laughter) With you saying about private healthcare, I suppose we just take our NHS very much for granted, I know we’re always moaning about how it’s being ripped to shreds by the Government but at least we have one I suppose. Yeah. (there’s further discussion about the NHS and private healthcare issues) In America there’s this cowardly and dishonest war on drugs that has always been a sore point with me and there’s a song on the Citizen Wayne album called Count Time. Where I attempt to give a little snap shot as to what it was like for me to go to jail and a little shout out to all the other musicians or at least as many as I could think of on the day I was writing that song who have done time in this ridiculous attitude in America. They are trying to criminalise basic human behaviour and I think you know they spend $16 billion a year in a war that’s basically against their own people and to a great degree - sick people. If you look across the board they’re ain’t that many people that get caught up in it, so you would think that they could take that money, re-organise it and you know, if someone wanted help getting off of drugs they could make that available. If they didn’t want to get off drugs then just give them the drugs for Christ’s sake. You know what’s the problem ? Except that these fundamentalists in this country believe that it’s a moral issue, that you make a choice on these issues. If your pain is such that you need to take a pill to get through the day then why deny yourself ? Why create a situation where somebody has to stick someone else up in the street - to get the money - to get the pill ? You know why steal my colour TV to pay for your pill... Yeah exactly. It would be much cheaper just to give you the pill in the first place. There’s over a million people in prison in America and 60% are drug related... Which costs money that could be saved. We got a similar problem here with really overcrowded prisons which mostly is crimes related to drugs or drug habits. Therefore if you eliminated the problems and re-invested all that money into helping those people to deal with their habits and it would costs a lot less. It costs a lot less to maintain, you know give them what they need. Then they can go about and try to get a life together and not spending all their time hustling up money for the drugs - like here’s the drugs now go and get a job! The problem is, of course, they come out of prison and if they’ve been in for a fair number of years they lose touch with reality and so the first thing they’re going to end up doing is going back on it unless they are extremely strong willed ? Yeah and no-one is that strong willed. They are creating a permanent underclass of people who are disconnected to ways of coping with life successfully. Who are more pissed off and less able to handle the stress and the strains of everyday life. Which is considerable to begin with, let alone coming out you know. I know about these guys because I am one of those guys, they come out and say "Damn, what am I gonna do now, I’ve got nothing and I’ve got people telling me that we can’t hire you because you’re and ex-convict" you know. Yeah, OK moving on tell me about your deal with Epitaph ? Epitaph is an artist advocate record company, they will remind the bands constantly that Epitaph works for the bands. The bands don’t work for Epitaph and they have encouraged me every step of the way to follow the things that I’m interested in and do the kind of music that I think is beautiful. Even if it doesn’t fit into... you know the 17 year old, white, suburban, skateboard kid thinking. So you know if I make a record each year for the next ten years I’ll make it with Epitaph. So I take it that you have a really good relationship with them ? Absolutely, Brett is really a visionary in the record business and there are very few guys, men or women, who have come along that have the larger sense of scope and the will and commitment to support their artists. Right through the tough times and the good times. He’s a band guy you know. He was a guitar player and a song writer in a band and he was faced with a problem that a lot of bands are faced with that nobodies interested. Nobody wanted to sign Bad Religion so he said look my dad was in business let me get some advice from him and figure out how to press up some records and we’ll sell them at our gigs. Then like those records sold and there’s a bunch of other bands around that can’t get signed either maybe I could put them altogether and we could sell all their records and he was concerned with making quality music. So that was the rule - that you gotta make great records. He’s been proven right time and time again with his choices. Obviously including yourself ? Well I’d like to think so, we’re doing OK each record sells more than before even though I’m going into uncharted territory. I’m not trying to be a kid, I’m an adult and I’m trying to do rock ‘n’ roll with some sense of value and meaning to it - in this time that prides itself on youth. I’m also not part of the dinosaur rock thing either, I’m not like from Thorner or Journey or any of those awful fucking band or from the Jeferson Dead. We spend some of our time figuring out how do we find Wayne Kramer’s band, because we know that there’s people out their that appreciate what I’m trying do it’s a matter of you know, who are they and where do we find them. You know are they the people that read the Nation magazine or the New York Times ? I’m not sure if they’re the people that read Rolling Stone - I think that they’re the people that read Mojo because it’s a smart magazine. It doesn’t dumb down to it’s audience, it handles and thinks in a thinking intelligent manner. So that becomes our problem and our quest is to keep chipping away at it. I don’t try to write records that sound like the current trends, I try to make records that I think sound beautiful. I bring a lot of diverse influences to the table you know on the new record you’ll hear everything from Teddy Riley to Pennywise from the MC5s to John Coltrane there’s all kinds of shit in their. But isn’t that the part of being a musician ? You know as you get older and you listen to more and more stuff you then encompass all that into your own blend of music. So isn’t it surely the job of a musician to play what they want and what they feel rather than what they think will sell ? Yeah and with Citizen Wayne I really wanted to make a more ambitious record with hard beats and fatter sounds. So that’s were David Was was a great collaborator because he’s savvy with what he calls "computer-veg-o-matic" editing and mixing, looping and sampling. So we could bring in a load of modern recording techniques into play on top of my stuff which is basic gritty guitar orientated hard end rock. So yeah, I think you have to do the music that makes your heart sing. So will you be touring the new album ? Yeah, we’re doing a series of southern California dates now and then we do a whole US tour in June and then I don’t know what July and August are going to hold but in September we’ll hit Europe. Will that include the UK then ? Of course, where are you at ? We’re in Hull, so the nearest place you’ll probably play is Leeds. Oh yeah, I have a tour manager who lives in Leeds, Vic Webster. He’s over in China right now trying to open up some new possibilities. What’s your own personal philosophy on life ? I would say that erm, that this idea of live fast die young leave a good looking corpse is a rock ‘n’ roll lie. What it’s truly about is live long, live strong and stay creative and that’s the only things that are going to get you through. Your ability to be creative and to come up with creative solutions for the endless problems that life is going to throw at you. One thing that you can count on is that everything is going to change. You have to be fit, alert and pay attention to what’s going on around you and you have to stay creative. It’s all about work and you’re only here for a short time and in the end what it’s about is what you want to leave - that is that you left the place a little better than when you found it. Clean up the mess behind yourself. Well that’s right, what you find is that a lot of people tend towards to old rock and roll ethic of "Live fast, Die Young" and at the end of the day if you get a band who write songs about changing things. What have they changed ? They’ve only changed themselves from living to dead!!! So the only impression they leave on the world is their death and they’re remembered for the fact that they committed suicide or they died of a heroin overdose or whatever. Yeah that’s right, I think that our cultural icons don’t have to be James Dean or Kurt Cobain. But could be Pablo Picasso and Howlin’ Wolf, you know or the great Jazz musicians - they stay vital and swing right to the end. That’s my take on it. Yeah right, well what stuff influences you these days ? Well, I think that the only stuff that’s really creative right now, is what’s happening with guys like Beck and a lot of the Hip Hop artists. I just got the new D-Angelo record and there’s another new one Genuine. These guys are doing really creative things and they’re coming up with exciting new sounds that are fresh and still gritty, funky and earthy and that have a kind of visceral appeal to them. To tell you the truth outside of Rage Against The Machine and one or two other rock bands I don’t hear a lot of rock bands that personally blow air up my skirt. But I’ve always loved funk and R & B, so I always return to those things for inspiration, solace and enjoyment. Then I listen to the stuff that I’ve always listened to like John Coltrane and lately I’ve been getting into Cuban music. I got a record yesterday when I was doing this in-store appearance at Tower records and they said like go and pick out a few things - I got one by this band called Los Van Van, who I understand are the No 1 Cuban dance band. They’re been around for 20 or 30 years. One of the groups that I work with are Samba drummers and you get some really weird sounds out of all those drums. Yeah, well I’ll give you a report when we meet in the Fall about Los Van Van. In Cuba, music is an integral part of life everyday, regimes may come and go but the bands are forever and everybody plays. The bands play in the street you know, they don’t have MTV, Blockbuster video rental and cable in fact they don’t have TV period they’ve barely got telephones. (laughter) But what they have got is music, and music is alive out there and I think that’s pretty exciting. It’s the same with the Brazilian stuff, where it’s part of their carnivals and all the festivals and it shapes their lives. Yeah and it’s all connected to the whole body, which is something that I find in R & B and even Beck has an awareness of this. That music should be connected to your hips and your groin and not just a thing in your head, this is a thing for your whole body. Dancing is important, you know it’s fun and it’s how we express ourselves. That’s one of the things that I dig about Beck’s stuff, even though he’s a bit gangly (laughter) and he’s not the smoothest dancer but at least he’s sincere and he’s up there dancing you know and I dig that - I think that’s as cool as shit. Well that’s me out of questions, is there anything you’d like to add ? No, I think if we can force Miss Yiannou to get you a record you’ll be able to fill in all the blanks yourself. Well it’s been great speaking to you, I’ve really enjoyed it. Well thanks, I hope that it’s useable material. Yeah I’m sure it is. I look forward to seeing you. Yeah, September didn’t you say ? Yeah. OK, Wayne... Thanks Rick. Cheers... Take care. Bye. 
