MC5 Inducted Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

MC5 was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday. The band made it in on the Musical Excellence award after being nominated six times over the years.

The Detroit band, often considered a precursor to the ’70s punk movement, released only a few albums during its initial run in the late ’60s and early ’70s before personal problems resulted in their split. Their 1969 live album, Kick Out the Jams, is one of rock’s great concert records.

The group released its first album in 53 years, Heavy Lifting, on Friday. Its release follows the deaths earlier this year of guitarist Wayne Kramer and drummer Dennis Thompson. MC5’s other original members – singer Rob Tyner, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith and bassist Michael Davis – have also died.

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MC5 was inducted into the Rock Hall by Tom Morello, who appears on the new album and noted how MC5 “crystallized ’60s counterculture movement at its most volatile and threatening. … [They] were as loud and as dangerous as a Detroit riot.

“But perhaps their greatest accomplishment, in sound and in attitude, laid the cornerstone for one of rock’s most exciting and important genres. Before the Ramones, before the Sex Pistols, before the Clash, there was the MC5, inventing the template of raw power and irreverent attitude that became punk rock.”

MC5 Is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Morello went on the celebrate the band’s revolutionary spirit, recalling how they were the only band to show up to play the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “They played a defiant eight-hour set for the protesters,” he said. “‘And when they hit the stage and shouted, ‘Kick out the jams, motherf—ers,’ … the future path of every musician who dreamed of raging against the machine was made clear.

“In these few lines, they encapsulated the redemptive power of living, breathing, playing and believing the irresistible force of truly revolutionary music.”

Following their first studio album, Back in the USA, in 1970 and a follow-up, High Times, in 1972, MC5 broke up. After spending several years in prison on drug charges, Kramer launched a solo career that produced a half-dozen records through the ’10s.

In 2022 he resurrected the MC5 name for a tour with plans to make the band’s first album with Thompson and guest artists in more than half a century. The record was completed by Kramer before his February 2024 death. Thompson died in May.

As Morello said at the end of his induction speech, “Wherever and whenever any of us summon up the guts and the courage to get up on the stand and kick out the motherf—in’ jams, the spirit of the MC5 will be right there with us.”