Wayne Kramer, the musician best known for playing guitar in the Detroit proto-punk institution MC5, has died. He was 75.
No cause of death has been reported. The news broke today via Kramer's Instagram account, which posted a simple in-memoriam tribute with the quote, "Peace be with you."
Born Wayne Kambes in 1948, the musician and his friend Fred "Sonic" Smith formed MC5 (standing for Motor City 5) as teenagers in Lincoln Park, MI, in the 1960s. After their evolving lineup stabilized, they became the house band at Detroit's Grande Ballroom in 1967 and developed a reputation for their rapturously energetic live shows.
MC5 also leaned into a political pose when poet and left-wing activist John Sinclair became their manager, the band aligning themselves with the anti-racist White Panther Party group he had co-founded. The band played at the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention ahead of recording their 1969 debut album, Kick Out the Jams, live back at the Grande Ballroom. It was put out by Elektra, who later dropped MC5 over a dispute with local department store Hudson's for refusing to stock the record because it praised the Black Panther Party's role in the 1967 Detroit riots.
After parting ways with Sinclair and signing to Atlantic, they released two more albums, 1970's Back in the USA and 1971's High Time, before breaking up in 1972. Kramer released his debut solo album The Hard Stuff through Epitaph in 1995, later reuniting the surviving members of MC5 and touring. Among other things, he published a memoir, helped score films (Talladega Nights, Step Brothers) and did a lot of outreach work for incarcerated people.
