Remembering John Sinclair, 1941-2024
White Panther co-founder, MC5 manager, marijuana martyr from Detroit
These days, an organization called the White Panthers might be mistaken for another supremest outfit. But in its time the White Panthers were formed to be in solidarity with the well-established Black Panthers.
Freedom and justice were the tenants of the group, co-founded by John Sinclair, who died last week in 82. But so was legalization of marijuana — a cause that got Sinclair a 10-year sentence in 1969 and the outcry of thousands at rallies that included such supporters as John Lennon, who performed at a 1971 rally in Ann Arbor that drew 15,000 and recorded a song called “John Sinclair.”
It wasn’t his only connection to rock ’n’ roll. Sinclair was the manager of the incendiary band MC5, that further expounded shared revolutionary ideas.
Sinclair had his sentence cut to 26 months shortly after the notoriety of Lennon’s concert appearance, and once out, continued to create.
When I got a chance to talk to him, in 1996, he was on a tour doing his spoken word poetry to jazz music. The longtime Detroiter by then was living in New Orleans, where few knew him other than a knowledgeable local R&B disc jockey, blues scholar and poet.
“I started out in the early ‘60s writing poetry. I was in college and turned on to Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti,” he told me.
But he had already been deep into music.
“I had been a music fanatic since the age of 10 or 11, when I first heard the Clovers do ‘One Mint Julep.’”
Growing up outside Flint, Michigan., his rural upbringing contrasted with the frantic sounds of R&B disc jockeys he head at night, like Frantic Ernie Durham.
“It was so exciting — especially to me in a little farm community,” he said, “They became my whole focal point.”
R&B made way for the jazz of Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker. Soon he plunged deep into the avant-garde fringes of John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Pharaoh Sanders.
He began a journalism career, becoming Detroit correspondent for magazines such as Downbeat, where he became one of a handful of leading exponents of the avant-garde.
“We had this apocalyptic view that if you listen to this music, life will change and become more beautiful. I got all my political sense from these people and the people they led to.”
It was from the avant-garde, he said, that he became an activist.
It was the expanding frontiers of jazz that got him interested in rock ’n’ roll.
Up until then, he said, “I thought rock ’n’ roll in general was bubblegum music. Then I heard the MC5 were calling themselves avant rock, and the lead singer had taken his name from McCoy Tyler. I thought hey, this is interesting.”
Sinclair became a fan of their shows for a year. Then he became their manager.
“They were so anarchistic. They would come on and play a couple of James Brown songs and then turn their backs to the audience for 45 minutes, start this wailing feedback, and everybody would leave. Kids would just flee.”
But not Sinclair. “I was hearing John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders.”
One of the band’s biggest early gigs was a rally at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968.
Lots of other, bigger bands were invited to play the event, from the Grateful Dead to Jefferson Airplane. “But by the time it came around, there was a lot of notice about the police activity that scared all the other bands but us. We were from Detroit; we were used to it.”
Besides, he added, “we didn’t have anything to lose. We had no record contract; we were trying to get noticed.”
As it happened the MC5’s raucous, revolutionary music provided the perfect soundtrack to a chilling scene. “It was really frightening. As we were finishing out set, the police were moving in on the crowd, waving riot batons,” Sinclair recalls. “We got out of there.”
But Sinclair remained politically active, hatching plans with John Lennon to follow Richard Nixon on his 1972 campaign swing.
“That’s about when [Lennon’s] immigration problems started here,” Sinclair said. The tour was canceled. Th FBI had “infiltrated us with wiretaps. Of course we also reported our plans in Rolling Stone.”
Sinclair’s drug bust put a dent in the career of the influential MC5.
But he retained ties to rock as he became a spoken-word artist. One piece, “Friday the 13” was dedicated to Lennon. He performs it on a single with MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer.
At the time, the poet’s political action was more limited, though he attended the odd rally calling for the legalization of marijuana. “I’m a registered Democrat. I’ll perform at rallies for political causes I believe in. But that’s about all.”
Did that mean he had mellowed?
“I hope so,” he said. “You can’t help but get older; that’s our sentence here on Earth. The only ones I resent are the people who want you to be the same way all your life.”
A growing interest in Sinclair’s poetry and music at the time had led to poetry and music collaborations on small labels. But his appearance at the time with Archie Shepp would be their first live show together.
This is a big thrill for me,” said Sinclair. He wasn’t worried about fitting his words with Shepp’s music, even though they hadn’t had a lot of rehearsal.
“I try to approach it like a sax player,” he said of his spoken-word performance. “I step up and take a solo and step back.”