CBS SF talks to Bay Area songwriter and MC5 "reanimation" singer Brad Brooks
Brad Brooks, the singer in late MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer's "reanimation" of the revolutionary proto-punk band, recently talked to CBS SF about working with the legendary musician on the posthumous release Heavy Lifting that came out last month.
Along with New York's dark sonic adventurers the Velvet Underground and their fellow Detroit brethren the Stooges, pioneering proto-punk outfit the MC5 helped shape the sound of modern rock, influencing and inspiring several generations of bands. The roots of the MC5 date back when teenage friends Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith began playing R&B, surf and garage rock together in 1964.
The pair cycled through bandmates, eventually connecting with commanding lead singer Rob Tyner (who would come up with the band's name) and the rhythm section of bassist Michael Davis and drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson by 1965. The group would hone it's high-energy mix of back-to-basics hard rock, raw James Brown-style soul and exploratory, free-jazz experimentation highlighting the stratospheric guitar interplay of Kramer and Smith with a constant string of gigs in the Detroit area, gradually building up a sizable following to where the quintet could sellout local venues. The band also developed a left-leaning political philosophy influenced by manager and hippy radical John Sinclair, who would found the militant White Panther Party that intended to work with the Black Panthers on their revolutionary agenda.
The band would issue several singles on small independent labels, covering "I Can Only Give You Everything" by Van Morrison's Them and recording their first original songs. But it was a tour of the East Coast that served notice to audiences and the music industry that the 5 were a force to be reckoned with. The band routinely blew headliners like Big Brother and the Holding Company and even virtuoso British blues rock trio Cream off the stage, leaving sweat-drenched crowds clamoring for encore after encore.
Several labels expressed interest, with fledgling Elektra Records ending up signing both the MC5 and the Stooges in September of 1968 after Kramer recommended that label rep Danny Fields check out their "baby brother" band. Wisely aiming to capitalize on the electrifying intensity of the MC's live show, Elektra recorded a pair of hometown concerts at Detroit's Grande Ballroom for their explosive first album, Kick Out the Jams. While the effort stands not only as one of the great debut records of all time and a classic live concert document, it also exhibited the anti-establishment attitude and politics that soon set the band at odds with the label.
In addition to stirring up controversy with the famous expletive-laced introduction to the opening title track, the gatefold featured inflammatory liner notes penned by Sinclair concluded with the same profane exhortation. Elektra quickly issued a censored version of the record, much to the chagrin of the band. When the 5 responded to the record being banned from Midwestern department store chain Hudson's, they placed an ad in underground newspapers featuring more expletives directed at the chain and the label's logo. The subsequent threat of Hudson's to pull all of Elektra's records from store shelves led to the MC5 being dropped from their contract.
The band was quickly signed to Atlantic Records, but would continue to be plagued by label problems on subsequent efforts. Future Bruce Springsteen mentor and music journalist John Landau produced their sophomore album and first studio effort, 1970's Back in the USA. While the band members would later say they bristled at what the saw as Landau trying to mold their sound to his concept, fiery tracks like "Looking at You" and the politically charged "American Ruse" still stand as classic tunes on another crackling and influential album.
The band had better luck with producer Geoffrey Haslam on High Times, which would stand as the quintet's most expansive and experimental recording with songs like Sonic Smith's epic guitar workouts "Sister Anne" and "Skunk (Sonically Speaking)" and Tyner's fiery declamation "Future/Now." But relentless touring and growing drug habits were already wearing the band down. Though now revered as classics, both Back in the USA and High Times lost money, leading Atlantic to drop the group. In 1972, Davis was forced out of the band as he struggled with heroin addiction. Thompson and Tyner would also depart. After reuniting a final disastrous New Year's Eve show that only drew a few dozen fans to the same Grande Ballroom they had packed only a few years earlier, the MC5 disintegrated.
The musicians would play in a variety of projects after the implosion, with Smith most notably briefly leading his all-star Sonic Rendezvous Band (though they only released one single during their existence) before retiring from music to raise a family with songwriter wife and fellow music icon Patti Smith. Both Kramer and Davis would spend time in prison on drug charges during the '70s, with the guitarist eventually emerging and relocating to New York where he played with Johnny Thunders in the band Gang War in addition to performing with other projects and producing punk bands.
Sadly, the MC5 would not come back together until after the sudden passing of Tyner in 1991 from a heart attack with the surviving members participating in a Detroit benefit that raised money for his family. Smith died from heart failure himself in 1994 after several years of declining health. Meanwhile, Kramer relaunched his career, recording several solo albums and touring with help modern punk bands he had influenced like Clawhammer and the Streetwalkin' Cheetahs.
The first proper attempt at reviving the 5's legend came in the wake of the powerful 2002 documentary MC5: A True Testimonial that would unfortunately get held up in legal limbo over music licensing issues. Kramer would reteam with Davis and Thompson for a series of celebrated shows billed as DKT/MC5 that featured a variety of guest guitarists and singers including Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister Ian Astbury of the Cult, Mark Arm of Mudhoney, Nicke Royale of the Hellacopters, Evan Dando of the Lemonheads among others others. The band would periodically tour and play festivals in the years that followed, but it also dissolved after the death of Davis in 2012. Kramer also focused time and energy on Jail Guitar Doors USA, a nonprofit he co-founded that provides guitars and other musical instruments for inmates, using music as a form of therapy and rehabilitation. Kramer not only held fund-raisers and collected instruments that were given to prisons for their inmate music programs, he also regularly organized and performed concerts at correctional facilities across the country.
More recently, Kramer has focused on composing music for film and television and writing his memoir. The finished book, entitled The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities, was published in 2018 by Da Capo Press. Four years ago, Kramer marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Kick Out the Jams with a tour that would feature him playing with an all-star line-up of musicians under the moniker MC50 playing songs from the debut album in its entirety. After a round of acclaimed performances in Europe, a version of the band including Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, Zen Guerilla singer Marcus Durant and San Francisco rock hero Billy Gould from Faith No More on bass played a string of dates across the U.S., including an incendiary night at the Regency Ballroom.
In 2022, the guitarist announced plans to tour and release the first new studio album under the MC5 moniker in over five decades. The recording -- entitled Heavy Lifting -- was produced by Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd) and features contributions from such notables as original MC5 drummer Thompson along with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, Alice in Chain's William Duvall, fellow Detroiter Don Was (Was Not Was) on bass and talented Bay Area singer/songwriter Brad Brooks -- who befriended Kramer in 2019 and ended up co-writing most of the new material.
The guitarist assembled a new touring band he dubbed "We Are All MC5" and described as a "reanimation" of the classic group. The quintet hit the road in the spring of that year, showcasing some of the new material alongside MC5 classics with Brooks and Kramer out front and support from drummer Winston Watson (who has played with Bob Dylan and Giant Sand in addition to having early connections with Brooks), bassist Vicki Randle (Mavis Staples), and guitar hero Stevie Salas (David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger).
While there were plans for the band to tour again closer to the long delayed release of Heavy Lifting that was finally scheduled for October of this year -- the album was recorded in 2021 -- the guitarist would would only make a handful of live guest appearances onstage in 2023, playing Lenny Kaye's Nuggets tribute concert and a show with influential experimental punk band Pere Ubu among others. It was later announced that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his second bout with the disease after having survived treatment for salivary gland cancer in 2019.
Sadly, Kramer died in February of this year, just two months before it was announced that the MC5 would receive their long overdue induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month. October proved to be a busy time for the MC5 between the induction, Heavy Lifting getting released by earMUSIC and the publishing of a new oral history of the band written by noted music journalists Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki that used interviews conducted by fellow music writer and editor Ben Edmonds (who worked for legendary Detroit-based magazine Creem and the American edition of Mojo). CBS SF recently spoke with singer Brooks about his musical history, how he first connected with Kramer several years ago and came to be an important collaborator with the guitarist, as well as the process of writing and recording the explosive songs heard on Heavy Lifting.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
CBS SF: When I was preparing for our talk, I listened to Dean Delray's "Let There Be Talk" podcast you did and it made me realize we should talk a little bit about your pre-history. I know about your funk-rock band Pollo Elastico starting during the late '80s in Tucson, but wanted to discuss your background prior to moving to San Francisco.
Brad Brooks: Yeah, Pollo Elastico is the band that probably most people knew me from. It was the most popular thing I did in Tucson, but I had been playing music beforehand there, starting in the early '80s I guess. [Guitarist] Pete Holmes from Blackwülf and I have known each other for a long time, before we were in Pollo Elastico together, but I really started my musical adventure and stuff in Tucson. I met [drummer] Winston Watson when we were young, young kids playing. Tucson is really still a big part of my musical identity. I still have friends I go back there and visit.
Pollo Elastico ended up touring out here in San Francisco and I just kind of fell in love with it. Then when the band broke up, I moved out here. Mostly to follow my daughter. I had a young daughter at the time and I knew at some point I was probably going to have her, so I needed to kind of get a foundation set up with my life in San Francisco. I had some friends who had played in a band with who lived out here and I moved into a place at 67 Moss Street near Seventh and Folsom. It turned out to be this godsend; they had an elementary school across the street and there were rehearsal places nearby. I had everything that I needed. I just needed to figure out how to make it all happen in San Francisco.
CBS SF: So the two bands that came up in the discussion with Dean Del Rey were Dolorosa and I guess Reckoner was the earlier band?
Brad Brooks: There was a band called Reckonball that was the first band I did in San Francisco, I think, in 1991. That was with some guys that came from Tucson, but we kind of started tearing it up pretty early. It was such a great experience to play the I-Beam and open for The Fluid and Sister Double Happiness later. Erik Meade from The Jackson Saints, he just loved the band, and he turned me on to all his friends and turned the band on. That's how I met Linda Perry when she was in 4 Non Blondes and we would play with them.
But unfortunately, it was one of those bands that tend to happen to me [laughs] where we're grinding for two years, and then everybody is kind of done and leaves. Which later happened in Dolorosa. Roger [Rocha] was in 4 Non Blondes and he wanted to start a band, and he and I were friends. There was a guy named Adam Aaronson who was in My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, and Joey de Bono was in Liquid Sky and and we started writing. We made this really great record that still has not come out with Michael Rosen, that I hope comes out someday, that Linda kind of helped us finance.
In the end, we couldn't work out a deal with it, but there's no weirdness anymore. Linda and I are good friends, and it can come out if we want it to at this point. I think it should come out. I think we felt like we were the last rock band in 1994 or whatever because we were doing different stuff. I mean, I know that's not the case. Then after that, I just decided that I was going to be in a band that was never going to break up again. That's when I started my own solo music. I'd always written lyrics for the music of bands and different people. I learned to play guitar and piano. This was the first time I was able to started putting out my own records. Probably in like maybe 2000 is when I started writing and recording. I have four of them out.
CBS SF: I grew up in the Bay Area and moved to San Francisco around 1994, and saw a lot of music in SF before then. I'm trying to remember if I saw either Reckonball or Dolorosa, but honestly can't remember. I do remember seeing the names on flyers and in club ads for sure. It's funny, because that was just a few years before I'd see Wayne playing at the Paradise Lounge with the Streetwalkin' Cheetahs and the BellRays in 1999. I remember him being a really nice, very approachable guy. How did you hook up with him?
Brad Brooks: I met him in 2019. Tiffany DeBartolo, who has Bright Antenna Records, was doing a show at the Sweetwater in Mill Valley, She had written a graphic novel on Jeff Buckley, so she was going to do a book release with some music, with some people playing Jeff Buckley songs and Jeff Buckley's mom, Mary Guibert, was going to be there. My name got kind of thrown around and I ended up doing a Jeff Buckley song and one of my songs with my friend Adam Rossi.
But about four days before Tiffany emailed me and said, "Hey, my friend Wayne Kramer is going to be in town. It's his 70th birthday. His wife is one of my best friends. Do you want to come up and sing "Kick Out the Jams" and maybe something else?" And I was like, "Yeah, I would love to!" So we ended up doing the show. This was the April 30, 2019. I remember that because it was Wayne's birthday.
So we did the show and it was an amazing night; packed at the Sweetwater and a lot of love for Jeff Buckley. Wayne was also there because Tim Buckley had played with the MC5 quite a few times. It was really fun to play with Wayne and we sat down afterwards and had some birthday cake. I just sat next to him and started talking. And, as you said, he's just was so approachable and just such a great person. And he just said, "Hey, tell me about your life," you know? And we started talking about kids, because now I have 12-year-old twins, and he has a son close to the same age.
I was telling him about my musical journey, and then I had told him that two years ago, I had gotten throat cancer, and I was just lucky and grateful to be singing at all anymore. He he grabs my arm, and he goes like this [points to his neck}, and he's got the same scar as I do. And he goes, "I'm in day four of radiation." And I was like, "Wow. I'd like to help you if I can". Because I went through it, and it's going to get...the radiation part is probably the worst part. Because you you can't eat or drink. I lost like 40 pounds. It's scary. I mean, anytime you're dealing with cancer is scary. This [Brooks's procedure] had a 90% success rate, which is good. But you really go through it and you're just miserable and you think you're going to die, because you're just getting whittled away. There's a sun burning the inside and outside of your neck.
So that's how we connected. We exchanged phone numbers and I would text them things. And then he started calling me as he was getting kind of worse and just asking me questions. And we developed a really close bond as a cancer brother, you know? He was my guy and I was his "pick-me up," as he called me. So our friendship developed over the next year in that way.
Around then, COVID hits and everyone's s--t out of luck. No one has any gigs and we're all sitting at home. Wayne and I are talking on Zoom about our kids and how do you keep all that together. Finally, in November of 2020, were both talking about how we were having a hard time being creative. And he told me, "My therapist told me I need to get back to working and I've chosen you. I'm going to send you some stuff. Let's see if we can do some writing." So he ended up sending me some things that he'd kind of been working on, but he also sent me a letter [that kind of outlined] a movie script which he had written about this thing called "Heavy Lifting." It was like a "Breaking Bad" kind of character, but this guy is like a movie director or a screenwriter who's writing this caper movie, but as he's making it, he's actually going to do the caper and then just escape the world. Crime is going to pay. That was what I took out of it.
So that actually became the "Heavy Lifting" song later on. It was actually kind of written for this movie. Tom Morello had sent Wayne a riff that Wayne put together some music for, and I wrote the lyrics and the melodies on that one. That song really started it, but we met and bonded as cancer brothers, and then eventually we became writing partners. We started November of 2020 and by probably the middle of 2021, we had like 15 songs. Wayne is really great in the studio, and he knows his way around it, so the demos that we made were really good. And eventually he starts kind of shopping it around, and then Bob Ezrin's name comes up and he ends up producing the record with us. That was a whole another amazing part of it.
CBS SF: From what I've read, Wayne approached Ezrin about producing the album after working with him on the Alice Cooper album Detroit Stories, and it was Ezrin who convinced him to make Heavy Lifting an MC5 album. What was the initial plan for the songs? Was going to be a new Wayne Kramer album before it took a new direction with Ezrin?
Brad Brooks: The interesting thing is that when we were writing it, we weren't thinking of anything about what it was going to be for. The great thing about Wayne is he was such an inspiring person, and he saw something in me that maybe I didn't even see in myself, you know? He knew I was a good writer, and he had heard me sing. He helped me and did some nice things for me on my record God Save the City, which came out in 2020. And before the election four years ago, I did a Brad Brooks version of "American Ruse with my band, and Wayne played guitar and sang on it with Vickie on it as well. And so he kind of knew what I could do.
But we were writing these songs, honestly, just for the joy of creation; just trying to make great art. And that was something that we always talked about. I always talked with him, musically about the things that turned on the MC5, which was like the Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer, Funkadelic. He and I bonded a lot on soul music. I feel like I'm a soul rock singer. But we had written these songs without thinking about what they were for. When Wayne was working on Detroit Stories with Bob, the Alice [Cooper] record, I think he started playing Bob some of this stuff.
I don't think Bob wanted to do another art project, well not art project, but a concept album kind of thing. But he was like, "I think this sounds like the spirit of MC5." And I think Bob said, "The world kind of needs that spirit right now. I hear it in these songs. I think it sounds like you're making an MC5 record." And I think Wayne really thought about it and I think he thought that that was something that he wanted to try and do. He felt like the time was right for it.
There's no replacing those guys and there's no recreating 1969 to 1972. But the one thing I will say is that when he and I were talking about the state of the world and politics and all of it -- the rise of Trumpism, George Floyd, everything that was going on with COVID even, and how that was handled -- I said, "Wayne, does this feel like 1969?" And he said, "It's worse." That resonated with me. So in the songs that we were writing, I was writing really about Oakland and about what was going on during that time. So it was about George Floyd, the insurrection, the homeless situation that's been going on and still goes on.
"Blind Eye" is a song that I wrote about this woman that I saw every day in my neighborhood, and just watching everyone locked in their own own lives. It's such a difficult situation, but to not do anything...She was young. She was a really young person and that affected me. So all that is in the music. I think it translates to Detroit, to Oakland. The working class people, I am that [laughs]! I am a grinder, in my music and in my life. And this opportunity that Wayne trusted me with was just an amazing thing. But to get back to your question, Bob heard it in the music, and I think Bob was interested in doing an MC5 record, and that's how it was kind of decided.
CBS SF: I was going to ask about the timeline the recording. So you guys essentially demoed a lot of the stuff that ended up on the record, and then the recording in earnest began with Bob in 2021?
Brad Brooks: Let me think here. So in August of 2021 -- I hadn't met Bob yet, but I knew he was going to be producing -- Wayne and I got together for five days with Bob to just do some pre-production and sit down together and kind of break apart the songs. And I have to say Bob, he's been so good to me, but at first I really was fighting for these songs. I think he'd said somewhere we were arm wrestling for the lyrics a little bit. Wayne and I felt really strongly about these songs, but to Bob's credit, he's really good at pushing you just enough to make it better.
There was a couple things that I rewrote. Like "Barbarians at the Gates," I had some kind of similar subject matter, but maybe I wasn't being as specific. And once it became an MC5 record, he was like, This has to be direct." The MC5 was always direct, you know? Kick out the jams! We're punching up to fight what's going on in the world right now. I tend to be a little more veiled than what I'm trying to say. He's like, "You can't do that on this. You have to be specific." So "Barbarians at the Gate" was a song that I had rewritten the lyrics for, and I'm so glad I did. Because he pushed me to do it, and I learned not to be afraid of the rewrite on some things. And as we went along, we did make stuff a lot better, I think. And then some things, to Bob's credit, he was like, "I like what you said here. We're going to keep it."
So that was a really interesting process. And I learned a lot from working with Bob. And since Wayne's passed, we've become even closer because of this experience that we went through. Then once we did that and met with Bob those five days, we're started talking about different people the playing on the record and who's going to track it. And Wayne and Don Was have always had this great Detroit connection, musically, personally. And Wayne was in Was Not Was for the first record, and Don had played on the MC50 tour a little bit and had seen the MC5 and grown up with it. And Wayne was like, "I'd like to have Don be the bass player on this." And Bob goes, "Okay, let's call him up."
This is the crazy world that they live in, right? They can just call people up. And so Bob calls up Don and he's like, "Hey, Don, how are you doing? What's going on?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm in a session with Abe Laborial Jr." [Paul McCartney's longtime drummer]. And Bob's like, "Well, do you want to play bass on this new MC5 record with Wayne?" He's like, "Yeah, I would love to." And then Bob's like, "Well, hey, let me talk to Abe. I hadn't talked to him in a long time." So he gets Abe on the phone and Abe's saying, "Hey Bob! What's going on?" Bob's like, "Hey, you want to play drums on the new MC5 record?" And he's like, "Hell yeah I do!" Boom. There's the band, right there. It happened in five minutes.
So we ended up tracking in November of 2021 at the Waystation [in Los Angeles] with Dave Way, who has this amazing studio that turns out to be Julian Lennon's old studio. It's kind of a home studio, but it's got a great tracking room. So we're all in there tracking as a live band. The demos were sketched out pretty good, and we end up tracking 15 songs in like three and a half or four and a half days.
CBS SF: Wow. That is not how albums are made anymore!
Brad Brooks: I wish we had gone longer, but everyone was down for the cause and Wayne has so much respect from all these guys. It was just a blast. Nothing was more than three takes, and I sang vocals live. There's a couple things like "Boys Who Play with Matches" and "Black Boots" that are predominantly those takes when I tracked with them. So it was this really fun process for the basics. And then we started doing overdubs, and that's where a lot of the special guests came in.
I know that Wayne had some ideas for people to be wanted, like Vernon [Reid] and Slash and William Duvall, and of course, Tom [Morello]. His riff was already on "Heavy Lifting." That song was a big key, because it was the title of this thing that Wayne had talked about and I ended up using it. But that song was like, "Okay, Wayne and I really have something kind of going on. The making of it was just a joy. Unfortunately, it took longer for it to come out -- that's sometimes just part of the business -- but tracking all of it was done by 2021. And then by 2022, Wayne's doing press about it coming out and then there's the tour that I got to be the We Are All MC5 singer with Wayne and Vicky and Winston Watson and Stevie Salas as the core band, who also got on the record as well.
CBS SF: It sounds like you had more songs than ended up on the album. I know you had the new version of "The Edge of a Switchblade" and the cover of "25 Miles." Those are the songs that stand outside of what you'd put together with Wayne, though maybe there's other stuff that I'm not aware of. You sing on most of the album, though "25 Miles" sounds like it's you and Wayne sharing the vocals...
Brad Brooks: That's a duet in a way. That's a song that Wayne really loved. It was one of the first things we tracked. That was a song that Wayne has always loved, and it's kind of the soul side of Detroit that we always bonded on. So that was always going to be on there. And then "The Edge of a Switchblade," I ended up tracking, but then William Duvall did. I'm on that one a little bit too, but William did a great job.
There are some songs that we recorded that aren't on the record and I think that's more just because maybe they weren't heavy enough. But they're also some of my favorite songs. There's probably five other songs that Wayne and I wrote that I hope come out someday. One is called "We Rose" and it is about George Floyd and that whole situation. And then there's a song called "We Don't Play By the Rules," which is like a soul song, a lot in the way of "Let Me Try," that MC5 song. Wayne and I loved soul music, and it's a funky record, as you know. I would say it's not really a punk record, but it's got a lot of funk and rock to it. And those are the things that Wayne was writing musically and what we were talking about. It was Wayne's music and me writing the lyrics and melodies. I wrote 95% of the lyrics and melodies. But Wayne and I, our writing situation was such that, like, we just always were honest with each other, and had to be from the get go.
When we started, I was like, "We just have to be able to be honest with each other to make it go faster." And we really didn't have any issues. Writing together was so fun and so inspiring for each of us. Because during COVID, we were just miserable. So during that time, we're writing, getting excited about it. I couldn't wait to get something from him, and he couldn't wait to hear what I was doing. We did it for just for the pure joy of making music and making art, and I am so proud about that part of it. Because it's kind of rare.
CBS SF: That was a time where it was hard to find things to look forward to. I think we all experienced it.
Brad Brooks: Exactly. It was sustaining both of us, on a lot of levels. As I've said, Wayne was such a great guy. Man, there's just so much I miss about him. We talked every couple weeks, and it was always just about what's going on family-wise or in our real lives. Our families got to hang out, and our kids were close. That part's been really, really hard. But I'm glad I got the time that I got with him. It was just a gift, personally and musically.
CBS SF: Looking at the credits on the song listing for the album, I thought it was a little odd that you're listed as beingfeatured on "Black Boots," since you're singing on most of the album. Was there anything specific about that song that led to that credit being in the in the song listing?
Brad Brooks: It's funny. That is one of the songs that I didn't write. [Rise Against singer] Tim McIlrath wrote it. Wayne wanted him on there because he wrote it, but that's me singing on it. A great song. But yeah, there's a little confusion [with the song listing].
CBS SF: You already kind of alluded to this, but I noticed that "Because of Your Car," "Blessed Release" and especially the closer "Hit It Hard" all really lean into the funk side of the 5 that kind of gets forgotten. Early on, they covered James Brown songs live all the time, so it's not like it was a secret. Was it the mutual love you both have for soul and funk music that kind of led that coming out more?
Brad Brooks: Yeah, I think so. One thing I want to say, from studying Rob Tyner for doing the touring stuff, Rob is just one of the great f--king singers of all time. I hear a soul singer. Adrenalized soul music, R&B, that's what I heard in the MC5 with Rob's attitude and the band's attitude. That was a big part of it. But Rob was a great soul singer to me. He had that Wilson Pickett scream and wrote great lyrics about the times.
Once it became an MC5 record, if there was anything that I tried to do -- if I could, to honor those guys -- was to write about the times that we're in; to write about now, you know? It's such a shame that some of those great MC5 songs like "Over and Over" and "Poisoned" and "American Ruse," all these things about what was going on then, and it's still going on. So even doing the touring that we did, it never felt like a nostalgic thing at all, because the lyrics and the songs were talking about what's going on now, still. Still! That's the thing that's so frustrating.
In studying Rob, I listened to everything, I got all the bootlegs, all of them on vinyl, too. I would find all these MC5 bootlegs and I really just studied him as much as I could. Not to copy him, but just to think about the writing part. He was such a creative person. If there was anything we could do to honor them, it was to keep the ethos and just try to talk about the times. But there's no replacing that time and those guys. They were as unique as could be as individuals. And the new book that's out is amazing. Really, you get five different versions of the same story.
CBS SF: The songs on the new album all stick to a very tight, sort of traditional pop song structure. They're all three to four minutes long. It kind of reminded me of Back in the USA, in that way. There's none of the extended jam or free jazz elements that were present in some of the other original records. Was there a conscious decision to not explore that side?
Brad Brooks: I think in the studio, on "Can't Be Found" there's kind of a bass breakdown in the middle that Don does that we opened up. There's a couple things we opened up, but I think that that we pretty much followed the demo structure that Wayne and I did. And the shame for me and for all of us in the band was that we were looking forward to playing some of these songs live and being able to explore that.
We would have probably played two or three at the max, but it would have been fun to to open them up. Because that was one thing about touring with Wayne and playing with him that was so fun about the band. We were doing that, and there were these open moments where you have to pay attention and you have to let them happen. There was some open structure to a lot of the tunes, and that was so fun and exciting for me too, to just feel it out. And it meant that we, as the band, had to stay even more connected on a listening level to what was going on. And I think we felt like we were just scratching the surface of what we could do within that. And everyone was so excited to have this record come out and to get back on the road.
In fact, around the holidays last year, Wayne and I were talking. He had been doing press about the record coming out, and we were talking about getting together. We were actually going to get together in late January to get the band back and just start playing a little bit and maybe try some of the new songs out. And Wayne called me on January 15 and told me what was going on with him [with his pancreatic cancer treatment]. I don't think he knew how bad it was going to be yet. He just had found out. And my heart just sank. I just wanted him to get as much time with his family as as he could. And then, unfortunately, he was gone by February 2.
It's still just been devastating for his family. God, I think about him every day. It's not because the record's out. It's because he had such an impact on my life as a friend. I can't call him now. I can't talk to him about what's going on. Like I said, we talked about our kids a lot too. Our kids are pre teens. That's the part that I miss. It's that connection as a friend. He had that impact on a lot of people.
CBS SF: I'm sorry for your loss. I really can't imagine. It hurt me when he died, just as a fan, so I can't imagine what it must be like to have been friends and to have worked with him. I did want to ask a bit about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction that you were able to attend. I honestly tried to find it in the broadcast. I fast forwarded through a lot of the five hour ceremony that's on demand and I didn't see it. I ended up having to watch a video someone took there at the arena on YouTube.
Brad Brooks: It happened in the early middle part. Tom Morello talked and his speech was amazing. Tom and Wayne were really good friends, for a long time. For 20-odd years or something. And Tom was there when Wayne of started thinking about Jail Guitar Doors USA, which, to me,, will be Wayne's legacy. That was something that meant so much to him. And I think he never felt more connected than when he was going into prisons and talking about reform and about giving prisoners hope for just their sanity, and teaching music and making that a sacred space. For the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there was not a performance, but Tom got to speak about those guys, and all the families were there too, which was really amazing. I got to meet I got to meet everyone that's alive, as far as the families go.
And the exhibition inside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the new inductees, the MC5 had the biggest and best collection of stuff. Everybody stepped up and turned in some great things. That was emotional, too. That was the Friday night before. It was really weird to see Wayne's guitar behind the glass. When I met him the first time, he picked me up at the airport and we went and started writing right away, because we had been doing it online. I was going to be there for like three days, and got to stay with him. But that's the guitar he played all the time. So to see it behind glass was really...it's weird, you know? I mean, that's where it should be, but it's weird because that was his tool. That was his tool for communication.
And I will say this too: man, his playing on this record, he went out just at the top of his game. He really did. As I said, I honestly hadn't written for someone else's music in a long time, since Dolorosa. Maybe I'd done a one off here and there. But to have Wayne have the faith in me and choose me and the fun that we were having making it, it was really just an experience of a lifetime. I just wish he was here to be part of it.
So now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I've been writing with Tom Ayres, one of my favorite people and guitar players. So we've been working on making a record. I love Tom, and hopefully that will be the next thing on the horizon. And if there was a chance to play these songs at some point, I hope that happens too. I just kind of out of my hands a little bit, but I would be honored to do it again; to play that stuff and play some of the new things.
