Just when you think you know everything cool about the music scene in Tucson.. well, you don’t.

You may have heard about a certain Baldwin brother living among our majestic saguaros. Whoop dee doo. Or perhaps you’ve heard the tales of an adult Gary Coleman logging in marathon hours at a Tucson hobby shop during his time here. Big deal. Frankly, actors are boring, so what about music royalty?

It might surprise a few folks to know that Tucson boasts more than it’s share of highly influential musicians. We’ve got Linda Ronstadt. The other day, I met someone that hadn’t put two and two together about The Ronstadt Center. Well, we had her. I hear she’s moved on. We’ve got Angela Bowie. Yes, that would be the woman who gave birth to the haircut that gave birth to Ziggy Stardust. We’ve got some bloke named Paul McCartney – or at least we did until his wife Linda passed. And we’ve got Mike Davis, bass player from the hugely influential MC5, which started rocking the pants off The Establishment in the late ‘60s. Or, rather, we did have Mike Davis until he packed up and moved to Pasadena with Angela, his lovely Tucson ex-pat wife. Come to think of it, why are all our legends forsaking us? But I digress.

Every garage, punk and rock lover recognizes the battle cry, “Kick Out the Jams, motherfuckerrrs!” made legendary from MC5’s sweat-drenched stage. You’ve watched grainy videos and photos of afro’d head-banging and instrument-wielding madmen that resulted in a sonic wall of rock & roll noise that could not be matched. They called it “Pure Energy.” Perhaps you were even lucky to see them live as DKT/MC5 on Club Congress’ stage in 2004 with the likes of Evan Dando (Lemonheads) and Mark Arm (Mudhoney) filling in for the dearly departed.

If not, you’ve seen and heard their influence echoed in countless modern punk, indie and garage bands from Rage Against the Machine to The White Stripes. Not to mention seen them splashed across Jennifer Aniston’s chest on Friends (That was so odd… I have the same shirt).

But MC5 weren’t just known for their music, they also made a name for themselves as rebellious pseudo-political activists, calling for a revolution on a regular basis.

They became involved with John Sinclair’s (their svengali/manager) White Panther Party, which was basically about giving the finger to The Man. They were staked out and beaten by cops, were buddies with The Stooges, and were signed after an incendiary performance at an anti-Democratic Convention rally in 1968… which would explain why Rage Against the Machine played “Kick Out The Jams” at LA’s chaotic Democratic Convention right before things started to get really ugly in this country.

MC5 left a rollercoaster ride of helter skelter rock & roll history that is impossible to condense in a few paragraphs, but we know the legends… let’s hear some of the story from the other side, from Mike Davis’ point of view.

Having known Mike for several years through his wife Angela, who manages 2/3 of MC5 in addition to running Svengirly Music, Inc., I’ve always had a million questions that I wanted to ask him about those days. But at the family dinner table with innocent children about, or at work with Angela in an office heated to about 100 degrees, it never did seem like the right time. So in the interest of killing two birds with one stone, I will share with you the results of my rapid-fire barrage of questions, which Mike and Angela so eloquently and patiently answered. In fact, there was so much to talk about we will be serving it up in two sittings.

Onward!

When did you first fall in love with music? Any defining moments?

Well, there are defining moments for everything… “Peter and the Wolf” by Prokoviev. I had a 3 (record), 78 rpm picture book album when I was little. I played it over and over every day. Later, as a 13 year old, I fell in love with vocal groups from the early days of pop music, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Del Vikings, The Elegants and a slew of others. I remember being at a Red Wings hockey game with my parents. I was like 10 years old. They had an organist who played between periods while they resurfaced the ice. It was the most glorious sound I ever heard. Later, when I was in college, I discovered Bach and the Baroque period. I still can’t get enough of that stuff.

How did you become involved with MC5?

I don’t know. It was a quirk of fate. I played guitar a little, but it was as an accompaniment for singing. When I was 19, I was a counselor at a YMCA camp. I sang Harry Belafonte songs to the kids in my cabin at bedtime. They loved it. The camp director and his staff came by one evening to check it out. It was a good thing. Folk music was the hip thing in the college world of the day. It was great fun. You didn’t have to be good, you just had to be into it. Bob Dylan pushed it into the main around ‘63. When the Beatles hit in ‘64, it changed everything. They were young white guys from working class backgrounds, they had a huge style, and they wrote their own songs. That meant anyone had a shot at being in music and being successful. You didn’t have to be a trained musician. It was up for grabs.

By 1965 I was at loose ends personally, and looking for a real direction. I met Rob Tyner who was all bubbling about his rock and roll band – yetch, the music of squares. I went to see his little outfit at a bar in Detroit. They were cool. I liked it. They were a little tougher in terms of their sound than the pop jangle of the English bands. Two of their guys were not as committed to the idea of playing in a band for a life’s work. That was enough to get them put out of the band sooner or later. It was sooner, and I was drafted into the MC5 to raise the bar in terms of art value and commitment. I was good with being a celebrity from my art school days. So, I kind of provided a link for the rest of them to get beyond [Detroit suburb] Lincoln Park.

When MC5 was formed, was there the initial idea of approaching music in a subversive way or did you just start playing music and everything fell into place from there?

Yes, that’s right. I wouldn’t call it subversive. I might call it original. I knew that to be anybody, you had to come up with something provocative or at least something of your own. Copycats don’t stand a chance in the long run. We were very “R&B,” aggressive and conceited. I heard The Yardbirds and Jeff Beck do Howlin’ Wolf’s “I’m A Man.” The middle part with the rave up was the trick. The entire band shifted into a spontaneous, supercharged passage that went beyond the limits of the song. We used to play that one, and it was our chance to blow people away. After a while we started writing our own free form stuff. So, the subversive tag doesn’t mean much to me. I thought of what we were trying to do as groundbreaking.

MC5’s music and approach to life seemed to thrive on energy and chaos. What was going on in your mind in the middle of all of this turmoil – when the Nixon administration had a file on you, the White Panthers, the arrests, etc?

At first we were in control, but after it got going, other people were having a greater influence in the band than the band members. Although at the time, merging with John Sinclair’s Trans Love Energies cooperative (the teacher-turned-counterculture warrior’s umbrella name for his many projects) seemed a strong and convenient move, I doubt the outcome was positive for us. It pigeon-holed us as a political/counterculture social group more than a group of strong characters who played music. We lost our real identity in a sense, and became a rhetorical arm for dreamers. I hated it. We turned into propaganda rats with guitars. (Note: This may just be the best quote I’ve heard in a year.)

In the end, the thing that people applauded us for was the intensity of our performances. It was always the vibe of the band, and the sound we made. We’d hit on it all the time in the beginning, and that stuff created the legend, but with all the distractions, we started being inconsistent. Yeah, it was like a grand joke on the establishment for a year or so, but when the joke got too serious, it wasn’t fun anymore. I think people see [MC5] as a martyr or maybe a phoenix. It’s almost unreal the reverence that people feel about us. In the end, it was the chemistry of the band that made the band what it was.

What was one of your most memorable MC5 moments?

Oh jeez, I have a few. The Bob-Lo Boat in 1966 – we played in a half full drafty hall on Bob-Lo Island. That’s an amusement park in the middle of the Detroit River. You took a ferry to get there. We froze our asses off at the gig. It was called The Teen Fair. On the way back on the boat, we decided to set up our amps and play a spontaneous set. The whole second deck was dancing. It was then I realized the power of our sound, and the power of live music.

Another time I recall playing a cameo appearance at Golden Gate Park for about 10,000 hippies. We hit the stage with Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” It was pandemonium.

A third was a show at The Grande Ballroom in Detroit. We finished our set with a spaced out “Black To Comm.” We were out of material and didn’t know how to top it. We got called back for an encore, the first encore I ever heard of by a rock band. We went back out without a clue as to what we were going to do. I started the bass part to “Rebel Rouser.” We played that one, [plus] “Pipeline” and “Boss” by The Torqueys. The crowd was left in hysterics. It’s my all time favorite MC5 show.

What are your feelings regarding the popular theory that MC5 were the first punk band/one of the first bands to introduce the punk vibe/musical style to America?

Hell, I wouldn’t know how punk came out of that, but everything finds its roots in something else, doesn’t it? Perhaps [it was] the anti-social tone of MC5 toward the non-rock and roll world. Maybe [it was] the reckless abandon with which we played, putting it all on the line all the time. We were edgy that’s for sure. If that is true, then I’m really proud to be the prototype. I love all the punk and hardcore stuff of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I would like to think of the MC5’s music as without limitations.

What do you think MC5’s most important contribution was, be it culturally, musically or otherwise?

Inspiration. Just inspiration. We gave a lot of guys the fuel to go for it. People credit us as being influential in their lives, not necessarily as in music, but whatever moves them to strive for something. I get people telling me that all the time. MC5 fans are people in all walks of life. I know of judges, members of Congress, newscasters, lawyers, doctors, and all types of musicians and music fans who cite the MC5 as a major important factor in their history. It’s humbling.

What was the first sign for you that the ride was going to end?

That’s a tough question, but… I think I have an idea. When Jon Landau came to produce the Back In The USA album, we booked a newly built studio in East Detroit that had an 8-track room, and a soon-to-be completed 16-track room as our recording digs. We were doing some run downs of the stuff we wanted to record, when Landau came over the talk back asking what we were playing. We told him. He was wondering which version we were going to use. What did he mean? He said that each time we ran down the tune, it was different. We said, “That’s how we play.” He said, “You can’t do it like that.” We said, “Why not?” He said (pause), “How are we going to fix mistakes, edit, etc. when we don’t know what we are about to hear? It has to be consistent.” John Sinclair came into the room reeking of pot smoke. “It sucks,” he announced and left the room. He wasn’t buying it.

At that moment I felt the rift between what we had been and built over the years, and the challenge of becoming a professional rock and roll act. This was inconsistent with everything we had espoused to our fans and foes. I didn’t know how we were going to explain it, much less pull it off musically.

What have you been doing musically post-MC5? What has life been like after having such a whirlwind experience?

I’ve had a couple of long-term musical episodes with some different people. The Destroy All Monsters period from ‘77 to ‘84 took up too many years with little results, although that too, is making a resurgence.

After I’d been in Tucson several years, I started doing a stint with Rich Hopkins and his Luminarios. We started off with writing and recording a couple of tracks for a German tobacco company, Phillip Morris. We then decided to make a band of it, and played our first gig at Congress Hotel, opening for John Entwistle. That was cool, and we had a great performance as I recall.

After 5 or 6 years of gigging with various lineups I decided it was time to head to Los Angeles, and get serious about my career. The last two years has been occupied with touring as DKT/MC5 (DKT stands for living MC5 members – Mike Davis, Wayne Kramer, Dennis Thompson) to bring a closure to the MC5, at least for me, and play the MC5’s music for countless fans all over the globe.

I’ve produced a couple of records for young bands, and am going to Italy to produce an Italian band this spring. Angela and I have a company called Svengirly Music (www.svengirly.com). She manages bands, does band merchandising, and we are music publishers. This takes me into a variety of areas connected with the music business.

I must say, when I came to Tucson in 1987, I thought the past and MC5 were well behind me, and I would be starting over in every way. So it was with shock that as I was driving my ‘77 Camaro, still with Michigan plates on it down Tucson Blvd. one afternoon, that I heard a familiar riff on the radio. I turned it up a little bit to see what it was, and a bolt of lightening hit me. It was the theme song of a local radio show. It was none other than “Kick Out The Jams.” I couldn’t believe it. As the years rolled by, I realized Tucson was a place for me to settle some personal issues, and appreciate a different view of life. I’m grateful for my years in Tucson.

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I’ve always felt that Tucson welcomes the creative and unique with open arms, so I suppose it’s no surprise that a “propaganda rat with a guitar” could find his way to our oceanless shores. Even if it was just for 19 footloose and White Panther free, dusty years.

Check back for the second installment of the Mike Davis interview, which will deal with how he and his wife/manager Angela have coped with Mike’s hepatitis C and about his decision to document his feelings and treatment via an extremely well-written blog. In the meantime, be sure to kick out the jams.