Of all the loud, rebellious rock groups forged in the white heat of America's Motor City, MC5 were the most uncompromising. A high-octane force of nature, saluted now as punk pioneers, MC5 were streetwise Detroit factory rats, assembly-line escapees who lit the touchpaper on some of the most combustible rock'n'roll ever heard.
It's 1968. An incendiary debut album fused the raging pungency of free jazz with dislocated cosmic blues and brutally confrontational garage rock. A second stripped the music bare and became a blueprint for Britpunk. A third, exuding maturity and professionalism, was widely praised. Yet by 1972 their advance ruptured by accident, deception and often self-sewn misadventure, MC5 were done.
Despite the tendency to self-ignite, the distractions of activist tomfoolery and management seeking only a soundtrack to sedition, MC5's aim was pure: to get down, party and blow every other rock band into insensibility. Now Richard Butterworth dissects MC5's chaotic, magnificent history, their records and the fevered countercultural ecosystem that spawned them: the speed-fried music; the bristling posture; the duplicitous record deals; the corrosive drugs. And, of course, the significance of MC5's infamous catchphrase. So right now, it's time to KICK OUT THE JAMS (brothers and sisters).
Richard Butterworth's grown-up career began in advertising, first as a paste-up artist, later as a graphic designer. Settling on copywriting, for years, he reaped the pleasures, pains and penury of freelancing. As a lifelong believer in the healing and redemptive power of music, however, he knew that humankind's highest art-form would eventually saddle up and ride him into the sunset. Today Richard lives in Cornwall, UK, with his partner Sue, a golden retriever and CD shelf-space in managed but perpetual decline. He still reads and writes about the music he loved before he was a grown-up.