New Power Generation

Wayne Kramer is sitting in the kitchen of his West Hollywood pad, talking about lies. We’re a society suffocating from an overabundance of horseshit, he says, his impatience flashing like one of those stinging thunderbolts he rings from his guitar. Kramer‘s dissatisfaction with the status quo and his distaste for the greedy are constant threads in what continues to be an amazing life.

”I was a teenager when the Stones and the Who came to America, and many people of my age group have grown up with rock music, too. But they’ve become disenfranchised with it because of the juvenile nature of what‘s shoved down their throats. The business interests are pushing teenage music. They’re kinda like the Jesuits: ‘Get ’em young, keep ‘em for life.’

“The perniciousness of it is that young artists can be hoodwinked. They sell a dream that if you have a hit record and you make a lot of money, it‘s gonna fix you. So whatever that terrible hole in you is, if you have success, it’ll fix you. It‘s a lie and very damaging. It not only doesn’t fix you, it makes you worse.”

In 1969, Kramer had his taste of rock stardom as a founding member of the legendary MC5, the Detroit group that rocked harder than any from that era. (They‘ve just been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) The 5 were also the house band for the White Panthers, hippie revolutionaries whose message of “dope, rock & roll and fucking in the streets” outraged the power structure of this country all the way up to the Nixon White House. When Kramer and company weren’t being shafted by record companies or hounded by law enforcement, they were chemically self-destructing. A documentary called MC5: A True Testimonial recently premiered in Chicago, much to Kramer‘s relief.

“I’m grateful to have been a member, but I can‘t help wonder if my tombstone will read, ’HERE LIES WAYNE KRAMER. HE USED TO BE IN THE MC5,‘” he laughs. “I’m glad the movie‘s coming out, because it’ll tell the story once and for all. I‘m tired of talking about it.”

The last decade, although not without tumbles into his own terrible hole, has been Kramer’s most productive. He‘s just released Adult World, his sixth solo album since 1995 (amid several side projects) on his own MuscleTone Records. Like 1997’s Citizen Wayne, it‘s a masterpiece of literate nuance and musical sophistication that nonetheless continues to kick out the jams as only Wayne Kramer can. For those whose first love is non-hyphenated capital-R Rock, there’s been a paucity of first-rate stuff for almost 30 years. It‘s not mere nostalgia that’s sustained so-called classic rock radio but a longing for catchy, ballsy, guitarcentric music. In a sense, Kramer‘s making classic rock now.

The MC5 are oft credited as primary progenitors of punk rock, heavy metal and grunge. But Adult World is proof yet again that Kramer is more in a league with rock mavericks such as Steve Earle, Tom Waits and Ani DiFranco, artists who sound like no one but themselves, whose songs are short stories with memorable melodies, whose audiences generally are not Clearasil consumers. Because of the MC5, his longtime association with Epitaph Records and his natural inclination toward sonic energy, Kramer’s been crowned a punk forefather; while accurate, the honorific is also a simplification. “Punk rock is a very conservative world. Punks rage about freedom, expression and being different but are often really narrow. I‘m not a punk, I’ve never been a punk, I‘ll never be a punk.”

Amazingly, considering Adult World’s big sound, three-quarters of it was recorded -- and all of it mixed -- in Kramer‘s home studio using Pro Tools on a Macintosh computer. “Records cost too much. They’re charging sometimes $18 for a record. It‘s too much fuckin’ money for a guy that works and wants to go to the record store and pick up a couple of things on Friday, some new bands -- two or three records, that‘s his electric bill. We need to make better, cheaper records. Ten songs for 10 bucks. That’s what I might call my next album.”

Kramer went to business school and received a small-business loan from the feds to start his label -- the same federal government that warehoused him in the ‘70s after a coke bust. “The idea behind the record company is to put out new music for grown-ups.” MuscleTone is also reissuing his Epitaph titles with bonus tracks, as well as releasing a super-session CD by Kramer, Brian James, Duff McKagan, Clem Burke and Stewart Copeland called Mad for the Racket and an album by Mother Superior (known as the Rollins Band when Henry’s with ‘em).

Kramer’s DIY ownership of the means of production is an evolutionary extension of his youthful anarcho-syndicalist values. And just as he‘s come to terms with the business of music, much of Adult World deals with Kramer’s attempts to make sense of his personal life, particularly after four years of sobriety. The album kicks off with “Brought a Knife to the Gunfight,” a slow burner with backward guitar a la “Rain” in which “The character is always just outside the circle. Did I mine that out of my own life? Certainly.”