State Champ Radio Rock
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Wayne Kramer, the co-founder of the protopunk Detroit band the MC5 that thrashed out such hardcore anthems as “Kick Out the Jams” and influenced everyone from The Clash to Rage Against the Machine, has died at age 75.
Kramer died Friday (Feb. 2) at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, according to Jason Heath, a close friend and executive director of Kramer’s nonprofit Jail Guitar Doors. Heath said the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
From the late 1960s to early 1970s, no band was closer to the revolutionary spirit of the time than the MC5, which featured Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith on guitars, Rob Tyner on vocals, Michael Davis on bass and Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson on drums. Managed for a time by White Panther co-founder John Sinclair, they were known for their raw, uncompromising music, which they envisioned as the soundtrack for the uprising to come.
“Brother Wayne Kramer was the best man I’ve ever known,” Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello wrote via Instagram on Friday. “He possessed a one of a kind mixture of deep wisdom & profound compassion, beautiful empathy and tenacious conviction. His band the MC5 basically invented punk rock music.”
The band had little commercial success and its core lineup did not last beyond the early 1970s, but its legacy endured, both for its sound and for its fusing of music to political action. Kramer, who had a long history of legal battles and substance abuse, would tell his story in the 2018 memoir The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities.
Thompson is now the band’s only surviving member.
Kramer and Smith had known each other since their teens and played with various other musicians around Detroit before the core lineup was in place, in the mid-1960s. At Tyner’s suggestions, they called themselves the MC5, short for Motor City Five, and emulated The Rolling Stones, the Who, and other hard rock bands of the era.
By 1968, they had built a substantial local following and were influenced by Marxism, the White Panthers, the Beats and other social-political movements. The MC5 was more radical politically than most of its peers, and otherwise louder and more daring. They were virtually the only band to perform during the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, in Chicago, where police were beating up anti-war protesters.
“Kick Out the Jams” was their most famous song, peaking at No. 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and marking their only appearance on the chart, and opened with an unprintable call to arms: “Kick out the jams mother—-er!” A live album of the same name peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard 200 in 1969, their highest-charting release. They also released the studio albums Back in the USA and High Time before breaking up at the end of 1972.
Kramer would lead various incarnations of the MC5 over the following decades, and perform with Was (Not Was) among other groups. But for a time he sank into the life of what he called “a small-time Detroit criminal.” He was arrested on drug charges in 1975 and sentenced to four years in prison. Jail Guitar Doors is named for a Clash song that refers to his struggles: “Let me tell you ’bout Wayne and his deals of cocaine.”
Survivors include his wife, Margaret Saadi, and son, Francis.
Heart, the rock group started by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson in 1974, will return to the road for the first time in five years this spring on the Royal Flush tour.
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The trek, which will kick off April 20 in Greenville, South Carolina, will feature Cheap Trick as support on most of the North American leg, while Squeeze will open a handful of Heart’s summer European dates. Heart will also join Def Leppard and Journey for three previously announced summer stadium shows in Cleveland, Toronto and Boston and will make an appearance at the New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival on April 28.
“The exceptional talent of the band brings a whole new level of energy to Hearts’s live performance,” Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson said in a joint statement. “I am incredibly proud of the show that our band has crafted and am looking forward to reconnecting with our fans.”
The North American leg will launch on April 20 in Greenville, South Carolina, and conclude on Sept. 22 in Morrison, Colorado. Heart will also head to Europe in late June through mid-July, with Squeeze opening select dates.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on today through Heart’s website. You can see the full list of tour dates below.
Heart 2024 Royal Flush TourApril 20 – Greenville, SC @ Bon Secours Wellness ArenaApril 22 – Savannah, GA @ Enmarket ArenaApril 25 – Hollywood, FL @ Hard Rock Live (in Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood)*April 26 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie ArenaApril 28 – New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (multi-act event)**May 1 – San Antonio, TX @ Frost Bank Center (special guest TBD)May 3 – Thackerville, OK @ Lucas Oil Live at WinStar World Casino and Resort*May 4 – Tulsa, OK @ BOK CenterMay 7 – Indianapolis, IN @ Gainbridge FieldhouseMay 10 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm ArenaMay 11 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum CenterMay 13 – Baltimore, MD @ CFG Bank ArenaMay 15 – Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein CenterMay 17 – Rosemont, IL @ Allstate ArenaMay 18 – Louisville, KY @ KFC Yum! CenterMay 21 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars ArenaMay 23 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints ArenaMay 24 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Hard Rock Live*Jul 30 – Cleveland, OH @ Progressive Field** (with Def Leppard & Journey)Aug 1 – Ottawa, ON @ Canadian Tire CentreAug 2 – Toronto, ON @ Rogers Centre** (with Def Leppard & Journey)Aug 5 – Boston, MA @ Fenway Park** (with Def Leppard & Journey)Aug 7 – Quebec City, QC @ Videotron CentreAug 8 – Montreal, QC @ Bell CentreAug 10 – Albany, NY @ MVP ArenaAug 11 – Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank CenterAug 13 – Cincinnati, OH @ Heritage Bank CenterAug 15 – Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv ForumAug 16 – Hinckley, MN @ Grand Casino Hinckley Amphitheater*Aug 18 – Lincoln, NE @ Pinnacle Bank ArenaAug 21 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel ArenaAug 23 – Charleston, WV @ Charleston ColiseumAug 24 – Knoxville, TN @ Thompson Boling Arena at Food City CenterAug 27 – Norfolk, VA @ Scope ArenaAug 28 – Allentown, PA @ The Great Allentown Fair*Sept 17 – Portland, OR @ Moda CenterSept 20 – West Valley City, UT @ Maverik CenterSept 22 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre (special guest TBD)
Boygenius is going on hiatus. As alluded to by Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus during their Thursday (Feb. 1) acoustic shows in Los Angeles, they are indeed planning to put an indefinite stopper on band activities following a breakthrough year for the supergroup.
Fans who were invited to the band’s duo of back-to-back private concerts at The Smell tweeted that the three indie musicians had said onstage they’d be “going away for the foreseeable future.” A video from the evening also shows Dacus telling the crowd, “This is our last show, and we’re feeling it.”
A representative for Boygenius confirmed to Billboard that the trio will be stepping back, as the group indicated on stage, but offered no further details. The band has not yet posted about the hiatus on social media.
The announcement caps off a sensational year for Baker, Bridgers and Dacus, who originally debuted Boygenius in 2018 with the release of their self-titled EP. The three musicians then returned to their respective solo careers before reuniting in 2023, releasing their first full-length album, The Record, in March followed by a four-track EP, The Rest, in October. The group toured in support of the album throughout much of the year, playing shows and festival appearances across North America and Europe.
Upon its release, The Record scored the band its first entry on the Billboard 200, where it peaked at No. 4 and remained on the chart for a total of 14 weeks. The project also earned Baker, Bridgers and Dacus six nominations at the 2024 Grammys — which they’re expected to attend Sunday (Feb. 4) — including album of the year, best alternative music album and record of the year for single “Not Strong Enough.”
From the beginning, Boygenius has been open about the fact that its latest run would be temporary, given the demands of each member’s solo endeavors. “I think people know this is a rarity and that there’s no guarantee that it’ll continue,” Dacus told Billboard during an interview with the band in April. “Like, we will continue to be Boygenius and be friends, but we also will get back to our own things.”
She added: “I think people have this awareness that to be present with it now is really to be existing in a moment.”
Bruce Springsteen has announced that his mother, Adele, died on Wednesday. She was 98 years old. The 74-year-old rock star shared the news with his followers via Instagram on Thursday (Feb. 1), posting a sweet throwback video of him dancing with his mother to a recording of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” “Adele Springsteen – […]
Whether it’s heavy metal, alternative rock or electronic pop, there’s something from Bring Me the Horizon’s catalog for everyone to enjoy: S-P-I-R-I-T. Let’s hear it.
After announcing on Wednesday (Jan. 31) that the next resident artist at Las Vegas‘ Sphere would be Dead & Company, the Grateful Dead spin-off band revealed the dates for their six-week summer run on Thursday (Feb. 1). The shows dubbed Dead Forever will consist of 18 shows overs six consecutive weeks from May 16 through […]
AC/DC’s “Back in Black” music video keeps on rocking, as the visual reached one billion views on YouTube. It’s the Australian band’s second clip to join the Billion Views club, following their hit “Thunderstruck.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the music video, the group performs the […]
Two decades since forming MGMT as Wesleyan University students, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser haven’t lost their psychedelic puckishness. Despite its grim title, their fifth album, Loss of Life (out Feb. 23), contains some of the duo’s most sincere, hopeful music yet. “Coming out of the pandemic, there was a whole wave of super doom-oriented art and music and apocalyptic shit,” VanWyngarden says of MGMT’s first album since 2018’s Little Dark Age.
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Recorded in 2021 and 2022, Loss of Life is also the act’s Mom + Pop debut (after leaving longtime label Columbia Records) and features “Mother Nature,” MGMT’s first hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart since its 2007 smashes “Time To Pretend” and “Kids.” As VanWyngarden says, “This album is more reflective and existential and sort of philosophical. But at the core, it’s about always going back to [the idea of] love being something that you can depend on — and that is sort of indestructible.”
How did you settle on Mom + Pop as your new label home?Goldwasser: It was after the album was completed. We got to shop the record around – it was the first time we’ve ever really done that. One of the people works at the label went to Wesleyan, where we also went, and her faculty advisor was the same as ours. We bonded of that the first time we met, just talking about weird stuff that we did in college.VanWyngarden: We kind of did, like, label speed dating. Everyone we talked to was super, super cool. It could have been great to go with any of them. In the end, Mom + Pop had this sort of ethos that was at the foundation of their label that we were attracted to and related to. Goldie, as [Mom + Pop founder/owner Michael Goldstone] is affectionately known, had been in the music industry for decades before for major labels and came out of it kind of wanting to do something [at Mom + Pop] that was trying to change things up and be more all about the artists, like in a true sense. So we liked that.
You’ve said that your last two records, 2013’s MGMT and 2018’s Little Dark Age, dealt with the paranoia and anxiety of living through the modern era. What was your headspace when making this one?VanWyngarden: We both turned 40 while making this album, and we wanted to find a way to retain our light-hearted, playful approach to things but to challenge ourselves to have more of a sincere and hopeful message. Coming out of the pandemic, there was a whole wave of super doom-oriented art and music and apocalyptic shit. A common condition for humans for, like, the entire history of humanity is that you feel like the world is ending – and it’s probably because you know you’re gonna die. Mortality is an apocalypse that’s common to every human. It’s sure, it’s certain. This album is more reflective and existential and sort of philosophical. But at the core, it’s about always going back to love being something that you can depend on – and that is sort of indestructible.
You reteamed with Little Dark Age producer Patrick Wimberly and longtime studio collaborator Dave Fridmann. What do they bring to the table?Goldwasser: Those are the human beings that we feel most comfortable existing with in the creative process. We just want to feel like uninhibited and natural in the whole process of creating music. Especially having worked with Dave Fridmann since our first record, we just have this level of understanding and communication with him. I don’t know how we would ever build that up with anybody else.VanWyngarden: Considering how naive and new to everything in the music industry we were when we first met [Dave], he’s almost like a dolphin trainer. Like we were these dolphins that came to his complex and he trained. Everything we know traces back to Dave Fridmann. Patrick’s the same, really. He’s a peer; he’s a producer, but more so in the sense of helping preserve the atmosphere and the vibe.
For Loss of Life, you also widened your creative circle compared to your previous albums. Tell me about that decision and how it impacted the record.Goldwasser: Part of that’s a result of us being less precious about the way that we make music. It had been hard for us at a lot of points in time, wanting to be recognized more as producers ourselves and wanting people to know that we’re responsible for the sounds on the records – maybe we’ve had a chip on our shoulder about that in the past. With time and experience, we’ve learned to let go of some of that. The most important thing is to make good music.
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“Mother Nature” has a cool lineup: Oneohtrix Point Never, Danger Mouse and Nels Cline. It’s also your first charting hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart since “Time To Pretend” and “Kids.”VanWyngarden: I didn’t even know that.
How’d it come together, and how have you been reacting to its success?VanWyngarden: I’ve driven around so much listening to classic rock radio, and I recognize that now, in terms of time having passed, we’re like eligible to be on classic rock stations. Along with ’90s Britpop, there’s a lot of classic rock influence [on “Mother Nature”]. When we were first working out the piano riff at the beginning, I always felt like there was a Supertramp feeling to it. It all really came together very naturally and organically on that song. We had known Brian Burton [Danger Mouse] for a really long time and we were we were working in his studio. He was there giving us advice and his opinion and helping work through sections. Then once we developed the song out and invited Oneohtrix Point Never on, he and Ben did a session where they just went hog wild with guitars and made this sort of shoegaze-y bridge. Then we got the song closer to where it ended up when we were working at Sean Lennon’s studio in September 2022. It was in upstate New York and Nels and Yuka [Honda] live close by, and then Oneohtrix Point Never was up there. There was this smorgasbord of amazing musicians. We had Nels go in and just fool around on the guitar and we were like, “Wow, this is incredible.”
Oneohtrix Point Never worked on five of this album’s tracks. Artists from The Weeknd to Soccer Mommy have been collaborating with him lately. How’d you connect with him? What did he add to Loss of Life?Goldwasser: Andrew met him at a party in New York – and didn’t know who he was at the time. They just ended up having a really cool hang. After that, they hung out again. And then we thought it would be fun to get together with him and see what happened. It turned out we have a lot of the same musical references. We just got along really well. He got where we were going with the record. The way that he works is very curatorial – he mines sounds and has an encyclopedia of sounds that he knows, like, this is how you get this sound. I always get a kick out of seeing people’s different approaches to how they work.
“Time To Pretend” features prominently in Saltburn. How did that synch happen?Goldwasser: We were approached by the filmmakers. I had been a fan of [director Emerald Fennell’s] Promising Young Woman — so I knew it was going to be something a little out of the ordinary.VanWyngarden: I don’t remember exactly when it was brought to us; I don’t think I was paying too close of attention. I was like, “OK, another [person] who wants to use ‘Time To Pretend’… I wish they would use one of our newer songs.” But then I saw Saltburn and I was like, “Oh, this is set in 2007, this totally makes sense.” It’s really great to be kind of passively participating in another cultural phenomenon. I’m impressed that there’s Georges Bataille-level wildness happening in this massive pop cultural film — that’s not very common. To have a song in that is cool, because we like being subversive and irreverent too.
You debuted with Oracular Spectacular almost two decades ago – and played it in full at Just Like Heaven festival last year. How do you look back on that time?Goldwasser: It’s pretty wild how things get put into context, the stories that people tell about things over the years. At the time, we weren’t thinking about how people were going to be writing about it 20 years later. We were young and dumb and somehow we…VanWyngarden: Wait, how are you going to finish that?Goldwasser: …are still here.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
They’re baaaack! Dead & Company is reuniting after wrapping up what was their “final tour” last summer. The group shared in a video on its social media accounts on Wednesday (Jan. 31) that it is heading to Las Vegas for a residency at the Sphere. Over a black screen, white text appears to share the […]
Just three weeks after first teasing Paramore‘s rollicking cover of Talking Heads‘ “Burning Down the House,” the band’s rendition is finally here.
On Wednesday (Jan. 31), A24 Music officially announced Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Stop Making Sense — a tribute album in commemoration of the 40-year anniversary of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense concert film and accompanying soundtrack.
The tribute album’s track list mirrors that of the original LP, with fresh, new takes on the 16 electrifying tracks from a genre-spanning array of artists. The full list of artists featured on the soundtrack includes Paramore, Miley Cyrus, Lorde, The National, Teezo Touchdown, Kevin Abstract, Jean Dawson, girl in red, BADBADNOTGOOD, Blondshell, The Cavemen., Chicano Batman, Money Mark, DJ Tunez, El Mató a un Policía Motorizado, The Linda Lindas and Toro y Moi.
A24 Music’s new compilation specifically celebrates the recent re-release of Stop Making Sense to theaters nationwide. Originally filmed and released in 1984, the Jonathan Demme-helmed concert film chronicles four nights of performances on the band’s 1983 tour in support of their Speaking in Tongues album, which reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200 that year. Back in 1984, the original Stop Making Sense soundtrack hit No. 41 on the Billboard 200; the set has since spent 119 weeks on the ranking, more than any other Talking Heads title.
Stop Making Sense returned to theaters this January in a restored 4K print. A24 acquired the worldwide rights to the film, and under their guidance, the Stop Making Sense re-release set an IMAX record for highest-grossing live event and eclipsed the gross of the film’s original 10-month U.S. theatrical run in weeks. On Jan. 27, A24 launched a new theatrical residency for the film, hosting monthly screenings in major cities — including Chicago, London and New York — as the concert doc approaches the 40-year anniversary of its original premiere (April 24).
Talking Heads have earned eight career entries on the Billboard Hot 100, including their sole top 10 hit, 1983’s “Burning the House Down” (No. 9). On the Billboard 200, the band’s 12 career entries include 1983’s Speaking in Tongues (No. 15), 1985’s Little Creatures (No. 20) and 1988’s Naked (No. 19).
Check out Paramore’s blazing “Burning the House Down” cover — and a sneak peek at their video — below.
