As guitar heroes
go, Fred "Sonic" Smith was one of the best, his musical legacy
firmly established by his time spent as one half of the dual guitar
arsenal that fueled the legendary MC5, and later fronting his own
Sonic's Rendezvous Band and collaborating with his wife, Patti
Smith.
In the late '60s and early '70s, the Motor City Five (later
shortened to MC5) defined the Detroit rock sound. Under the guidance
of radical writer John Sinclair, the 5 were dangerous, using guitars
as their weapons of choice in the fight to change the world. The MC5
-- Smith, Rob Tyner on vocals, bassist Michael Davis, drummer Dennis
Thompson, and Wayne Kramer, the other half of the band's guitar tag
team -- created rock and roll that was a confrontational assault on
the status quo.
The Motor City Five ... was a supremely tight and hard-hitting
example of ... Detroit sensibility...Poet and activist John
Sinclair, who wrote about the free jazz of John Coltrane, Sun Ra,
Ornette Colemen, and their cohorts for Downbeat, encouraged the 5's
jazz listening and became their manager. He also enlisted their
services for the revolution; his White Panther party was a Yippie-like
association of radicals and artists whose program called for
"revolution, dope, and fucking in the streets."
The MC5 was born in the early 60s in the blue-collar Detroit suburb,
Lincoln Park. "I'd just moved into the neighborhood...," Wayne
Kramer remembers, "...and everyone was telling me about this
juvenile delinquent who played bongos, even a little guitar. The
'delinquent' turned out to be Fred Smith. ...Fred was a lot louder
than I was. He'd get into a lot more trouble....Fred always thought
of himself as the 'master criminal.'" Smith also made an impression
on fellow Lincoln High School student Dennis Thompson, who has noted
that " Fred struck me as the ultimate rebel ... Wayne Kramer said,
Fred Smith and I started playing guitars together, must have been in
the tenth grade -- in '64 we played in a lot of rival bands. Then we
ended up in the same band together and we met Rob Tyner and Dennis
Thompson and Michael Davis and we all moved away from home together.
We were all getting to be 16, 17. We moved to the beatnik
neighborhood...That's were we met John Sinclair -- the archetypal
beatnik poet. ... John was a little older, a little better educated
than we were, and seemed to be able to relate to everybody. We
decided he should manage the MC5....
The 5 took the influences of British bands like the Who and
Yardbirds, and mixed them up with equal parts Motown, Chuck Berry,
reactionary politics and contemporary jazz, to form an incendiary
blend of maximum volume, feedback and distortion that the band named
"high energy rock."
The Velvets flirted with the effects of distortion and feedback, but
the MC5 based their entire sound on them. They had consciously
assimilated the precepts of free-jazz pioneers like Albert Ayler and
John Coltrane and now sought to place their innovations in a "rock"
setting....
The first night we did "Black to Comm," [the 5's most famous
free-form improvisational number, named for the connection on their
amps] we wrote it down in Kramer's basement, and Fred Smith
discovered that you could turn up the Super-Beatle amp until it
became unbearable, right, and started playing the opening chords to
"Comm" spontaneously and smashed a jar! [Rob Tyner, interview with
John Sinclair, The Ann Arbor Sun, May, 1967]
In time "Black to Comm" became a monumental closing peak, powered by
Tyner's wordless gospel exhortations, the Thompson-Davis rhythmic
blunderbuss and the Kramer-Smith team's increasingly sophisticated
guitar tag. ["Edge of the Switchblade, To Hell, and Back, with the
MC5," Ralph Heibutski, DISCoveries, 12/95]
When the band began, the arrangement between the two guitar players
was fairly traditional:
When we started out me and Fred used to say I was the lead player,
and I played all the solos. And Fred Smith was a genius rhythm
guitar player...But after a while, Fred's technique developed so
well that we didn't draw the distinction anymore. He was a
one-of-a-kind original. Later, the more we started writing, and when
he started writing his own songs and guitar breaks, he had his own
whole musical vocabulary. Wayne Kramer, interview in Addicted to
Noise, Issue 1.02]
It was with the 5 that Smith acquired his nickname. Smith chose the
appellation after seeing it on a guitar. As Kramer remembered, "He
returned the guitar but kept the name because he liked the way it
sounded on him." [Addicted to Noise, Issue 1.02]
On stage at the Grande Ballroom, where they served as the house
band, the 5 combined musical flash with visual flamboyance.
Showmanship was as essential an ingredient as the music. Dressed in
satin pants and sequined jackets, Smith and Kramer, flanking Tyner,
would twirl, machine gun their guitars, and drop to their knees.
Fred in his bent-shouldered stance would blast riffs on his
trademark Mosrite guitar, the force
barely channeled through Marshall amps, ending songs with his fist
raised high above his head.
Wayne did a lot of dancing and gyrating...Rob would do the
pony...Wayne and Fred got into choreography, back-bends. ....Fred
did a lot of dramatic, bravado moves. He'd bend his knees and lean
back... [Michael Davis, Freakout USA , Vol.1, No.1, 1993]
I'll never forget the first time I saw the MC5 perform... in 1968 at
the Grande Ballroom...As Tyner squirmed and sang, behind him were
two sparkle-sequined guitarists who traded-off lead in a fervid
fusillade of fiery notes and converged the role of rhythm into
flesh-tingling licks of backup vibration: Wayne Kramer on Fender
guitar and Fred Smith on Mosrite guitar was how the band described
the arrangement. [Ken Kelley, Addicted to Noise, Issue 1.02]
As noted by Malcolm Russell in The Rough Guide to Rock (Penguin
Books, 1996):
At first, their antics made the MC5 simply too hot to handle, but in
late 1968 they signed to Elektra.. The result was the incredible
live album, Kick Out The Jams , which captured the band at their
most powerful and confrontational. Recorded on their home turf, the
album kicked off with a radical rap from Brother J. C. Crawford and
then exploded into some of the most demented high-octane rock'n'roll
ever made. Also included was an example of the band's wrecking crew
approach to rock/free-jazz fusion, a razed, white noise version of
Sun Ra's Starship.
The band went on to record two more albums, the more commercial Back
In The USA , which included the Smith-penned classic "Shakin'
Street" and High Times, an attempt to return to their earlier style,
but again with only limited success.
High Times was notable not just for the music, but because for the
first time the 5 produced the record themselves, and assigned each
song individual, rather than group, songwriting credits. It also
marked Fred Smith's maturity as a songwriter: Smith gets credit for
four of the records eight tracks. Dennis Thompson, whose
contribution was the song "Gotta Keep Movin" has explained that he
wrote the song with Fred "to show off Fred's abilities to play
thirty-second notes. He perfected that stuff, and we didn't have a
vehicle for him to play that way." Thompson also salutes Smith's
handiwork on "Skunk (Sonically Speaking)", which set a trio of
free-form horns against a hammering, effective guitar riff. The song
still excites Thompson "because of all the players involved, the big
band feel - and Fred came up with an excellent production." [DISCoveries,
12/95]
The 5 were on the front lines of the 60s youth rebellion and often
paid dearly for those beliefs. That defiance made the band a target
for the police in both Detroit and Ann Arbor:
Poet-MC5 manager John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were
brutally assaulted, beaten, Maced and arrested by members of the
National Security Police, the Oakland County Sheriff's Department,
and the Michigan State Police while performing at a teen-club in
Oakland last Tuesday, July 23rd. [John Sinclair, Guitar Army, Street
Writings/Prison Writings , Douglas Book Corp.,1972]
That defiance also earned the band FBI surveillance (they were cited
at a Senate hearing by Spiro Agnew as being part of a communist
conspiracy to corrupt the youth of America), and cost them two
recording contracts.
They [the record industry] despised us because of an anarchistic
behavior and militant political stance. We came out of Detroit with
our big Marshall amplifiers and spangly clothes, and we leaped
around like some unholy version of James Brown on acid, playing free
jazz and screaming "Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers" at a time when
they were just learning to market three days of peace and love...The
last thing anybody wanted was a gun-toting, high volume rock band
from Detroit. Wayne Kramer, interview with Nina Antonia, Record
Collector, September, 1996]
Eventually the band crumbled under the weight of their heartfelt, if
naive, revolutionary ambitions (as well as drug and personal
problems). Putting it into perspective, Fred later explained:
The extent of our relation to politics was the high-energy intensity
of it.. And when we were 18 or 19, we wanted to take over the world.
We wanted the world to be the way we saw it. We didn't relate to
convention. [Fred "Sonic" Smith, Bomp! , November, 1977]
When the 5 splintered, Smith picked up the pieces -- first with
Ascension, which included fellow MC5 members Dennis Thompson and
Michael Davis; then, beginning in 1974, putting in time as guitarist
for the Scott Morgan Group (Morgan was the former frontman for the
Detroit R & B-influenced Rationals). By 1976, the Smith/Morgan
combination had evolved into Sonic's Rendezvous Band, with the
addition of Gary Rasmussen, of the Sinclair-managed Up on bass and
Scott Asheton of the Stooges on drums. The brief reign of this
Detroit supergroup included only one recording session and only one
"official" release, the double-sided single "City Slang."
Much like the MC5, the band's vocals were mixed below the dual
guitars and feedback, with Smith's solos propelling the sound. The
band focused on guitar dazzle that was decidedly out of place amidst
the prevailing punk ethic of minimalism. As a review in Bomp!
reported in 1977, "[Smith] may be the last of the guitar ...barons
for whom proponents of the new wave will rally to support. ..Sonic's
gut-tearing [guitar] interludes are a refreshing alternative. He
emerged recently from an Ann Arbor stage with bloodied fingers."
The band opened for Patti Smith on a Detroit date in 1976, where the
soon-to-be couple was introduced by Lenny Kaye.
It was March 9, 1976, and we met in front of the radiator at that
hot dog place, Lafayette Coney Island, in Detroit. The Sonic
Rendezvous Band was opening for us, but I didn't know anything about
him. Lenny introduced me to this guy. I heard that his name was
Smith, and my name is Smith. We just looked at each other and I was
completely taken by him. I had no idea who he was or anything about
him until afterwards when Lenny told me. Lenny introduced him and
said "He's one of the great guitar players." I said, "Perhaps you'll
want to play with us tonight." And he said, "Maybe so." Then he left
and I asked Lenny if he was really good, and Lenny said, "the best."
So I was playing with him that night, and I had a lot of bravado in
those days. I didn't have respect for anybody. But I totally
submitted to his reign. He came on the stage and started playing,
and after a while I just set my guitar down and let it feed back. I
just let him take over because I felt I had met my match, that I had
met the better man. [Patti Smith, interview in Mojo, August 1996]
Fred backed Iggy Pop on his abbreviated 1978 summer European tour,
with Sonic's Rendezvous Band serving as Pop's opening act. And by
1978, Fred and Patti had become a couple. Both "Dancing Barefoot"
and "Frederick" on Patti's 1979 album Wave were inspired by Sonic.
The couple in married in 1980, and choose to direct their creative
talents into raising a family. They settled in the suburbs outside
the Motor City, leading private lives that included only a few
public appearances. Clinton Heylin's From the Velvets to the
Voivoids contains this Lenny Kaye description of one of the couple's
rare performances at a June 1980 benefit for Detroit's symphony
orchestra at the Masonic Temple in Detroit:
The first part was Patti reading poems from her book....Fred "Sonic"
[Smith] and Patti came out and they lowered a screen, and on the
screen they showed a film of a Jackson Pollock painting. they turned
a guitar on to feedback, leaned it up against the amp, and they
played -- Fred on saxophone and Patti on clarinet ... it was real,
actual improvisatory jamming, and as the soundtrack to this Jackson
Pollock film was very, very heavy...
The couple also performed at an AIDS benefit held in 1991 at Ann
Arbor's Nectarine Ballroom where they were joined by Lenny Kaye, Jay
Dee Daughtery, Scott Morgan, Gray Rasmussen, and Scott Asheton. And
in 1992, Sonic participated in a reunion of remaining MC5 members at
a memorial for Rob Tyner's family (Rather eerily, Tyner died of a
heart attack in November 1991; three years to the month before the
same fate claimed Smith).
In 1988, Fred and Patti released Dream of Life, a collaborative
effort despite being marketed only under Patti's name. "... I look
at Dream of Life as [Fred's] gift to me... I told him we should call
it by both of our names but he wouldn't," Patti related in Mojo
[August, 1996] And in another interview she noted: Fred crafted that
whole album. He wrote all the music. A lot of the concept of the
songs were his. ....I think he did a beautiful job but it was just
perhaps a time when people weren't that interested .....I still
think Dream of Life will find its time and people will see the
compassion and breadth of Fred as a man and musician through that
album... [Patti Smith, interview in Addicted To Noise, Issue 2.06,
June, 1996]
The pair also contributed a song, the ethereal "It Takes Time", to
the soundtrack for Wim Wender's 1990 film Until The End Of The
World.
Fred died on November 5, 1994. In honor of her husband, Patti
erected a memorial at the Old Mariner's Church in Detroit, where the
couple was married. There are actually 2 monuments on the church.
One is on the church bell tower facing Detroit proper; the other is
just over the rear doors on the river side.
Fred and Patti were working on new material and planning a return to
recording at the time of his death. Fred had also been teaching
Patti to play guitar. Her newest album Gone Again , was named by
Fred and contains two songs co-written by the couple, as well as
several meditations by Patti on the loss of her husband.
"The way Fred was, was why the MC5 turned out to be such an enormous
enigma; it made people look at themselves," said Michael Davis at he
time of Fred's death. "He made us all reach deeper and give our
best." ["Edge of the Switchblade, To Hell, and Back, with the MC5,"
Ralph Heibutski, DISCoveries, 12/95] |