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It’s been a wild ride from long-haired guitar revolutionary to punk-rock elder statesman, but Wayne Kramer has managed to come through it all with his sense of humor -- and his ferocious chops – still intact. “Brother Wayne” first burst upon the national rock scene in the late 1960s as one-fifth of the MC5, Detroit’s legendary radical rock ensemble. Though the band’s high-energy mixture of Chuck Berry and John Coltrane met with limited commercial success (of their three albums, 1969’s Kick Out the Jams was the only one to make the Top 40 charts), their music and attitude profoundly influenced everyone from '70s punks like the New York Dolls and the Ramones, to '90s rockers like Mudhoney and Monster Magnet.
Sadly, drug problems ripped the MC5 apart in 1972. Wayne spent the next few years battling his own demons, and wound up doing two years in the penitentiary for dealing cocaine. Upon his release, he formed Gang War with erstwhile New York Doll Johnny Thunders. When that band collapsed after only one tour, Wayne signed on to play guitar with Detroit homeboys Was (Not Was). After an extended hiatus from the music biz, Wayne finally resurfaced in 1995, recording The Hard Stuff with members of Bad Religion, Clawhammer, Rancid and the Melvins. Released on punk imprint Epitaph, the record proved that Wayne’s singular vision and mind-blowing guitar excursions were even more relevant in the '90s than twenty-five years before.
Determined to make up for lost time, Wayne has released four albums in the last five years, including the amp-frying live classic LLMF. Recorded exclusively for MUSICBLITZ, “Crawling Outta The Jungle” sets a nightmarish vision of New Orleans to a claustrophobic electro-rock soundtrack. “I originally wrote the song for Chris Vrenna, the drummer from Nine Inch Nails,” Wayne says. “He was telling me these horror stories about what it was like to be stuck in New Orleans with Nine Inch Nails, so I put this little scenario together, kind of a cartoonish take on this poor guy imprisoned in New Orleans with this ‘evil master.’ I took a little poetic license here and there!”
Though the throbbing, atmospheric track represents something of a sonic departure, Wayne attests that it’s merely the natural result of an unquenchable desire to create.
“I just try to make the most beautiful music I can with the tools that I have available,” he says. “If I’ve got a band, I’ll use a band; if I’ve got a hard drive I’ll use a hard drive. They’re all variations on circular saws, power drills, hammers. They’re all tools, and I’m trying to build a masterpiece. I’m committed to making sounds that I think sound cool – and if I think it sounds cool, then I have faith that somebody else out there will think so, too!”
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