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Carson Interview 1 Cass Corridor Documentation Project Oral History Project Interviewee: David A. Carson Relationship to Cass Corridor: Detroit music historian, deejay Interviewer: Jared Natzke Date of Interview: April 7, 2011 Location: Purdy-Kresge Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI (by phone) Natzke: This is Jared Natzke. I’m interviewing Mr. David Carson on April 7, 2011. He is the author of a few books about Detroit rock history: Grit, Noise, and Revolution is about Detroit rock and roll and Rockin’ [Down] the Dial is his earlier book about rock deejays in Detroit. So David, could you tell me a little bit about your background, about where you grew up? Carson: Sure. I was born in the city, in the city of Detroit, over on the east side, over by Chryslers, and I kind of got moved to suburban Royal Oak as a child. But I kept ties with the east side. My grandmother continued to live over there in the flat that we had lived in. I always had ties to that part of town. [I] grew up in Royal Oak, went to Helen Keller Junior High School, Dondero High School out there.
Transcript
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Carson Interview 1

Cass Corridor Documentation Project

Oral History Project

Interviewee: David A. Carson

Relationship to Cass Corridor: Detroit music historian, deejay

Interviewer: Jared Natzke

Date of Interview: April 7, 2011

Location: Purdy-Kresge Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI (by phone)

Natzke: This is Jared Natzke. I’m interviewing Mr. David Carson on April 7, 2011. He is the

author of a few books about Detroit rock history: Grit, Noise, and Revolution is about Detroit

rock and roll and Rockin’ [Down] the Dial is his earlier book about rock deejays in Detroit. So

David, could you tell me a little bit about your background, about where you grew up?

Carson: Sure. I was born in the city, in the city of Detroit, over on the east side, over by

Chryslers, and I kind of got moved to suburban Royal Oak as a child. But I kept ties with the east

side. My grandmother continued to live over there in the flat that we had lived in. I always had

ties to that part of town. [I] grew up in Royal Oak, went to Helen Keller Junior High School,

Dondero High School out there.

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Natzke: So you eventually got into radio. When you were growing up were there certain deejays

that you listened to a lot, that you looked up to, that you kind of wanted to emulate?

Carson: Well, Detroit was always a really great radio town and it’s had some terrific stations

and personalities, people who were on before I was listening to them whose reputations I was

aware of. People like Ed McKenzie, who I had sort of flickering memories of from his television

show. In the middle 1950s he had been the original “Jack the Bellboy.” He was the first big disc

jockey to be followed by teenagers because he did a lot of rebellious things on the air, and that

type of thing. Later on there were people like Mickey Shorr, who was a bigger than life, very

flamboyant guy on the radio. And of course Robin Seymour, you want to give Robin credit

because he was probably one of the very first of the white deejays to program R&B records,

which morphed into what was starting to be called “rock and roll” in 1954-55, that era. Then

Mickey Shorr, who was on WJBK and then WXYZ, and was a big top showman kind of thing,

did a lot of controversial things, drew a lot of attention to himself. Huge reputation. Some of the

other big people, other folks that my era would remember are Bud Davies from the early days of

CKLW radio and television, Joel Sebastian, Lee Alan, these were the big names in the early

1960s. “Lee Alan on the Horn,” he was another guy who knew how to get people listening to his

radio show. Tom Clay, who was on WJBK in the late ‘50s and later at several other stations in

the area, he sort of brought a more confidential tone to Top Forty radio rather than the “Hi guys

and gals!” He was more speaking to the other person across the dial and that was something you

noticed. He really communicated well, really sold the music. Joel Sebastian, Lee Alan kind of

picked up on that and it’s the kind of thing where if they were playing a slow rock and roll

ballad, rather than introduce it in a big way they would get very mellow on the air and would be

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introducing that record as if they were tuned in to what it was all about and communicating that

to you. It would be very interesting.

So radio went on like that through the ‘60s. We had a station, WKMH, that changed

formats at the very end of 1963 and became WKNR, “Keener Radio,” and it had a shorter play

list and a livelier, faster moving sound. They became the big station in the mid-‘60s. That’s

probably when station image replaced individual personalities as the more dominant thing.

Rather than somebody saying, “Yeah I listen to Lee Alan” somebody would probably say, “I

listen to Keener [WKNR].” “Keener” may have some great deejays on it, which it did, like Dick

Purtan, Bob Green, but the station itself had a more cohesive sound twenty-four hours a day.

Kids said these were the rock stations but in reality they were pop music stations that played the

songs that were the best sellers. So you had the Motown hits and you had the Beatles and the

Rolling Stones all being played alongside Petula Clark or Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra. If they

had hit records that were at the Top Ten, it was all played together. So it was sort of a

galvanizing effect and everybody was aware of all of the music. So that’s kind of where radio

was up until 1968.

Natzke: That was my impression from your books, that especially AM radio became much more

polished and formulaic going on. I know some of the FM stations had started to come along such

as WABX, they kind of tried to mix things up and they were very different than the radio –

Carson: Well there was nowhere to go but up on FM in those days. Nobody listened to FM radio

(laughs) back –

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Carson Interview 4

Natzke: You mentioned it was mostly elevator music, that’s what was being played –

Carson: Correct! Because people listening to it were either listening in doctors offices, in the

elevators, or they were elderly people who wanted soft, quiet, Montovani type music and that

type of thing. In fact, if you looked at a rating sheet of the stations being rated for listenership in

Detroit in 1965 there was one FM station that even showed up at the bottom (laughs). You could

put all the rest of them together and they barely added up to a couple of percent of listeners. So

stations didn’t even stay on the air, you could do anything on them. They were doing what AM

radio had done years earlier. They might have a jazz show on for a couple of hours and then a

classical music show and then a discussion program, just sort of a hodgepodge mishmash of

things.

So in ‘68 a station called WABX, which had been on the air in town for about seven or

eight years, had tried their hand at classical and played pop music, light jazz, they did have an

excellent jazz show in the evening with a guy named Jim Rockwell who was well known. But

aside from that they were going nowhere. Believe it or not, they didn’t even sign on the air until

nine o’clock in the morning.

Natzke: (laughs) Yeah, nobody was listening.

Carson: Yeah (laughs). Why bother competing with the other stations? So that was the attitude.

They started fooling around, playing some of the music that you couldn’t hear on the AM Top

Forty stations. Because now you had people, not only the Beatles but other artists, putting out

albums and putting more effort into the albums. Before that you had Bobby Rydell having a hit

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record and then the record label would rush out a Bobby Rydell album that would indeed include

the hit record and twelve or eleven other cover versions: him doing a Bobby Vinton song and a

Dion song (laughs). So there wasn’t much into it. But now you had people producing albums

with original material or material that they had put a lot of thought into. But this music wasn’t

available. You couldn’t hear it anywhere except over on your friend’s hi-fi or something. So

WABX started to program a little of this and it was a mix of blues and folk music and some of

the more mature rock on a show called “Troubadour.” And the response was terrific so “why

don’t we play some more?” I had done a little work over there myself, a little fill-in work, so I

remember what the atmosphere was like at that time at and it was just ripe for a change. I think it

was around February ‘68 they went full blast with that and there was this whole maturing

audience of people who had grown up listening to the AM Top Forty rock stations that now were

embracing this. “Wow, what is this music and all these album cuts?” And there didn’t have to be

a jingle and a commercial between every record. There was still a big mass audience for AM Top

Forty radio. It was fast, it was exciting, they played the hits. But now there was something to

serve a different audience, and that’s where that came along. And WABX, besides the music,

they started to reflect more of the interests of that growing Woodstock era, sort of the community

of people, the political views and such.

Natzke: One of my favorite stories that you related in Grit, Noise, and Revolution was when

WABX got an advance copy of the [Beatles] “White Album” before anyone had heard it and

were playing it live on the air. They received a call from the record company from England to

stop immediately. I thought that was very indicative of what kind of station WABX was.

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Carson: Yeah, that was an exciting time for them because before that, as one of my old friends

who was working there at the time said, it was always one of the big AMs that got maybe an

advance acetate of a new [Rolling] Stones single or something but here was an album they had

their hands on. And they really promoted the heck out of it; people were pouring out of the clubs

and everything else to get out to their cars to see, “What is it they’re going to have tonight?” And

yeah, it was the “White Album” by the Beatles. It was a very exciting thing. But they would do

things there, like the deejays could be creative and they would play sets and they might have a

set where they would play three or four songs by a particular artist or three or four or five songs

on a particular theme, whether it had to do with war or something else. It was a very creative

period.

Natzke: Yeah, it seems like they gave them, the deejays, much more freedom than other stations.

Carson: It didn’t last too long (laughs), but it was kind of a golden era there.

Natzke: It was fun while it lasted. So getting back to your background a little bit, why did you

want to get into radio in the first place? What was it about radio that appealed to you?

Carson: Well, I was just one of those kids who when I got my first transistor radio I just was

hooked. I was listening to some of my favorite disc jockeys at night, Joel Sebastian primarily, on

WXYZ and I said “that’s something I would like to do.” I guess you have a feeling for

something, an affinity for it. From then on that’s what I set my sights on. I was lucky that we had

an actual FM radio station in Royal Oak tied to the school system. I was able to do some

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Carson Interview 7

programming on that. In fact, I did a show on that as early as 1965 that was kind of a harbinger

of the later things they were doing at WABX. I was playing kind of a mix of some of the early

Bob Dylan records, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, some early Van

Morrison when he was with was with Them. It was an interesting time that I got to do that. Yeah,

so I just thought that it was a lot of fun, who wouldn’t like it? And might be a great way to meet

some girls too, (laughs) you know? Just the idea of being able to sit in a room behind a

microphone and talk to people and try to put yourself in a state of mind that somebody’s actually

listening to what you’re saying (laughs), which I’m sure they always are not. But that’s what you

sort of tell yourself you’re doing and it was very appealing.

Natzke: So you actually went on to work at a country station for a while too, WEXL –

Carson: Yeah, I started on FM radio. Believe it or not I used to announce the “Middle East Hour

(laughs) in Detroit” at an FM station. A fellow named Faisal Arabu was the host of this program

and he would come in and bring in the things and it was kind of like old time radio. He went in

the live studio that we had to the right of the control room I was in and I would cue up his theme

music and it was sort of very Arabic sounding. “Time for Detroit’s Middle East Hour, with your

host Faisal Arabu!” “Thank you Dave,” and then he would do the show. At that time there was

no inclination on my part of what the Middle East was, I thought he must be Egyptian or

something (laughs). The thing about it, he was a terrific guy and one day he came in and said

“Dave, starting this week let’s drop the ‘Faisal.’ Introduce me as ‘Frank’ Arabu because I’m

thinking about running for city council,” (laughs). I don’t know, maybe I should “Google” Frank

Arabu to see whatever happened to him. Yeah, then I worked at some other little stations in

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outlying areas and eventually worked for WEXL, which was AM radio. I was doing the all night

show there playing country music. Of course, people would say, “That’s great, but when are you

going to get on ‘Keener’ [WKNR]? (laughs)” or, “When are you going to get on one of these

other stations?” Eventually I left Detroit. I worked in Grand Rapids and Louisville, Kentucky. I

worked in Flint [MI], but always kept close ties with my hometown.

Natzke: What caused you to eventually leave the radio industry?

Carson: I think I was just one of those people who got into it at such a young age, when I was

fifteen (laughs), so by the time I was twenty-five things had changed a bit and I guess the prism I

was looking at the world through had changed. So I just made some changes. I never really said,

“Hey, I’m leaving forever,” but it sort of turned out that way. All these years later it’s kind of

strange, as things go full-circle, I work for a publication called Radio World that serves the radio

industry today.

Natzke: What was the process like for writing your books? Both Rockin’ Down the Dial and

Grit, Noise, and Revolution, it’s clear from the notes in the books that you conducted a lot of

interviews for these. So if you could just talk a little bit about what that was like –

Carson: Well, they were similar. At first I decided – I was originally working on a little article,

I thought, about Detroit radio and then it just expanded from there. I had written about thirty

pages, or maybe I had thought about a book and just sat down and I sort of just emptied out

everything, all my inner knowledge (laughs). In fact, I was saying to my wife, “Jeez, I don’t

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Carson Interview 9

think I’m going anywhere” and she said, “Well now you have to call people! (laughs) You have

to do some research! Surely you can expand –.” And I said, “Well yeah, that makes sense. Let

me try that.” I simply started, and this was before Google, I just started tracking down some of

my radio heroes and people that I had remembered. I think the first person I called, for whatever

reason, was Paul Winter, who people might remember as being affiliated with Channel 56 [PBS

WTVS] many years later. But Paul, Saul Wineman was his real name, but on the radio he was

always Paul Winter and he was a great performer on WXYZ from about 1951 until the mid ‘60s

and later to talk radio and other things. I called him, did an interview and talked, and from there I

just started tracking down people, just conducting these interviews, starting to put it together. I

was trying to get old photographs, crosschecking dates and information, verifying things, and

that’s kind of how it went. It was a labor of love, I definitely spent several years on that project.

Natzke: Were most of the people you talked to pretty willing to work with you? Especially

people that were in the bands, when you were writing Grit, Noise, and Revolution.

Carson: Well on the second book, besides interviews I also did a lot of research. There was

more information also. Again, there was a lot that I didn’t know, that I learned through

referencing other information and then tracking down people and talking. Yeah, most people

were happy to talk. Like any time you’re interviewing people, every now and then you get one of

those people: “So was it exciting? Can you tell me what it was like?” “Well, it was exciting. Yes,

it was nice,” (laughs). So, that happens and it’s you’re job as an interviewer to try and draw out

more information from them. Some of the people were terrific and had very encyclopedic

memories of things that happened. It was great fun. I interviewed all the three surviving

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members of the MC5 and they were all terrific, terrific interviews: Wayne Kramer, Michael

Davis, and Dennis Thompson. Jem Targal from Third Power was a great interview. I had nice

memories of some of the rock concerts they played at. Some people you had to prod or you

would wind up having to feed them some hints and they would go, “Really? I was there? I didn’t

remember?” (laughs). “It’s all a blur to me. If you say so!” That was like putting together a

mosaic, you know? There had been a number of articles written in magazines here and there, an

article on the MC5. There had been some articles on Bob Seger, an article here and there on Russ

Gibb, who owned the Grande Ballroom. So you had a few of these things out there but no one

had ever really put it together. So that’s kind of what I was doing: taking these things and trying

to timeline it all out and create a narrative. I didn’t want to just do an encyclopedia of Detroit

music. I could’ve done something like that: “Here’s a chapter on the MC5, here’s a chapter on

Bob Seger,” but I thought, “That’s boring,” (laughs). Here I was trying to show, “Here’s where

the MC5 enter the story and now we’re leaving them because we’re going over to talk about

John Sinclair coming into the picture. Now we’re going to bring the MC5 back and here we’re

completely moving away from that and going over to touch on this other thing that was going

on.” So trying to put all that together, make it flow as one story.

Originally, when I did the first treatment for the book, I was going to start off with the

story of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, where that late ‘60s era sort of began. I had

virtually no Motown in the book because there was so much Motown available, so many books

on Motown. The publisher, University of Michigan Press, they read it and they wanted to do it

but they had some people weigh in on it and they said, “You can’t put out a book on Detroit

music that doesn’t touch on Motown!” (laughs). Finally I said, “Ok, I’ll work it in, I’ll find a way

to do that.” Then I decided, “Well, I’ll put one advance chapter where I talk about the early days

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of Detroit music and the birth of Motown, this and that.” Well, from that it grew into – I got into

some really juicy things; I think I wound up putting in three or four earlier chapters, all the way

back to John Lee Hooker. It was pretty much a chapter on John Lee Hooker and blues in the ‘40s

in Detroit then moving up through Fortune Records, the local R&B record labels, and the birth of

Motown. I tried to put in some different information that wasn’t available, and again, within the

context of everything else that was going on. Besides Motown, there were other entrepreneurial

record companies and record producers running around Detroit at that time. I think when people

read that they kind of get to see what was going on when Berry Gordy started the company

[Motown]; who his competition was, what it was that he was doing that made him more

successful than the others. Then I brought it up to introducing Mitch Ryder and the Detroit

Wheels and then on to the era of the teen nightclubs: The Hideout, the Crow’s Nest, and all those

places as live music sort of started to – not totally replace, but be the preference over the old disc

jockey record hop type thing. And then on to the Grande Ballroom and the more sophisticated

things. It was strictly music, the big rock bands, and it became a school process. You were

schooled in playing the small teen dances and you moved up to a little better places and for these

bands if they could get to the Grande Ballroom or the Eastown Theater, those were the big

prestigious gigs.

Natzke: I thought that was really interesting, what you talked about in Grit, Noise, and

Revolution about this progression, how it kind of progressed from black R&B bands to white

R&B and then rock and roll sort of started coming out of both of those and then it started

changing very rapidly and –

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Carson: Well, the whole era was an exciting era. When you really stop and think about from the

time that Elvis Presley released “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1956 and the Beatles released “Sergeant

Pepper” eleven years later, look at the span, look at all that went on in eleven short years. And

again, you bring that down to the local level. If you read the book and see the kind of rock and

roll bands, the Thunder Rocks and some of these early bands with the saxophones, the

Royaltones, that were playing in the late ‘50s at teen dances, from there it’s just a short hop,

seven, eight, nine years and you’re with the Amboy Dukes and the MC5 and Bob Seger System

and the music has just progressed in such a way. Even thirty years later it doesn’t equal the

impact of the changes that went on in that era. I think that’s what made it so exciting, you could

really chart it out. It’s the same thing with the radio earlier, with the exception of the music they

were playing, you could take a radio station today and you could play a recording of that station,

an “air check” as they say, from fifteen, twenty years ago and it really doesn’t sound any

different, you know, the presentation of the station. In the old days you could listen to a radio air

check of Tom Clay in 1958 and then listen to a recording of a station in 1965 and, “Boy, I can

tell how things have progressed in the production on the station and the presentation, the way it’s

done.” It was the same with the music. That made it very exciting and made it an excellent story

to tell with a beginning, a middle, and an end because that era, for both radio and music, did sort

of come to an end in the early ‘70s.

Natzke: In Grit, Noise, and Revolution you talk a lot about some of the Detroit bands that didn’t

really make it big on the national stage. Actually, it seems like the majority of the Detroit bands

didn’t really manage to break out. Are there any of them that you would like to highlight briefly

that you think were really talented but never quite made it?

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Carson: Well, there were just so many but again, when we’re talking about these groups, if you

were from Detroit they were a big deal. Besides the teen clubs, besides the Grande Ballroom, the

Eastown Theater, all that, this was an era between 1969-71 or ’72 where there were also just an

unending number of outdoor rock concerts all over southeastern Michigan. There was a great

need for music, for live music, so there were so many bands, and bands could make money by

playing the gigs in the teen clubs, the Grande, and all these outdoor concerts. The big lineup, the

superstar lineup of Michigan talent would’ve included the MC5 of course, Bob Seger with his

Bob Seger System, a band called the Frost, Ted Nugent’s group the Amboy Dukes, a band called

SRC. Those were probably the big five headliners. There were also the Rationals who were very

popular, out of Ann Arbor.

Natzke: Yeah, you said they were wildly popular for a while.

Carson: Wildly popular, although they came to an end a little earlier than that but they had some

hit records. They were just a great group and they were promoted in a most professional way by

a guy named Jeep Holland who was a producer and a booking agent. He knew how to do things,

promotion on a small scale but in a big-time way. And of course there were the Stooges. So these

groups were just big and if you had a festival and these were your headliners, to people in

southeastern Michigan you might as well have been saying, “Well, we’re having the Beatles, the

Rolling Stones, Cream,” (laughs). You could take that same lineup to an arena in Kansas City

and they’d be going, “Who are these people?” for the most part. It was really strange. There were

other bands, Savage Grace, the Third Power, the Frut, just too many to mention. Unfortunately,

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they just, for various reasons, could not break out. Bob Seger was on a small local record label.

He had like three or four consecutive top ten records in Detroit (laughs).

Natzke: Yeah, he just could not make it on the national –

Carson: Yeah, but those records just wouldn’t make it out of Michigan. They didn’t have the

business finesse and the promotional means to break him out. Frost signed a contract with

Vanguard Records, which was a national label, primarily more folk music oriented, but they just

didn’t seem to have the faith in them or something. They would stock the records in Michigan

and their albums were selling great, they had hit singles, but they would go out on the road and

they would be in San Francisco and there wouldn’t be any records. So that’s a problem that they

had, that a lot of the acts had. Those would be just great groups and people who came to Detroit

to play hated to have to follow these people because they were good groups, the MC5 especially.

But you really would not want to have to follow any of those groups onstage. There were a lot of

national acts who maybe, for whatever reason, they had a better record label, better promotion,

they had a hit record, their album was selling better, so they came to town and they were the top-

billed act at the Grande Ballroom and they would be supported by one or two of these groups.

Well, once the MC5 would come up and burn down the stage practically, “Now let’s see what

you got!” That resulted in their whole thing with the “Kick out the Jams,” when they would stand

on the awnings and tell these bands, “Hey, you’re lame, man! You gotta kick out the jams or get

off the stage!” Detroit was a tough audience because we had such great talent and great bands, it

was very demanding. People worked hard for their money, they worked in the factories. If they

went somewhere and you were paid to perform, you’d better deliver.

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Natzke: So did you have a few favorites that you really enjoyed going to see back then that were

big in the Detroit scene?

Carson: Personally, I liked the Rationals. They had some records out that I liked. I liked the

group and I liked the way that they were promoted. I had been a Bob Seger fan, his early records:

“East Side Story,” “Heavy Music,” and all that. Those were favorites. Ted Nugent and the

Ambory Dukes did manage to come up with one big national hit with “Journey to the Center of

the Mind,” which I thought was a great record, it surely deserved to be a top twenty hit in

Billboard, which it did. Third Power was another band that was kind of a power trio that really

worked hard and put on a great show. It’s hard to find anybody to say anything bad about.

Natzke: In Grit, Noise, and Revolution you talk at length about the MC5. They’re widely

regarded as being revolutionary in both their politics and their music. So what was it about their

sound and their personas that made them so different from the bands that had come before?

Carson: They were just very loud (laughs) and they played very hard rock music. They just

really attacked it and they had some great equipment. I played a little bit in a band as a teenager,

you know? We would just plug into our amplifiers, stick the microphone into the same amp as

the bass guitar (laughs) and play like that. They started getting into, with the help of somebody

that was serving as a manager, they got into some of the really great new amplifiers and sound

systems. So they were able to play at an earsplitting level, which they did. They really put on a

show, they had a great front man in Rob Tyner, and they really mixed – they were a

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contemporary rock band but they also paid tribute to the past in that they did a lot onstage. They

did some routines (laughs) onstage but at the same time they weren’t just an oldies band or

something. But they were something to look at and they had different outfits that were colorful.

They kind of came out of the tradition of James Brown, they really loved that stuff. They would

go to see James Brown perform and that’s kind of what was on their minds, “We want to get out

onstage and wow these people.” They would do backbends and knee drops and Rob Tyner would

get down on the floor and spin around (laughs) and do God knows what. People felt, man, when

they went to see “The Five” that they were really getting their money’s worth and like, “These

guys are really working hard, they’re not trying to slip by,” or anything like that. And they were

good musicians; they played loud and unleashed.

Their first album, which strangely was a live album, nobody put out a live album for their

first release. I guess the record label they signed with at the time, Electra, somehow agreed that

they were best when they were live and they made this decision to record them at the Grande

Ballroom and put that out. Technically, it was not the best recording for sure (laughs) and there

were mistakes in there and screw-ups. The band themselves, Wayne Kramer even told me, they

were under the impression that they going to get another shot. If they weren’t happy they were

going to get another chance to record it again. The label said, “No, we’re happy with this. This is

what’s going out.” But it was just wildly, crazy, unleashed, kinetic energy on there and people

went wild. And it sold. It did well, I think it got up into the top forty albums in Billboard, and it

kind of built their reputation: they are this tremendous live band and here they’re captured on

disk. Now, they shot themselves in the foot and that became their only release for Electra. It’s

kind of famously told how they wound up on another label and the next time they went

completely the opposite direction with an album that was too structured and maybe a little too

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thin. Although, that album did much better in Europe than the first one did. But that was it, that’s

what built their reputation. They were a great live band and then when that album came out it

was like, “Well it’s captured here,” with “Kick out the Jams” and all those songs on there.

Everybody would say, “When you go to see them you’re going to really see a show!”

After their affiliation with John Sinclair, who was a political activist in Detroit at the time

and was their manager for a while, that added to the allure of “The Five.” Now there was this

political side to them. Which personally to them it was like, “Well, this is part of showbiz, this is

part of the band’s image.” They personally weren’t out to change the world. I think they were on

board with it, they weren’t phonies or fakes or anything, but their main goal was to be a great

rock and roll band. Then all the political stuff got in the way and caused them to have problems,

caused them to lose their record contract, and caused them to get appearances cancelled and the

things that ultimately hurt you career-wise. But, at the time, it made for very exciting rock and

roll.

Natzke: Yeah, sounds like it.

Carson: In other words, somebody could say, “Yeah, what a mess. God, the MC5, what a train

wreck of a band, of a career!” But also you could say, “Yeah man, but at the time, wasn’t it

great?”

Natzke: It was really fun to watch, yeah (laughs).

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Carson: Fun to watch, and who does everybody remember from that era when they want to talk

about Detroit and Detroit rock in that era? “The Five,” man. That was the band.

Natzke: They definitely made an impression.

Carson: Yeah, exactly.

Natzke: So, the MC5 and the Stooges they’re often called precursors to punk. The term

“proto-punk” gets thrown around a lot talking about them. You may have heard about the band

Death; their so-called “lost” recordings have been getting some attention lately and they were

kind of very early punk-sounding. So in your opinion what role do you think the Detroit rock

scene played in the development of punk, even though the so-called punk bands didn’t

eventually come out of Detroit?

Carson: I think in the book I related a story, and it was something I picked up from a magazine

article from a British publication. Rob Tyner, who was the lead singer for the Five, had been in

England, invited over or something, he was writing an article, something for the [New] Musical

Express publication over there and that’s when he started picking up this information that some

of these new rock bands, punk bands, were pointing to the MC5 as early inspiration. I think it’s

just – if you maybe go on websites for British, European bands, punk bands, you see a lot

references to the Five and to the Stooges and it’s pretty obvious when you look what they did.

That’s what you would say about the Five, is that they had that “Detroit attitude.” It came

through in pictures and I think what happened in the ‘80s was just the next step from that. Things

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had smoothed out a bit, right, in the rest of the ‘70s so I think those bands were reaching back a

few years and looking at records and looking at what was going on. I think those were the bands,

without a doubt, that inspired them.

Natzke: I like the sound of that, that Detroit gave punk its attitude (laughs).

Carson: Yeah, for sure. I think Dave Marsh, the writer, was one of the first people who even

came up with that term.

Natzke: Of course, yeah, in the magazine Creem they coined the term “punk rock.”

Carson: Yeah, bunch of punks! (laughs) I think I was called a punk one time –

Natzke: So why do you think that the MC5, the Stooges, this band Death, why are they getting

so much recognition and buzz now? Do you think this is praise that’s overdue for these bands,

that they’re finally getting recognized?

Carson: I think this kind of thing goes in waves, you know? I think there’s been times a few

years ago when the Five, if you were putting them on a graph as far as recognizability or

referencing them, or whatever, you’ll see times when they were pretty high. Then it goes down

for a bit and smoothes out then all of a sudden there’s a lot of press, a lot of activity; somebody

new comes along and starts talking about them. Maybe there’s a release of a new compilation of

material that’s out. Now, if they weren’t good, if what they were doing wasn’t really good, it

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wouldn’t last. I think that the material is there, and people can go back and listen to it and they

can read about the Stooges, read about the Five. That’s why a new generation, or every four

years, every six, seven, eight years, ten years, somebody comes along and goes, “Yeah, I’ve

discovered the MC5!” And also it’s probably kind of a cool thing when you latch on to

somebody from the past and go, “Yeah, I’m hip to what they were doing way back then and I see

the value in it, I see what effect it’s had on society and on music over the years.” I just think that

kind of thing will continue. Some old rock bands, other people further back such as Chuck Berry

or whatever, they don’t go away. Everybody always knows about Chuck Berry but there’s

probably times when he seems to be a little bit more in the news or you read more about him,

and it’s the same thing with this. Although, this affects more directly this punk rock thing.

Natzke: Getting back to talking about the Grande Ballroom a little bit, for a while that seemed to

be, like, the center of it all: the rock, the counterculture movement, psychedelic art, and all sorts

of the politics going around in that era too. So how did Russ Gibb and John Sinclair, how did

they make the Ballroom into such a cultural epicenter for Detroit?

Carson: Well, firstly they were sort of first (laughs) with the idea. Russ Gibb is sort of an

enterprising, entrepreneurial person. I think probably everybody by now has heard the story.

Very briefly, he had a friend that he grew up with in the Detroit area who he went and just

visited, a trip out in San Francisco about the time that the Fillmore Ballroom was getting started

out there. They had the strobe lights going and all the posters and stuff and he said, “Hey, that

would be a cool thing in Detroit! Detroit’s the kind of place this could –” So he came back with

that in mind. He had sort of rented halls and put on deejay dances, that kind of thing, in the past

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so he had some experience as a promoter. But this was like a whole new thing. So he was

hunting around for a place and he finally found the Grande Ballroom, which had been a big

Tommy Dorsey kind of big band ballroom. I think it was a warehouse for old mattresses or

something for a few years before that. And [Gibb] made a deal. Russ did not own it, someone

else owned it; he sort of leased it from that person. It was his father-in-law, I believe. But that

was it, and [Gibb] said, “This is just a wonderful atmosphere in here and this will be the kind of

place,” I don’t know if he said that at the time but it quickly became that kind of place where

people came and stood in front of the stage and listened. As opposed to what was going on

before that where mainly the deejay kind of record hops, you’d have the disc jockey come out

and play records, maybe bring a band along and they’d play a twenty-minute set and then they’d

play some more records, give a few records away and say goodnight. Then you had some of

these teen clubs that had maybe a couple of bands; a little more live music but the atmosphere

was like a VFW hall, kind of vapid. So here you had, number one, a larger facility so you could

get more people into it, which is exciting when you put more people together, a better stage,

better sound, better atmosphere. It’s not like it took off overnight but it gradually – they opened

up at the end of October of 1966 – it really was just local talent for almost a year before he was

really able to start booking some national acts also. When people got down there and the smell of

incense, the dark lighting, and the kind of Moorish architecture, it was like another world. You

went up the stairs and you got up there, “Wow,” it just made it a very cool place. And there was

nothing else like it. So, first on the scene, they kind of beat everybody to that kind of thing. It

didn’t really last all that long. When we talk about it people think, “Oh yeah, the Grande was

there for years.” In reality, it was only really in consistent operation from late ‘66 until about

mid-‘69, and that’s when he closed it, opened some hybrid Grande Riviera Theater sort of thing,

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then reopened the Grande for a month or so, and that was it. It was really all over at the Grande

Ballroom in late ‘69 but during those years the Who played there, Janis Joplin, Cream, the

biggest acts in rock; the MC5 were the house band, opened for many of these people. All the

other great Detroit bands would really compete and when they got there they really wanted to

play great because they wanted to be asked back, they wanted to get back at the Grande. It was

just the right place at the right time.

Oh, and I’m sorry, you asked me about John Sinclair. John contributed ideas to Russ

Gibb because he was more in tune with kids. The way Russ told it to me, it was kind of up to that

point – and this was what I remember about the early and mid ‘60s – kids back then were kind

of, well you had your frats and you had the greasers (laughs). But this was like, the people who

were coming to the Grande, were like a different type of clientele. So Sinclair was able to kind of

hip him to the new scene and what was going on and what bands might be good to book, what

other things they could do in there to make the place cool. That’s what they would do. It just had

a life of its own. Pretty soon, they did a lot of handbills and some posters, but they really didn’t

need to do too much to get people to be coming down there after ‘67-’68.

Natzke: So even though the Ballroom was such an important venue, a lot of the Detroit rock

scene, it seems, was shaped by stuff that was going on in the Cass Corridor neighborhood. So

how did the nature of the art and the music scenes in the Corridor shape Detroit rock and roll?

Carson: Well, boy, that’s an interesting question there. Being a Detroiter and being a person

who grew up out in the suburbs, to me that area was an area I visited often, went by, went

through, went to parties down there, I don’t recall referring to it in those days as “Cass Corridor.”

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It was usually like, “Yeah, there’s a party going on down around Wayne [State]. There’s

something off of Cass [Ave.], down by Cass,” such and such. That was such an interesting area;

it certainly wasn’t the garden spot, it didn’t have a lot of gloss. We all looked at it as kind of a

place where anything went. You would see this cool housing, you could find artsy people but

you could also find winos on the street and lower income whites and blacks. It was just a mosaic,

there’s that word again. I don’t know if it was mosaic-y, it was just so mixed up from block to

block. I do know that John Sinclair and also some people who played in rock bands and people

who wanted to be around music and around art gravitated there. Maybe they lived – one of the

artists, Gary Grimshaw, who created a lot of the posters for the Grande, and he came from

Lincoln Park [MI]. He loved to take trips down to the Cass Corridor area with his buddies, go

down there and drive around, visit some friends, go to some parties. It was like a whole different

world from what he experienced in Lincoln Park and he made a point of eventually moving

down there. He had an apartment down on Prentis [St]. The MC5, they wanted to get down there

finally, they were living down on West Canfield [St]. John Sinclair and the Detroit Artists’

Workshop were set up over by the John Lodge [Expressway]. So it was this crazy area; you

could find whatever. If you wanted to view it as a hotbed for revolutionary politics, it was that. If

you wanted to look at it as, “Oh yeah, that’s kind of a seedy part of town,” it had some of that.

You also had the Masonic Temple down there to go to concerts at. I think people said it was a

creative area and there were a lot of writers and musicians down there. As far as making a direct

link to the Detroit rock scene, I don’t know. I can say the MC5 lived in the area, there were a few

other people, but the rock scene in the late ‘60s was more of a state of mind, or whatever, that

came out of various parts of the metropolitan area.

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Natzke: Was there any music scene, or scenes, that were specific to the Cass Corridor area? Or

was it kind of tied to the rest of Detroit scene? Was there any kind of jazz or folk, avant-garde

stuff going on?

Carson: Yeah, there were hangouts down there. You’d just go down to Verne’s Café and Bar on

Forest [Ave], between Cass [Ave] and Woodward [Ave], and it was kind of, depending on who

was there, a pseudo-beatnik scene. Or you might run into somebody from the Communist Party

hanging out down there, giving out pamphlets (laughs), that kind of thing. I’m trying to think

what other – the old Cobb’s Corner Bar down there. But as far as – there were things spread out.

The Chessmate Club was definitely out of that area; that was some folk music club out on

Livernois [Ave]. Baker’s Keyboard [Lounge] jazz club. Things were all over Detroit. I think

that’s probably why Creem magazine, when they came out, they were successful because they

were pulling all that together into one place into a publication, and that’s how they developed a

readership. They also covered politics too. The Fifth Estate newspaper, of course, predated

Creem and that was a little bit more Cass Corridor-focused because there was more political

coverage in that publication. Of course, there were music concerts around Wayne State

[University] at Tartar Field and everything so that definitely was going on. But I would say that

the area was viewed as an inspirational place. You were going to visit friends down there, you

were going to talk politics, and listen to music, listen to jazz, listen to music maybe you weren’t

going to be listening to (laughs) with your friends out in Royal Oak or someplace. Then there

were a lot of people who wanted to live down there just to be a part of that scene. I think that’s

why the members of the MC5 lived down there and they wanted to sample that atmosphere and

be close to Sinclair and the Detroit Artists’ Workshop and all that. So it definitely had an impact

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on music of that era and on the revolutionary scene, the whole thing. But as far as itself, making

a direct link to all the music, it would be a little bit of a stretch on that.

Natzke: So from many of the stories in Grit, Noise, and Revolution, it seems that the Detroit

Police Department was especially hostile to the rock scene and counterculture movement. Maybe

you could talk a little bit about that?

Carson: Yeah, well, hey, the Detroit Police Department, right. For the faint of heart, looking out

your rearview mirror and seeing a Detroit Police Car behind you, that’s one thing you didn’t

want to get involved with in those days. There was a lot of animosity there and they definitely

were coming down hard on that perceived left-wing scene, and John Sinclair. They used people

to infiltrate the rock scene and to try to get dirt on the movers and shakers within it, like John

Sinclair and others. They were targeted for sure and people in the rock music scene definitely felt

like, “We don’t have any fans in the Detroit Police Department.” They had files, the old Detroit

Red Squad had files on Sinclair and other people. It was not a pleasant time. Of course, coming

up on the riots in Detroit in ‘67 there, it really brought out a lot of inadequacies. There were

hardly any African-American officers on the police force in a city like Detroit. So there was a lot

of bigotry and a lot of meanness. (Laughs) I hope nobody’s listening from the Detroit Police

Department right now. But yeah, that was part of the times and conservative views: “We’re

going to take care of any of these troublemakers, rabble-rousers, these left-wing hippies that are

trying to lead our youth down a path of revolution.” That was kind of the view, that these were

“commies” and “pinkos” and that they were going to be blowing things up and who knows what

they’re trying to accomplish so, “We need to keep a close eye on them.” Of course the MC5,

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with their close affiliation with John Sinclair, received a lot of that attention also. But then again,

all the other bands that played alongside the MC5 and were around that scene also received

attention.

Natzke: Something I thought was interesting that you’ve written about was this disconnect

between the white counterculture and the black civil rights movement, which were both kind of

going on in Detroit at the time. Especially between the Black Panthers and John Sinclair and the

MC5’s affiliation with their White Panther Party. It seems like they were kind of regarded as a

joke by the Black Panthers, even though they were professing this solidarity with them. It seems

like the Black Panthers looked at them as not having a clue about what was really going on.

Carson: Yeah, that’s what it kind of seemed like. Some of it, like these are “Sunday hippies” or

“weekend hippies” or “weekend activists.” “They don’t know what’s going on, they don’t speak

for us.” A lot of it was, I’m not knocking the era, but also I was there in those days and there

were all the politics and there was, of course, the anti-Vietnam protesting going on. But also at

times it got into the ridiculous (laughs) with Sinclair and his group with their manifesto of the

things that they stood for. Sometimes I think that maybe they did themselves a little more harm

because people would read some of that stuff and go, “Well this is silly! (laughs) We’re talking

about serious issues here and you’re talking about blah, blah, blah.” So there was some of that.

John Sinclair, you have to remember, he was a fine writer. He was a jazz reviewer. He was a

terrific promoter. People would say he was the “P.T. Barnum of the Revolution.” He was a great

composer of press releases. He knew how to write stuff that people would want to read and

would get people excited and would also be entertaining. To this day, he does that. So I’m not

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taking anything away from him but I think some people who maybe were on the harder side of

the line, the more militant groups, might have said, “Oh yeah, that’s a little goofy.” At the same

time, I think he used some of that lighter rhetoric of his to bring people in and to get them to see

the bigger message.

Natzke: What effects, if any, do you think the riots of 1967 had on the Detroit rock scene in

general? Did the beginning of the “white flight” from Detroit, did that contribute to the breakup

of the Detroit rock and roll scene? Or do you think it was still mostly drugs and bands breaking

up and things like that?

Carson: Well, the end of the era came in ‘71 and ’72. So, if anything, the riots of ’67 may have

bolstered things and sort of added to the revolutionary flavor of the times, along with the

Vietnam War and everything. So here you had the civil rights movement really brought home

locally. Now, we’re just not seeing footage of Birmingham, Alabama, police hosing down

innocent black people –

Natzke: Right, now it was here, it was in your backyard.

Carson: It’s right here in Detroit. “It’s us against the Detroit Police Department. It’s us against

the system. Look, it’s innocent people here. Things are happening.” If anything, that really added

a lot of the grit to the story for sure and things were really heating up. So really, things peaked in

this era in about 1969, that’s when the big multi-act rock concerts, indoor and outdoor, really

came on all through ’69 and ’70. But you’re right, the era started to wind down, for a number of

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reasons, in ’71-’72: that change in business, a change in the way business was done; terrible use

of drugs, the introduction of heroin into the scene; change in the drinking age, which changed

who went to what clubs. All of a sudden there were fewer venues for bands to play in and the

outdoor rock concerts faded away. That was the end of that era, a lot of things happened there.

Most things that can be defined as eras are defined as eras because they have an identifiable

beginning and end. Although, as I wrote in the book, it doesn’t mean that it all ended at twelve

midnight on one particular day, you know (laughs). Things definitely – you could sense the shift

there, the interest in music. And bands breaking up; all these popular Detroit bands were

finished: the Amboy Dukes, the MC5, and the Frost, the SRC, they all collapsed, just fell apart

from within due to personality clashes, drug use, bad business, bad management. So they were

all gone by ’72. That era just kind of ended with the closing of the Grande Ballroom, the closing

of the Eastown Theater, all those teen clubs and you could feel it.

After that, some of the other bands came on but it was different. They were part of

another scene. Also, as I wrote in the book, by the time five or six years went by, by the time you

got to 1980, 1981, ’82, it was kind of easy to look back and visualize that 1965-1972 era and go,

“Yeah, that was the late ‘60s.” It went to ’72 but that was the late ‘60s. McGovern lost the

election there, the war continued on a bit, and it was just the end of that. And times change. All

of a sudden disco’s in and California rock with the Eagles and Jackson Browne, I mean it’s just a

different world. So a lot of people will say, “Well, that Detroit scene, that was a sham. That

never really went anywhere.” And I say they’re wrong. For people in Michigan, it existed; it

really took place during that era. Yeah, so a lot of them didn’t become big national stars, so

what? They were good. It doesn’t mean they couldn’t have. It really was an exciting time and I

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just can’t think of, since then, any era that you can point to like that with a combination of music

and politics and social issues all sort of coming together.

Natzke: So how would you characterize the “Detroit sound?” Or is that even a thing you can do?

Is there even a cohesive style to Detroit rock? From my impression of what people think of when

they think of Detroit rock, they think of hard-driving, in-your-face, aggressive, even

experimental music.

Carson: I guess those are the terms you would use: high energy, aggressive, loud rock and roll.

Of those bands back then, each one was a little bit different. MC5 did their thing and then SRC

had maybe a little more psychedelic edge to them, the Amboy Dukes had their own sound. But

they were all loud and they all were showmen. They tried to put on a good show. And sure, were

some of them inspired by more blues and R&B? Yeah, the MC5 would be. It’s tough, they’re

generalities. But if somebody’s going to say, “What was Detroit rock like? What marks that?”

you’d be saying, “Loud, high energy, aggressive music played well.”

Natzke: What would you say is the legacy of Detroit rock and roll? There continue to be bands

coming out of Detroit. Some even make it big, such as the White Stripes. Do you see the

development of bands like the White Stripes anchored in this historical legacy of Detroit rock or

is it just something else entirely?

Carson: What I think is so interesting, along the way, every time there’s an article in a magazine

or a newspaper about something having to do with music in Detroit, whether it’s Eminem or

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here’s an article about the White Stripes or something, in that article, invariably (laughs), there

will always be a paragraph that references that late ‘60s era in Detroit. Like, “From the city that

gave you Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and the MC5 and Bob Seger” and all of that. They

always will mention that. So that is the legacy, that always lives on: those groups, that era. It ties

it together. In interviews with Jack White, or whatever, he surely mentions that connection to the

past. I mean, you can’t live on the past and it doesn’t mean anybody that comes out, “Hey, we’re

the latest Detroit band. We’re from the same city that gave you Bob Seger and the MC5.” But

that’s the legacy. If that means, “We expect a little more out of this group, we expect them to

play a little better and play a little longer and put a little more heart and soul into it,” that could

be. But I like to think that every now and then – and there have been a lot of great groups after

this era that came along: the Rockets, the Gories, just a slew of bands. You like to think, “Well,

there’s someone else coming around the corner.” It’s been a while. Eminem’s still out there, Jack

White’s left town, but I like to think something will be coming up and it’ll be the next great

Detroit rock band and there’ll be a story about them and they’ll invariably be talking about how

this person was inspired or comes from the same heritage of Mitch Ryder and the MC5 and all

that. That’s the legacy.

Natzke: Well thank you so much for talking to me today.

Carson: Hey, I appreciate it very much Jared.


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