February 17, 2012 – Michael Davis (68) – MC5 – was born June 5th 1943. Michael Davis (68) American bassist; he became the bassist for Detroit’s radical proto-punk band the MC5 in 1964. After dropping out of the fine arts program at Wayne State University, Davis became the bassist for the MC5 in 1964, replacing original bassist Pat Burrows when singer Rob Tyner and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided that they liked Davis’s style and wanted him in the band. He played on the band’s three original albums, including their debut Kick Out the Jams, and remained in the group until 1972. Their first album “Kick Out the Jams” was released in 1969 and became an international hit.
He stayed with them during their most challenging and incendiary period, and in later years appeared with a rebuilt version of the group called DKT/MC5, while also studying for a fine arts degree and promoting a music education program.
Before becoming embroiled in the MC5’s tumultuous hard-rock sound, Davis had been more inclined towards folk music. A native of Detroit, he was studying to be a painter at Wayne State University in the city in the early 1960s when he went to hear Bob Dylan play at the Masonic Temple.
“He was just playing guitar sitting on a stool all by himself, and it took hold of my life,” Davis recalled. “I decided that’s what I wanted to do – I wanted to be a musician.”
He met the future MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, then still in high school, and they played Beatles songs together. He also got to know the band’s vocalist, Rob Tyner, and when their bassist, Pat Burrows, quit, Davis was asked to take his place. At the same time Dennis Thompson came in on drums.
At this early stage the MC5 – short for Motor City 5 – were a covers band, blasting out versions of songs by the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks and the Yardbirds, and Davis would recall this as his favorite period with them. “The sound was just raw and rough and exciting,” he said. “Later, when we were trying to be like jazz musicians … I really didn’t even like that stuff at all.”
Nonetheless, it was the radical, free-form elements that the group began to build into their music that secured their place in history, and they were encouraged to become increasingly radical, both musically and lyrically, by the DJ and jazz critic John Sinclair, who became the MC5’s manager in 1967 (though he was far too alternative to use the unhip term “manager”).
Kramer and co-guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith were both heavily influenced by the free jazz effusions of Sun Ra, Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, which Sinclair nurtured enthusiastically. He was also connected with radical political groups including the White Panthers and Fifth Estate, and headed the Trans Love Energies organisation, which aimed to promote “an assalt on the culture by any means necessary”.
In 1968, MC5 signed to Elektra, who realized that the band’s pulverizing live shows could not be bettered in the studio, and duly released the live album Kick Out the Jams (1969), recorded at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom. Bristling with classics such as the title track and the insurrectionary Motor City Is Burning, the disc charged into the Billboard Hot 100, but the Detroit-based department store chain Hudson’s refused to stock the album because of its obscene lyrics. The band responded by taking out newspaper ads saying “Fuck Hudson’s”, which prompted Elektra to end their contract.
Picked up by Atlantic, they made Back in the USA (1970) with producer Jon Landau, who later managed Bruce Springsteen. It was another powerful batch of songs, though Landau opted for a more conservative sound and the disc lacked the energy of its predecessor. It proved uncommercial too, reaching only 137 in the US. The following year, by which time the band had fallen out with Sinclair, they released their third and last album, High Time. Sales remained feeble, but the group were happy that this time they had had artistic control, which had given them some freedom to experiment.
In February 1972, Davis was ejected from the band during a British tour because of his drug use. As he described it, he was “put out of the car on the highway so that I had to find my way back home and start things over for myself”. The MC5 itself lasted only until its farewell gig at the Grande Ballroom on New Year’s Eve 1972.
Sometime in the mid-1970s, Davis spent time in Kentucky’s Lexington Federal Prison on a drug charge, where he was unexpectedly reunited with Wayne Kramer. Upon his release from prison, he joined the Ann Arbor-based art noise band Destroy All Monsters at the urging of friend Ron Asheton of The Stooges. Meanwhile Davis had returned to his first love, painting, when he was jailed and spent time studying art at several colleges in California and the American north-west. His painting White Panther/Big World adorned the sleeve of the 2009 album MC5: The Very Best of MC5, and in 2011 his work appeared in the Punk and Beyond exhibition at the Signal Gallery, London, among exhibits by numerous current and former punk rockers.
Davis spent seven years with Destroy All Monsters, penning the underground punk hits “Nobody Knows”, “Meet the Creeper”, “Little Boyfriend”, “Rocking The Cradle” and “Fast City” among others. The band recorded and released on Cherry Red Records, toured the U.K., and then broke up. Their music touched on elements of punk rock, psychedelic rock, heavy metal and noise rock with a heavy dose of performance art. They described their music as “anti-rock.” Destroy All Monsters never found mainstream success, but earned some notoriety due to members of notable rock groups The Stooges and MC5 who joined the group in various reincarnations.
Although Destroy All Monsters never recorded a proper album, Sonic Youth singer/guitarist Thurston Moore released a three compact disc compilation of the group’s music in 1994.
Davis also played with a number of bands, including Ascension with Smith, the LA-based Empty Set, and in the 1990s Rich Hopkins & the Luminarios and Blood Orange, based in Tucson, Arizona, where Davis had made his home.
In the spring of 2003, Davis reunited with fellow surviving MC5 members Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson to play a show at London’s 100 Club as part of a promotion for an MC5 inspired line of apparel for Levi Strauss Vintage Clothing. This spawned a 200 city world tour and a trip back into the studio to write new songs. Later he co-founded the group DKT-MC5 with former MC5 members Wayne Kramer on guitar and Dennis Thompson on drums, hence their band name.
In 2011, one of his paintings titled “Black To Comm Sk8r Boys” appeared as the cover art for the Easy Action Records multi-media audio/DVD release from the 2009 sold- out performance by British rock superstars Primal Scream and the reunited surviving members of the MC5 at the Royal Festival Hall.
Following a serious motorcycle crash on a Los Angeles freeway in May 2006, Davis along with his wife Angela Davis, launched a non-profit organization called Music Is Revolution Foundation, dedicated to supporting music education programs in public schools.
Michael Davis was 68 years old when he died on 17 February 2012 from liver failure.
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