Noted with sadness, John Sinclair has died at the age of 82. He was a major figure in the Detroit music scene when I was in university. The MC5, who he managed, were THE Detroit band at the time. If you want to hear some of the loudest, most intense, and political music ever recorded, check out their first album, Kick Out the Jams. Probably more important, he was a leader in the movement to legalize marijuana, something that still has to fully happen in the US.
Sinclair was arrested in 1969 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession of two joints (this was his third possession charge). This served as the bedrock for his and others to protest. John Lennon and Yoko Ono famously attended a 1971 freedom rally in Ann Arbor in solidarity, which also included Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Seger among 15,000 people. Two days later, Sinclair was freed from jail.
He lived to see marijuana become legal in his home state in 2018 and in several across the country. He also had a hand working in the alternative press, writing for Detroit’s Fifth Estate, DownBeat and founding the Ann Arbor Sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment