New Detroit venues showcased Michigan's important bands
The teen clubs that were the lifeblood of the young Michigan bands were usually housed in buildings that had been constructed for other purposes such as movie theaters, VFW halls, armories, and even a former funeral home. The most unusual looking of these teen clubs was The Mummp, located in the Northland Center shopping mall in Southfield, a northern suburb of Detroit.
The geodesic domed structure had originally been home to the Northland Playhouse, a 1,550-seat theater that hosted productions starring some of the big names in the entertainment industry including Mae West, Caesar Romero, and Red Buttons. When the theater closed in the mid-1960s, Detroit jeweler Hy Weinstein decided to rent it and turn it into a teen music venue.
Weinstein got the unusual name from his daughter who said the structure looked like a “mump,” her term for a pimple. He added an extra ‘m’, and The Mummp opened in December 10, 1966. Like all of the teen clubs, it was non-alcoholic and catered to young people from 16 to 21.
The Mummp was an immediate success, and it featured Michigan’s top bands: Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, Bob Seger & The Last Heard, the Scot Richard Case, Tim Tam & The Turn-Ons, the Woolies, the Rationals, the Jagged Edge, and the Pleasure Seekers. The Amboy Dukes, featuring guitarist Ted Nugent, played regularly at the club, and Nugent and lead singer John Drake were often dinner guests at the Weinstein home.
Ted Nugent was born in Detroit in 1948. He started playing guitar at nine and formed his first band, called the Royal High Boys, while in grade school. In high school, he met John Drake and they formed The Lourds. In 1964, the Lourds won a big Battle of the Bands in Detroit, besting 60 other groups. Unfortunately, Nugent had to move to Chicago later that summer when he father’s work was transferred there.
Nugent first formed the Amboy Dukes while in Chicago. He took the name from a defunct Detroit R&B band because he thought it sounded cool. Nugent has said that he knew nothing of the street gang from New Jersey whose name was made famous in the title of a 1950’s novel by Irving Shulman.
Following his graduation from high school, Nugent returned to Detroit and put together a new lineup of Amboy Dukes that contained Drake, rhythm guitarist Steve Farmer, drummer Dave Palmer, Rick Lober on bass, and Bill White on keyboards.
After playing regularly at The Mummp and other teen clubs, the Amboy Dukes were considered one of Detroit’s top bands. They signed with Mainstream Records and recorded their debut album, “The Amboy Dukes”, in just one night. It reached # 183 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart in 1968.
Their scalding cover of Van Morrison and Them’s version of “Baby Please Don’t Go” was issued as a single in early 1968, and its propulsive beat and howling guitars raised the bar for Motor City rock and roll. It was a big hit in Michigan and managed to reach # 106 on the Billboard Bubbling Under singles chart.
The Amboy Dukes’ original material was composed by Nugent and Steve Farmer. It was an unusual pairing in that Farmer was involved in the drug scene and Nugent claimed he had never smoked a joint and didn’t even drink. Nugent was also seemingly naïve and apparently did not realize that the pipe collection on the cover of the band’s second album might have had something to do with smoking an illegal substance, or that the title song, “Journey To The Center Of Your Mind,” might have been referring to a drug-induced trip.
The Amboy Dukes’ lineup had changed for the recording of their second album. Andy Solomon was now on keyboards and Greg Arama on bass, but by the time that the “Journey To The Center Of Your Mind” single was racing up the charts, the Mummp was closed.
The club was the victim of the emerging teen drug scene. The Northland Corporation, fearing bad publicity, decided to no longer allow Hy Weinstein to rent the geodesic dome. In the meantime, “Journey To The Center Of The Mind” helped define the psychedelic era as it reached # 16 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1968.
Things started to go downhill for the Amboy Dukes from that point on. The band’s follow-up single, “You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire”, failed to make the Hot 100, and Nugent soon fired lead singer John Drake over drug issues. After the band’s third album, “Migration”, was released, Nugent also fired Steve Farmer, his key songwriting partner. The band was renamed Ted Nugent and The Amboy Dukes as they limped into the new decade.
Michigan’s greatest and most famous rock and roll venue of the 1960s was Detroit’s Grande Ballroom. Russ Gibb was an unlikely rock and roll hero in 1966. He was a school teacher, already in his mid-thirties, with short hair and glasses. Gibb liked to make money, however, and he had been promoting dances at rented union hall with a WKNR DJ.
It was a trip to San Francisco to visit a friend that changed everything for Russ Gibb. His friend had passes to the new rock venue that Bill Graham had just opened at the Fillmore Auditorium, and it opened Gibb’s eyes to a new possibility. He was very impressed by the musical vibe, the posters, and light show at the Fillmore, and Gibb thought that the concept would work in Detroit.
After he returned to Detroit, Gibb found a facility similar to the Fillmore in the Grande, an old, abandoned big band ballroom located in a tough neighborhood on Grand River Avenue. Searching for local talent, Gibb turned to local activist and writer John Sinclair who recommended a young band called the MC5.
Looking to further emulate the San Francisco scene, Gibb asked MC5 singer Rob Tyner if he knew anyone who could produce colorful poster-style promotions. Tyner introduced him to artist Gary Grimshaw who created the poster promoting the MC5’s first show at the Grande on October 7, 1966.
The MC5 began in Lincoln Park, Michigan, when Wayne Kramer and Fred Smith started playing guitars together in junior high. Eventually, they put a band together, that included Rob Tyner on vocals, that they called the Motor City Five. They were able to convince an older neighborhood friend, who was acting as their manager, to take out a bank loan to buy $3,000 Vox Super Beatle amplifiers from England that enabled the MC5 to become the loudest band around.
When Kramer, Smith, and Tyner wanted to move into some jazz-influenced improvisation instead of just covering Chuck Berry, James Brown, and the Rolling Stones, the original bassist and drummer left and were replaced by Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson.
John Sinclair was a poet, writer, and the counterculture leader of the Detroit Artists Workshop, later renamed Trans-Love Energies Unlimited. Sinclair was the one who set up a meeting between the MC5 and Russ Gibb that resulted in Gibb offering the MC5 the opportunity to be the Grande’s house band. The catch was that he wouldn’t be able to pay them for a while. The MC5 accepted the offer because they were able to rehearse in the same place they would be performing. Not long after, the band asked Sinclair to be their manager.
By early 1968, the MC5 had recorded two singles on small Detroit labels but neither had attracted much attention outside the Motor City. In the meantime, the Grande had become a very successful operation that was regularly booking national acts like the Who, Cream, the Byrds, and Big Brother & The Holding Company.
As the Grande’s house band, the MC5 began to enjoy popularity on a much larger scale, and they took pride in overpowering some of the national acts. They also and heckled other bands that they thought were underperforming by shouting “kick out the jams” from the audience. It wasn’t long before Wayne Kramer and Rob Tyner turned “Kick Out The Jams” into a song that would be the rallying cry for the MC5 and Detroit rock and roll.
Before it was recorded, however, Sinclair and the band decided to participate in a music festival in Chicago’s Lincoln Park during the Democratic Convention of 1968. Because of the rumors of possible violence, the MC5 was the only band that showed up. They only played four or five songs before agitators in the audience started a disturbance and the Chicago police moved in and started clubbing the crowd.
Shortly thereafter, Sinclair invited Danny Fields of Elektra Records to the Grande to see the MC5. Impressed by the show, Fields also checked out The Stooges in Ann Arbor the following day on the recommendation of Wayne Kramer. Elektra ended up signing both bands.
It was decided that the MC5’s debut album on Elektra would be recorded live at the Grande Ballroom. Remote recording equipment was flown in, and the MC5 recorded the shows on October 30th and 31st that would become their “Kick Out The Jams” album.
One day after the recordings, Sinclair announced a new political division called the White Panther Party. The MC5 was designated the White Panther’s revolutionary band, ready to wage a total assault of the culture by any means necessary.
The “Kick Out The Jams” album was released in February 1969. It caused quite a stir because of Tyner’s shout of “Kick out the jams motherfuckers!” at the beginning of the song. Elektra became the first major label to include the f-bomb in the album’s grooves and also the first to include the word in the liner notes written by John Sinclair.
The “Kick Out The Jams” single, however, was recorded with the words “brothers and sisters” so it could be played on Top 40 radio stations. The single only reached # 82 on the Hot 100, but the album did much better, peaking at # 30 on the Billboard Top 200 LP chart.
The rest of the year seemed mired in controversy with some record store clerks arrested for selling an obscene album. When Hudson’s department store in Detroit refused to stock the record, the MC5 retaliated by putting an ad in an underground paper saying “Fuck Hudson’s.”
Elektra Records’ logo was also included in the MC5 ad without Elektra’s permission. The company was furious and when Hudson’s threatened to stop stocking all of Elektra’s records, the company re-released the album with “brothers and sisters” substituted for “motherfuckers” and also removed Sinclair’s liner notes. When Sinclair flew to New York to confront Elektra about the changes, the MC5 were abruptly released from their recording contract.
With John Sinclair facing 10 years in jail for his third marijuana conviction, the band signed with Atlantic Records in late 1969. Working with producer Jon Landau, the MC5 recorded a basic rock and roll album called “Back In The U.S.A.” The album was a sales disappointment, however, and both singles released from the album failed to chart.
As the decade came to a close, the MC5 found themselves tarnished by all of the radial political activity swirling around them, and it had ended up hurting their reputation with much of the record-buying public.
The rock festival movement in Michigan had started in Detroit back in the spring of 1967 when John Sinclair and Trans-Love Energies produced its first major event, a “love-in” at the Belle Isle Island Park in the Detroit River. Featuring the MC5 and other Michigan bands, it attracted over 6,000 people before the Detroit police moved in to disperse the crowd after the Outlaws motorcycle gang started causing trouble.
It was followed by the Southfield Pop Festival in July that featured Bob Seger & The Last Heard, the Rationals, and the Scot Richard Case. The number of festivals expanded in 1968 with the first Saugatuck Pop Festival, the Oakland Pop Festival, Detroit’s Dialogue ’68, and the Kalamazoo Pop Festival.
The festival movement in Michigan blossomed in 1969. The Detroit Pop Festival at Olympia Stadium kicked things off on Monday, April 7th. It was followed by the Grand Rapids Pop Festival on April 8th and the Saginaw Pop Festival the very next day. A two-day event called the First Annual Rock & Roll Revival was held at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit in late May.
The Summer months saw festivals held in Petosky, Mt. Clemens, Midland, and Saugatuck for a second time. Delta Community College also held a festival that summer that included a memorable performance by the Stooges.
The central figure in the Stooges was Iggy Pop, born James Osterberg in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1947. He grew up in Ypsilanti, however, after his father got a job teaching English at the local high school. Because of the post-war housing shortage, the Osterberg’s lived in a trailer park off Carpenter Road.
Osterberg was a model student in high school, and he played drums in the marching band. He and a friend named Jim Mclaughlin started playing rock and roll outside of school in the early 1960s. After recruiting Sam Swisher on sax, Nick Kolokithas on guitar, and Don Swickerath on bass, they formed a band called The Iguanas.
The group played high school dances and fraternity parties at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. During the summer of 1965, the Iguanas got a dream gig as the house band for Club Ponytail, the popular teen nightclub in the northern Michigan resort town of Harbor Springs.
The venue had once been a hangout and speakeasy operated by the Purple Gang of Detroit during Prohibition. It was turned into a teen gathering spot during the 1960s that booked national acts including the Beach Boys, the Shangri-Las, and the Four Tops.
After their Club Ponytail experience, the Iguanas recorded their first and only single, a cover of Bo Diddley’s “Mona”, at United Sound in Detroit, with Osterberg on lead vocal. Osterberg left the band shortly thereafter disappointed that “Again and Again”, a song he had written, was not chosen as the B-side.
Osterberg went on to play drums in The Prime Movers, an Ann Arbor blues band that looked down on the British Invasion-inspired music played by his previous band. They began called him “Iguana” to remind him of where he came from, and his nickname was eventually shortened to just “Iggy”.
After leaving the Prime Movers, Iggy formed a new band with brothers Ron and Scott Asheton and their friend Dave Alexander. Ron Asheton was a fan of the Three Stooges, and he named the band the Psychedelic Stooges in tribute. The sound the band developed was loud and repetitive, inspired in part by the sounds in the Motor City’s automotive plants.
The Psychedelic Stooges made their debut in Ann Arbor on Halloween night in 1967. They impressed John Sinclair who recommended then to Russ Gibb. The band debuted at the Grande in early 1968. Iggy at this time was imitating Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison on stage, but he soon developed his own style by performing shirtless and intentionally provoking the audience.
After signing a contract with Elektra Records, they shortened their name to ‘The Stooges’ and recorded their self-titled debut album in New York with John Cale, a former member of the Velvet Underground. Now considered a landmark pre-punk rock album, “The Stooges” reached # 106 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart in 1969. Two of its songs, “1969” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog” were released as a single. “1969” got significant airplay in Michigan but it didn’t chart nationally.
The Stooges gained a good deal of notoriety for their performance at the Delta Pop Festival that summer when Iggy took a young lady out of her seat and carried her around the auditorium. It turned out that she was the daughter of Donald Carlyon, the president of Delta College. The incident resulted in Delta withholding the Stooges’ $300 fee, and the band being barred from the college. The story of “the dean’s daughter” generated more than $300 worth of publicity for the band, however, as the decade came to a close.
