John Sinclair: A trio of tributes

Panther, politico, poet

IMMORTALISED in John Lennon’s eponymous 1972 song, John Sinclair was a fierce advocate for individual freedom who lost his own liberty on a drugs charge which became a cause célèbre in the USA.

Sinclair, who died this week aged 82, embraced the worlds of music, politics and also poetry. He was the manager of the rock band the MC5, a founding force behind the White Panther Party – a group allied to the revolutionary Black Panthers – a rousing figure in the activist hotbed of 1960s Detroit and eventually a man who reflected a lifelong allegiance to the Beats through his spoken word recordings and performances.

In this trio of articles, writer Mark Bliesener, poet Joe Kidd and counterculture historian Pat Thomas recall Sinclair as an emblem of a volatile period in the American twentieth century when popular music, grassroots demonstration, racial struggle and the battle against the repressive anti-narcotics regime contributed to a an incendiary cocktail on record, in the streets and in the media headlines of the day.

TRIBUTE I: ‘People have the power’

By MARK BLIESENER, musician, rock journalist, band manager and organiser of the annual Neal Cassady ‘Birthday Bash’ in Denver over many years

JOHN SINCLAIR was more than a crucial American visionary – though he certainly was that: high energy poet, musician, organizer, activist, leader, White Panther and Rainbow People's Party founder, band manager, promoter, writer, underground press pioneer, prisoner, DJ, husband, father, son.

– Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are going to be the problem, or whether you are going to be the solution...

In 1969 Sinclair received a 10-year prison sentence for gifting two joints to an undercover Detroit policewoman, his third pot bust in three years.

Sinclair spent the time between this arrest and imprisonment working to overturn Michigan's drug laws. His advocacy is recognized as one of the first steps toward decriminalizing marijuana in the US.

Sinclair served 29 months of hard time but was abruptly released in 1971 – just hours after a marathon concert and rally in Sinclair’s honour at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena.

John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Archie Sheep, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, local heroes the Up, Bob Seger and others called upon the packed house of 15,000 to ‘Free John’! 

– Brothers and sisters I wanna' see a sea of hands out there, a sea of hands. I wanna' hear some revolution...

Pictured above: An impressive lineup for the John Sinclair ‘Freedom Rally’ in 1971

Sinclair's imprisonment had been immortalized in Lennon's song ‘John Sinclair’, featured on his and Ono's Sometime in New York City album: ‘They gave him ten for two, what else can the bastards do. We gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta set him free yeah...’

On the day of the concert, Michigan state legislators – alarmed by Sinclair's established youth culture power base, Lennon's recording and the impending gathering – voted to overturn the states draconian drug laws. Because of time already served, Sinclair was freed the following Monday.

– Brothers and sisters a sea of hands…Are you ready to testify...

Sinclair, accompanied by his Blues Scholars trio, came to Denver on February 7th, 2014, to perform at the annual Neal Cassady ‘Birthday Bash’. They ignited the crowd at the Mercury Cafe and stole the show.

No mean feat, given that the perpetually inspiring David Amram and his stellar quartet were headlining. Sinclair briefly joined Amram onstage that evening for an impromptu round of joyous freestyling.

Sinclair's early February visit coincided with Colorado, on January 1st of that year, becoming the first state in the US to legalize marijuana. While in Denver, Sinclair delighted in the legality and legit liberation of retail cannabis shopping. Justice indeed, given his long time marijuana activism.

RIP John Sinclair 1941-2024

– Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa

Author note: All italicized lines are from Brother J. C. Crawford, White Panther and MC5 ‘religious leader and spiritual advisor’. Or what hip hop crewes today might refer to as a ‘hype man’. Crawford worked the crowd prior to band taking stage. His words directly represent the thoughts and spirit of  Sinclair and the WPP, and are included on the 5's Kick Out The Jams LP.’Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa’, at the end of the piece, is taken from the full title of the MC5 song ‘Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)’.

TRIBUTE II: ‘He was Revolution…He was Poetry…He was Rock & Roll…’

By JOE KIDD, musician, songwriter, countercultural activist and Michigan Beat Poet Laureate

‘YOU PUNK, you pig, you’ll die!’ Those were the words that echoed through Judge Columbo’s courtroom on July 28th, 1969 as the officers escorted John Sinclair out to begin serving his 10-year prison sentence for possession of 2 marijuana cigarettes.

I met John just two months earlier at the First Annual Detroit Rock & Roll Revival, an event that featured Dr. John the Night Tripper, Johnny Winter, the Amboy Dukes, the James Gang and so many others of the time. Sun Ra closed out the night. I was there for one reason. MC5. They introduced some of the new songs. ‘Human Being Lawnmower’ and more. They were ear splittingly beautiful.

Earlier that day, I looked to my left and there stood this giant, with black hair down to his waist, smiling and dancing, and having the time of his life. I was watching freedom in action. I am not tall, but I nervously walked up to him and said, ‘Hi John.’ He looked at me and smiled. That was it. That was enough. I wanted him to know I was here.

His ‘Poetry is Revolution’ poster hung over my bed when I was a teenager living with my parents. I was already a member of The White Panther Party. I received my letter in the mail. I wore my badge. I was sent home from school for refusing to take it off.

Pictured above: Sinclair and his famed ‘Poetry is Revolution’ poster

My brother and I were brokenhearted and furious at the same time when the jail sentence was announced. In the next season, we left our middle class home and lived in Ann Arbor with the Panthers and gained an education on living in the streets. John was in prison, Pun Plamondon was in charge.

Sinclair was always in the room, still free on the street, all conversation included his name, it was about him. John was the lion and the lamb. He was the voice of the movement, the driving force and the glue that held it together and kept it from fragmenting.  He was also the sacrifice.

The MC5 had moved on to seek fame and fortune. The Up were unsuccessfully trying to take their place. The newspapers were changing their names, the very party was changing its name. The power brokers were succeeding in their calculated effort to destroy the counterculture not just here in Michigan but nationwide, even in my beloved California and elsewhere.

In 1971, we heard rumors of a ‘Freedom Rally’.  It was finally announced that John Lennon & Yoko Ono were coming in to support Sinclair. At once, we put together our small amount of cash to drive to a head shop in Flint, Michigan, to purchase the last two tickets sold for the event. To our surprise, they were on the riser stage right. Very good seats.

Although we hear a lot about Lennon’s appearance, there were many other important artists and activists there as well: Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Archie Shepp, Bobby Seale, Ed Sanders, Stevie Wonder. A powerful testimonial as to how important Sinclair was to the art world and how unjust his incarceration was to people of his time.

To have one hero rescue another right in front of my eyes was an affirmation that I was doing, speaking and thinking righteously. It was effective. In 1971, John Sinclair was released to the roar of millions worldwide.

Around 1980, I was with my band the White Lines. John came to a concert in Detroit with another local radio personality Jerry Lubin. After our set, I sat with them at their table. They were raving about our show. Sinclair said these words: ‘I haven’t seen anything like this since the MC5 played the Grande Ballroom.’ He said that! I can still hear it. It has fueled my work as a songwriter and poet for the balance of my life.

A few years later, I put together a band called the Sedition World Orchestra. We had the opportunity to share the stage and accompany John in a small venue in Allen Park, Michigan. 

My daughter Jackleen Diana Eve is a poet, musician, and part-time photographer. I took her to John’s 70th birthday party when she was 20 years old. She was thrilled to meet him and take action shots of him and the local celebs in the room.

Sheila Burke and I wrote a song entitled ‘Liberation’ just before we attended Sinclair’s 80th birthday party in Detroit. We premiered it at his party and later in Ocho Rios Jamaica. It will always be dedicated to him and his great work. At that party I gifted him with a copy of my first book of poetry titled The Invisible Waterhole which he accepted with gratitude.

Since my appointment as Michigan Beat Poet Laureate 2022-2024, it has been a dream of mine to sponsor Sinclair for a Lifetime Award. In my opinion, no one has done more to expose social injustice, corporate manipulation, corrupt politics, prejudice judicial systems, unfair lawmaking and human suffering in general. not just through the written word but as a way of life, a way of rebellion.

For me personally, John Sinclair was not an advocate. He was Revolution. He was Poetry. He was Marijuana. He was Jazz. He was the Blues. He was Rock & Roll. He was Fearless. He was a Tornado. He was Che. His name will be spoken with dignity and reverence. He changed every thing, every place, every person, he came into contact with.

Finally, the last time we saw him, Sheila and I drove to Aretha’s Jazz Cafe in Detroit. As I slowly navigated the stairs on my crutches, I heard his voice, ‘Joe Kidd, you would think that this place might accommodate guys like us.’

Pictured above: A later years performance by John Sinclair at Aretha Jazz Cafe in Detroit. Image: Joe Kidd

I walked over to him and handed him another book, another present for birthday #82. This time New Generation Beats, 2023 Anthology, published by the National Beat Poetry Federation.

As usual, John did a stellar reading at Aretha’s and, when it was over, he was helped up the stairs and into his shiny black SUV. We met them on the sidewalk and said ‘Goodnight, see you down the road.’ About a mile down the road we saw his vehicle. 

We rolled down the window. They couldn’t find the freeway. ‘Two blocks up and turn right’, Sheila hollered. I couldn’t imagine John Sinclair being lost in Detroit.  At last, he has found his way home. That was it. It seems like nothing. As another great rebel, Lucas Jackson once said, ‘Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.’   

Earlier in the year, I asked Debbie Tosun Kilday of the the National Beat Poetry Foundation if I could arrange to have one of John’s poems in a forthcoming collection. She said yes.

I requested John send me something; he did. I forwarded ‘Bloomdido for Amiri Baraka’ and so we are both published in the book along with Sheila and a number of other talented voices. As far as I know, it is the last work of his that was published while he was alive on earth.

TRIBUTE III: ‘Sinclair speaks: Hoffman, Rubin and rock’n’roll’

By PAT THOMAS, musician, conterculture commentator, author of Listen, Whitey!: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 and Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary and compiling editor of Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg

MANY OF US are processing the loss of counterculture icon John Sinclair, infamous manager of the MC5 band, founder of the White Panthers (a Yippie inspired political group), a dynamic poet and vocalist, disc jockey, concert promoter, liner note writer, jazz and blues expert, and immense pot smoker pushing worldwide for the decriminalization of marijuana laws. Even John Lennon wrote a song about him!

I got to engage with John a number of times, sometimes on stage – I played drums in Detroit for one song he sang – we did a Jerry Rubin/Yippies book event together, we spoke on the phone a few times and I hired him to write liner notes for an Art Ensemble of Chicago vinyl LP reissue.

John was, in many way, the next generation of Beats. He not only talked the talk, he walked the walk, giving up a normal life (in other words, money and a nice home) to explore and live out his creative, political, and culture interests.

John was for many a role model of a badass, right there with others like him – such as Abbie Hoffman, who got booted off the stage at the 1969 Woodstock Festival by Pete Townshend for interrupting the Who’s performance of Tommy. And why? Because Abbie was trying to bring to the public’s attention the pot bust that had put Sinclair in jail for a much longer time than he deserved. The authorities really locked him up for being a political subversive.

Pictured above: John Sinclair and band participated in this 2014 celebration of Neal Cassady

A couple of years later, fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin helped complete (with John Lennon and Yoko Ono) what Abbie had started. I asked John about it, via long distance phone call, a few years ago. I was in Los Angeles and John was in Detroit, smoking a joint and listening to a baseball game on the radio while we spoke.

Here’s what he told me…

PT: What was your first impression of Jerry Rubin?

JS: Well, in the Summer of 1966, I was doing a six-month sentence in the Detroit House of Corrections for marijuana possession. And this issue of Life magazine came up, and it was about hippies, or radicals, or whatever. And then the picture of Jerry Rubin in a revolutionary war costume appeared before congress.

PT: Oh yeah, great photo. 

JS: That was a tremendous inspiration to me. First time I saw anybody on the left with a sense of humor. I thought that was great. I can’t remember when, exactly, we met, but somewhere, probably in ’67. 

PT: Yeah. He was in Berkeley when he did that, went to HUAC, then he moved to New York in ’67, to hook up with Dave Dellinger to do the march on the Pentagon. 

JS: Right, I probably met him in the Fall of ’67, something like that.

PT: If you can think back, what did you think of Jerry in those early days? 

JS: Well, I got a big kick out of him. I thought he was a media genius. Him and Abbie Hoffman, they had the key. Abbie called it ‘psychic ju-jitsu.’ And they would take the squares and the press, and the TV and the media, and would just turn them upside-down. 

PT: Oh yeah, they played the media well. They really did.

JS: Oh man, I was a huge admirer. I thought they were just geniuses. And then they started Yippie, in January of ’68. Then put out the call for Chicago Festival of Light [to happen in August 1968 to protest the forthcoming American presidential elections].  Well, I was probably one of the first to sign up for that.

PT: And one of the few people to actually show up with your band, the MC5.

JS: We were the only ones that ended up actually doing what they said they were going to do, yeah. Sad to relate (laughs). So, I thought as myself as a Yippie, and our group in Ann Arbor, we thought of ourselves as Yippies. 

PT: When did you formally start using the name White Panthers? Was that after the Yippies had already started up? 

JS: Oh yeah, that was November ’68, after Chicago. Chicago was kind of a big disillusioning turn point for us. Because we thought if you had a lot of imagination and a sense of humor, something to offer, you could prevail. But we saw in Chicago that that wasn’t going to be the case. They were going to…we were regarded as evil as everybody else on the left. We were bohemian, you know. We were LSD-driven, bohemians (laughs). 

PT: Yeah, one of the things that fascinates me, and I try to tell this to the kids, in a pre-internet world, there was this amazing communal feeling between the Yippies, the Black Panthers, obviously you guys at the White Panthers. I think it’s great that, somehow, everybody found each other. 

JS: There wasn’t so many (laughs). It was inevitable that you would meet the rest of the people on your side, because there weren’t so many of you. It was just Rubin and Hoffman had the genius of making it seem like it was millions. And then, it was (laughs). When they started out, it was about a hundred (laughs).

PT: So, would it be safe to say, it was Jerry Rubin who told John and Yoko about you?

JS: Absolutely!  Jerry Rubin brought all those characters together – John Lennon and Jerry were pals. And Yoko approved of Jerry, because Jerry and Abbie were at the top of the fucking class, you know? They were the guys. John & Yoko wanted to do something interesting in the United States. So, they hooked up with Jerry as their conduit – the one to actualize their ideas. He was key to the whole politicization of John Lennon, in the US I mean, Yoko was the key, of course. And she engineered it to Jerry Rubin.

I was friends with Jerry, and I was really good friends with Ed Sanders. Ed wrote a poem, in his inimitable style, in which he set out my case, and called for my freedom. Jerry took this to John and Yoko, because he was hanging with them. Jerry was a key figure, in my view, without Jerry, no benefit concert [featuring John & Yoko & Jerry singing the song ‘John Sinclair’] for my release from prison.

PT: I know that Abbie Hoffman was hanging out with Grace Slick and Paul Kantner. How do you think the Jefferson Airplane fit into this?

JS: They were good people. They were in the vanguard of the revolution. And Jefferson Airplane were stone hippies, who did get a record, the first hippie record on the top ten, ‘Somebody to Love’.  In ’67, they were the first. The Doors had ‘Light my Fire’. 

PT: I don’t think the Airplane get enough recognition, these days, for being political. People have forgotten.

JS: Well, because they became so shitty.

PT: Yeah they did. The Starship.

JS: Yeah, but that’s why they don’t get the respect – because later they tried to be [Stevie Nicks era] Fleetwood Mac, you know. In the beginning, they were cutting edge. Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. 

See also: ‘Obituary #5: Wayne Kramer’, February 10th, 2024; ‘Interview #19: Pat Thomas’, January 2nd, 2024; ‘Book review #20: Material Wealth’, December 15th, 2023; ‘Beat Soundtrack #29: Joe Kidd’, July 30th, 2023; ‘Beat Meetings #9: Mark Bliesener & William S. Burroughs’, July 17th, 2023; and ‘Beat Soundtrack #10: Mark Bliesener’, January 23rd, 2022