MC5 poet, director and activist John Sinclair has died aged 82

John Sinclair — the famed counterculture icon, poet and political activist who championed cannabis and rock 'n' roll and managed the MC5 — died Tuesday at age 82. Matt Lee, a spokesman for Sinclair, confirmed to The Detroit News that he died of congestive heart failure.

The Flint, Michigan native became known for his fight to legalize marijuana and as a co-founder of the White Panther Party, the anti-racist social group that served as a counterpart to the Black Panthers.

“He was at the forefront of the marijuana movement,” Lee told the newspaper. “But I don't think people realized how knowledgeable he was about American music, and he was a certified expert on all forms of American jazz and rhythm and blues.”

In the mid-60s, he became the manager of the MC5, whose politically driven rock aligned with his worldview. The group (short for Motor City Five) first emerged as the leftist rally band in the city at the time. After a performance outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the band returned to Detroit and its Grande Ballroom in October of that year to record what would become their landmark album. Kick Out the Jams. (The live LP—with its cry of “Kick out the jams, motofuckers”—would eventually land on Rolling rocklist of the 500 greatest albums of all time.)

Sinclair was arrested in 1969 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession of two joints (this was the third possession charge). This served as the basis for his protest and others. John Lennon and Yoko Ono famously attended a 1971 freedom rally in Ann Arbor in solidarity, which also featured Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Seger among 15,000 people. Two days later, Sinclair was released from prison.

He lived to see marijuana become legal in his home state in 2018 and in many across the country. He also worked in the alternative press, writing about Detroit Fifth Estate, DownBeat and establishing it Ann Arbor Sun.

The MC5 met Sinclair in 1967 and he was their manager until the band fired him in 1969. An interview with Rolling rock in 1971 he detailed their painful split over different political approaches and money. However, MC5's Wayne Kramer, who died in February aged 75, spoke of Sinclair's allure, even through the aftermath of that era.

“He's an incredibly persuasive and charismatic person,” Kramer said he told Rolling Stone. “He's this great big cat and he's got all this energy, you know, and he just turns it on you. There is something about John's father figure in the group. I had just left home, and here was this older cat who could explain all these things I didn't understand about the world. And it had a powerful effect on everyone else, philosophically powerful spiritual attitudes that it instilled in us.”