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The Photographs of Leni Sinclair |
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Friday, 10 February 2006 03:46 |
The Photographs of Leni Sinclair
Introduction by John Sinclair
I take some pride in the photographic achievement of Leni Sinclair, a great deal of pleasure, and the thrill, in the case of this gathering of her work, to be flooded with memories and emotions experienced many long years ago yet as fresh and exciting as the images she has captured and brought into print.
I met Magdalene Arndt in 1964. She had fled her native East Germany and came to Detroit, where she had been studying geography at Wayne State University and taking pictures for the fun of it. Magdalene (or Leni, as her family called her) was an avid jazz lover and a political and cultural activist who had attended the founding conference of Students for a Democratic Society in Port Huron in 1962 and was a member of the avant-garde Red Door Gallery on Second Avenue with Robin Eichele, Martine Algier, Carl Schurer, George Tysh, Charles Moore and others.
I had just matriculated at WSU as a graduate student in American Literature and was staying in the front basement apartment at 4625 Second Avenue. Leni was living next door in the apartment building on the northwest corner of Second and Prentis. We fell in love in the winter of 1964-65, not long after the founding of the Detroit Artists Workshop at 1252 West Forest, and were married on June 12, 1965. Our daughter Marion Sunny Sinclair was born May 4, 1967, and Celia Sanchez Mao Sinclair on January 17, 1970, at which time I was incarcerated in the state prison at Marquette in the Upper Peninsula. We separated in the Spring of 1977 but have continued to share in the care of our daughters and to work on many projects together.
Leni began her serious work in photography by shooting her friends in action at the Red Door Gallery and the Detroit Artists Workshop and soon could be seen carrying her camera with her everywhere she went. Her life trajectory carried her into the epicenter of the action in Detroit in the mid-1960s, and she had the good sense and presence of mind to capture on film just about everything she witnessed from her unique vantage point right in the very middle of what was happening.
The photographs selected for this collection give us a picture of energy in action as events unfolded, the people's movement surged, significant musicians played and audiences went wild in Detroit, Ann Arbor and environs during the 60s and 70s. This was a time of intense social change and immense cultural excitement which is now part of our collective history and will never return. But you can see some of what it was like in the photographs of Leni Sinclair, and the appearance of this catalog of her work is definitely something to be celebrated. Enjoy!
--New Orleans
March 25/April 3, 1999
Photo Captions:
Red Door Gallery
The Red Door Gallery, on Second Avenue just south of Prentis, was the forerunner of the Detroit Artists Workshop and provided an important focal point for the wave of artistic and cultural energy which was just beginning to swell in 1963-64. Pictured are Red Door activists George Tysh, Alan Stone, Robin Eichele and Martine Algier.
Charles Moore
The central figure in the musical ferment at the Detroit Artists Workshop was trumpet player Charles Moore, a native of Sheffield, Alabama and leader of the Detroit Contemporary 5. Charles moved in with me at 4625 Second Avenue in the Spring of 1964, and we were nearly inseparable companions for the next two years. In 1996 he put together and led the horn section for my recording date with Wayne Kramer, released by Alive Records as Full Circle.
Albert Ayler
Saxophonist Albert Ayler was in the forefront of the jazz revolution of the early 1960s and one of our musical idols. Around Christmas of 1965 Leni, Charles Moore, my brother David and I made a pilgrimage to Cleveland to meet Albert and his brother Donald, who were there visiting their parents for the holidays.
John Coltrane
The great saxophonist John Coltrane was God to us. We would travel to New York City or Chicago to see him play, or spend long hours with the John Coltrane Quartet at Detroit's Minor Key or Drome Bar on the west side. John Coltrane--Live Like Him!
Elvin Jones
A native of Pontiac, Michigan, Elvin Jones was the drummer with the John Coltrane Quartet and provided an incredibly powerful and endlessly inventive energy source for the most exciting improvisational ensemble of all time.
Thelonious Monk
One night in January 1967 at Cobo Hall we witnessed an incredible event where Thelonious Monk was re-united with John Coltrane for part of the evening's concert when Jimmy Garrison and Rashied Ali got snowed in on the East Coast somewhere and Monk's rhythm section filled in for them. Monk, whose fierce individualism and idiosyncratic antics were a source of constant inspiration, came out to spell Alice Coltrane on the piano bench for a couple of numbers and everybody went nuts.
Rob Tyner under strobe light
This is what it looked like at the Grande Ballroom when Rob Tyner sang with the MC-5 in the winter of 1966-67. Gary Grimshaw made a great Grande poster using this image, and Leni printed up the photo as a gorgeous poster from Pisces Eyes Productions.
Grateful Dead
When the Grateful Dead came to Detroit on their first national tour in 1967, I hung out with their managers, Rock Scully & Danny Rifkin, who inspired me to have the nerve to try to manage the MC-5. Later, when I got out of prison in December 1971, the Grateful Dead was playing at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor for two nights before a packed crowd of total freeks. I had never seen so many weirdos in one place like that before--there simply weren't that many freeks around when I had been incarcerated in July 1969.
MC-5 [all the usual shots]
Between September 1967 and July 1969 I had the privilege of working with the MC-5 as their manager and, on "Black to Comm," their tenor saxophonist. The MC-5 was the most exciting band I've ever seen, and I had the extreme pleasure of hearing them almost every time they played for nearly two years.
Fred Smith & John Sinclair in the Oakland County Jail
One night in the summer of 1968 I was assaulted, MACEd and beaten by six police officers and a rent-a-cop at an MC-5 performance at a place called The Loft in Oakland County. While I was down on my back with seven uniformed thugs flailing away at me with their nightsticks, Fred Smith came racing across the room, leapt into the air and pounced on the assailants in a heroic attempt to rescue me from harm. We were both charged with assaulting a police officer, but at our trial in the spring of 1969 I was convicted and Fred was acquitted.
Wayne Kramer with guitar & gun
Here's Wayne Kramer demonstrating the ideology of the White Panther Party: make the music and defend the people by any means necessary.
MC-5 on Zug Island
One bright day in the spring of 1969 we took the band to Zug Island to make some promotional photos. I wanted to pose the most powerful rock & roll band on the planet against the gigantic blast furnaces and raw mechanical landscape of the biggest industrial complex in the world.
Trans-Love tribe on the roof of the Detroit Artists Workshop
Leni took this picture of our Trans-Love tribe on the roof of the Artists' Workshop one early spring morning in 1967. Most of us had been up all night on LSD and the rest were dragged out of their beds for the photo opportunity.
Abbie Hoffman
The endlessly imaginative and dynamic Abbie Hoffman was a great inspiration to us as we groped for a way to express our hatred of the capitalist system and its racism, cultural repression and war-mongering ways--without abandoning our sense of humor.
Timothy Leary
The great prophet of LSD and consciousness expansion was a wonderful person and always a tremendous inspiration. When the MC-5 was on the West Coast in the spring of 1969 we visited Tim & Rosemary Leary at their home in the Berkeley Hills where we sweated through an acid trip while the Learys slyly crept upstairs to fuck.
Jimi Hendrix
The real God of the electric guitar was Jimi Hendrix, and he was worshipped without reservation by the MC-5, who included several of his songs in their playbook: "Manic Depression," "Foxy Lady," "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" and others were learned off the records as soon as they were released. The MC-5 opened for Jimi at the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit in March 1968; the action photo on the back sleeve of the "Looking at You" 45 was shot at that concert.
Black Panther Demonstration
Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and the brothers and sisters of the Black Panther Party blew our minds with the beauty of their analysis and the strength of their commitment to freedom and social change. In October 1968, as we prepared to make the first MC-5 recording "live" at the Grande Ballroom, the band and the rest of our commune decided to operate thereafter as the White Panther Party in order to demonstrate our support and enlist our fans and followers in the "white mother-country youth community" to join us in the revolutionary struggle led by the Black Panthers.
White Panther tribe in front of 1520 Hill Street
Here's the whole gang at White Panther Headquarters in Ann Arbor, missing only those members who were "underground" or in prison when this picture was taken.
John & Sunny Sinclair (1969)
The birth of my first daughter, Marion Sunny Sinclair, in Detroit on May 4, 1967 was one of the highest points of my life. We were extremely close during her first two years before I was taken to prison in the summer of 1969. My younger daughter, Celia Sanchez Mao Sinclair, was born January 17, 1970, six months are I had been locked up on a 9-1/2-to-10-year sentence for possession of two joints. Celia was almost two and Sunny 4-1/2 when I was released from confinement on December 13, 1971. I also have two beautiful step-daughters: Krishna Tyson, born in 1970, and Chonita Michaels, a Leap Year baby born February 29, 1972. Their mother, the former Patricia Brown, and I have been together since November 1979; we married on January 1, 1989 and moved to New Orleans in July 1991.
Sun Ra
The great philosopher of modern music and unrestricted space travel for all humans dwelt in the center of our musical cosmos for many a year. I first brought Sun Ra & His Arkestra to Detroit to perform with the MC-5 and the Magic Veil Light Show at Community Arts Auditorium on the WSU campus in the spring of 1967. We brought them back in the spring of 1969 for a month-long residency in the house next door to ours on Hill Street in Ann Arbor; this time they played the Grande Ballroom, the Ann Arbor Armory and other local venues with the MC-5 and co-headlined (with Chuck Berry & the 5) the First Detroit Rock & Roll Revival at the Michigan State Fairgrounds on Memorial Day weekend. After I got out of prison Sun Ra & the Arkestra were featured at all three Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals; my recordings of these shows are finally being released on Total Energy Records, starting with their 1972 performance.
Iggy
I first met Jim Osterberg in the winter of 1966-67 at Bob Koester's Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, where young James was studying the art of blues drumming with Sam Lay, S.P. Leary and others. When he returned to Ann Arbor, where he had played drums with the Prime Movers Blues Band, he recruited Ron and Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander to provide the music for a brand-new performance unit that would make musical and cultural history: The Psychedelic Stooges. Iggy was an indescribably exciting force on stage, incredibly imaginative and wholly original. I attended their first series of appearances, helped get them booked into the Grande and elsewhere, and urged Danny Fields of Elektra Records to sign The Stooges to a recording contract. Their manager, Jimmy Silver, was a partner with my brother David and myself in our artists' management company, Trans-Love Productions, during 1968-69.
Ron Ashton
Guitarist Ron Asheton is a fantastic character who powered the Psychedelic Stooges, starred in the second edition of Destroy All Monsters, played roles in several weird locally-produced films, and often showed off his extensive collection of Nazi paraphernalia.
Bill Kunstler
The late civil-rights attorney William Kunstler was one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century and a fearless leader in the fight against political and cultural repression in the USA. Following his long court battle against Judge Julius Hoffman in defense of the Chicago 8, he and his colleague Lenny Weinglass agreed to represent Larry "Pun" Plamondon, Jack Forest and myself against federal charges that we had conspired to blow up the Ann Arbor CIA recruiting office in the Fall of 1968. The legal "dream team" headed by Kunstler & Weinglass included Detroit lawyers Hugh "Buck" Davis and others, master propagandist Ken Kelley, and White Panther Party Chief of Staff David Sinclair.
John & Yoko
John Lennon & Yoko Ono came to my rescue in the fall of 1971 while I was serving the third year of my prison sentence. Our friend Jerry Rubin convinced them to come to Ann Arbor to headline a benefit concert and rally at Crisler Arena on December 10, 1971. Inspired by a poem written on my behalf by my friend and mentor Ed Sanders, Lennon wrote a song for me--titled simply "John Sinclair"-- and sold out the 15,000 seats at the arena in just 8 minutes. After my release we got together several times to plan a left-wing tour of America headlined by John & Yoko that would have followed Richard Nixon around in the Summer of 1972, but pressure from the Immigration & Naturalization Service and the Nixon administration persuaded Lennon & Ono to curtail their political activities.
Miles Davis
One of my earliest jazz heroes, Miles Davis led me into a wonderful world of music and musicians starting in the fall of 1959 when I first heard his newly-released masterpiece, Kind of Blue, until this day my favorite album of all time. When we organized the first Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in September 1972, Miles Davis was my first choice to headline the event--and he did.
Ray Charles
I grew up listening to Ray Charles' great Atlantic Records 45 rpm singles like "I Got a Woman," "Lonely Avenue" and "What'd I Say," and I saw him with his great orchestra and the Rae-lettes at the IMA Auditorium in Flint, Michigan around 1958. I chose Ray Charles to headline the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, and we broadcast his performance that year (and the entire festival) "live" on 96 radio stations all across the USA.
Coleman Young
Coleman Alexander Young was one of my personal heroes during his 20-year reign as the first Black mayor of Detroit. As a State Senator from Detroit, Coleman had long supported my legal challenge to the constitutionality of Michigan's marijuana laws and often helped us in our efforts to gain my release from prison. When he announced his commitment as Mayor to gaining control of the Detroit Police Department, I felt it was safe to return to the city and moved back from Ann Arbor with my family in the spring of 1975.
Bob Marley
One of the greatest and most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bob Marley captivated our minds with his beautiful songs of freedom, redemption and the liberation of marijuana. I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Bob Marley and his powerful band of Wailers at Masonic Auditorium in Detroit around 1975-76.
Jimmy Carter
Coleman Young came out in support of Jimmy Carter almost as soon as he announced his presidential candidacy in 1975, and once he was elected he repaid Detroit's commitment with millions of dollars and federal support for Coleman's initiatives. I was active with the Allied Artists Association and the Detroit Jazz Center during the Carter years, garnering hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal and state grant monies for Detroit jazz artists and their projects until the dread Ronald Reagan took over in 1981.
Rosa Parks
The woman who touched off the modern civil rights revolution by refusing to move to the back of the bus in Birmingham, Alabama in December 1955 later moved to Detroit and worked as a staff member for Congressman John Conyers for many years. When the city rebuilt 12th Street, the initial site of the devastating 1967 Detroit riots, they renamed it Rosa Parks Boulevard in her honor.
Detroit Women for Peace
Detroit's progressive community played a leading role in the fight for social, racial and economic justice in America starting with the labor union struggles of the 1930s and continuing into the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Detroit Women for Peace was but one of the many local organizations which spoke out forcefully against the War in Vietnam and helped bring it to a conclusion.
Marvin Gaye
The Philosopher of Soul grew up in Washington, DC and came to Detroit with Harvey Fuqua, leader of the Moonglows--the greatest R&B vocal group of all time--in the early 1960s. He and Harvey married two of Berry Gordy's sisters and thus became original members of the Motown family. Marvin's social consciousness and fantastic singing gave voice to the sentiments of millions of Americans in songs like "What's Going On," "Inner City Blues" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)." His biography, Divided Soul by David Ritz, is a truly amazing story that should be read by all music lovers everywhere.
Della Reese
Della Reese is another great Detroit artist who came out of the glory days of Hastings Street to build a successful international career as a singer and actress. I remember listening to her early singles when I was a little kid in Davison, Michigan, in the early 1950s.
B.B. King
Our greatest living blues artist came off a sharecropping farm in Kilmichael, Mississippi to sing his songs and play his guitar for people all over the world, influencing a whole generation of guitarists in England and America in the process. B.B. King was a headliner (along with James Brown and Sun Ra) at the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival In Exile, staged across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.
Rolling Stones
From the beginning the Rolling Stones led the way in recognizing and paying homage to the African-American blues giants who had inspired them to take up their instruments: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. On their American tours, which always stopped in Detroit, the Stones introduced important Black artists like B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Ike & Tina Turner, and Prince to white audiences. Early on, when asked to play a popular TV music show, the Stones insisted that Howlin' Wolf must come with them, and they recorded one of their early albums at the Chess Records studio at 2120 Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
Albert King
The gigantic bluesman out of Indianola, Mississippi was a big favorite with Detroit audiences of all descriptions, from the hippies at the Grande Ballroom to the hardcore east-side blues people at Ethel's Cocktail Lounge. He made a great recording of Sir Mack Rice's Motor City anthem, "Cadillac Assembly Line," and helped shape the musical consciousness of a whole generation of guitarists.
Aretha Franklin
The Queen of Soul grew up on Hastings Street under the wing of her famous father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, one of the nation's most popular African-American preachers. She started to soar as a teenage gospel singer in the mid- 50s and fully took flight a decade later when she came to dominate the popular music world with her brilliant recordings for Atlantic Records: "Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Do Right Woman" and scores more.
James Cotton
One of the last living originators of the modern electric blues, Cotton came out of Helena, Arkansas to record for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis and then rode to blues stardom as the harmonica specialist with the Muddy Waters Band on Chess Records. Cotton's popularity crossed over to rock audiences in the 60s and he thrilled many an audience at the Grande Ballroom on his frequent visits to Detroit.
--New Orleans
April 17, 1999
(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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