Joint Enterprise

Veteran poet, journalist and political activist John Sinclair doesn’t hesitate when asked what’s been the most memorable moment of his long and interesting life. “Getting out of prison 40 years ago,” the 70-year-old American counter-cultural icon says, with a wry chuckle. “That was easily my happiest moment.”

In 1969, following a series of convictions for possessing marijuana, Sinclair was sentenced to ten years in prison. His crime? Giving two joints to an undercover narcotics officer.
His imprisonment sparked public outrage and ultimately led to the landmark ‘John Sinclair Freedom Rally’ at Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena in December 1971. Three days after the rally, which featured performances and speeches from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman, he was released.
Amongst the numerous poets, writers, lawyers and musicians that Sinclair had to thank for his acquittal was a certain John Lennon. In addition to performing at Crisler Arena with Yoko Ono, the former Beatle had written and recorded the song ‘John Sinclair’ to highlight his plight (later featured on his Some Time in New York City album).
“After I got out of prison, I went to New York to say ‘thank you’, and then we became friends,” Sinclair recalls. “We were meant to do a project together, but the government found out about it and they tried to drive him out of the country. Lennon was a great guy. People are either great guys or they’re assholes. But he was a great guy. I always really enjoyed him.”
Shortly before his arrest and imprisonment, Sinclair had been fired as manager of hard-edged, proto-punk Detroit band MC5, who he’d been managing since 1966. “I didn’t come from the managerial or MBA or business side of things,” he recalls. “I was a poet and a journalist, and I just loved their music. And I wanted to see them concentrate fully on their music and that’s why I took on their management duties.
“I’ve heard the members of the group describe themselves during that period as ‘unmanageable’,” he continues. “So I figured out a way to make things work for them for a couple of years, and then they decided they wanted to try another direction so they fired me, basically. But I enjoyed working with them, I really loved the band’s music. Rob Tyner and I became very close friends.
“What I liked most about working with them was that every time they went to play in public they went out to try to destroy the audience. That was the term they used! They were completely focused on improving their music, improving their performance, and improving their relationship with the audience. For a manager that’s pretty exhilarating. You never had to tell them what time to practice. They were rehearsing every day.”
During Sinclair’s three-year tenure as manager, he and the band founded the White Panther Party in response to the Black Panthers’ call for white people to support their movement.
“The band and I and our roadies and a couple of friends in Ann Arbor formed the White Panther Party. It was something we all did together. It reflected our outlook. When our first album was released on Electra we wanted to be known as more than just some money-grabbing rock ‘n’ roll band, like most of our contemporaries turned out to be in retrospect. But we wanted to make a statement that embodied that we were different, that we wanted to change society. We were fervently and emotionally in support of the Black Panther Party. We thought they had the best ideas. And also they were under heavy assault from the government and the police – and we hated the government and the police so we decided to align ourselves with them.”

Needless to say, as a former White Panther, Sinclair is an Obama supporter nowadays. “He’s my president. I like him. I’ve waited all my life to have a black president so I’m very happy. It’s the other side that’s a problem. I’ve never ever in my life seen anything like what’s happened since he was elected, in that they’re refusing to participate in government. The Republicans just refuse to act in a responsible way in terms of passing legislation. I think they’ve just committed themselves to try to make him look as bad as possible so the voters will reject him in 2012. I hope that won’t be the case. I think people are a lot smarter than they’re given credit for.”
However things are going politically in the US, he’s delighted that some things are starting to change on this side of the pond. “I loved that the UK parliament told Rupert Murdoch that he was unfit to operate a company,” he laughs. “I’ve always said that! To me, Rupert Murdoch is public enemy number one in the world. But in the US, people like him own every newspaper, every TV station, every radio station, every record company, every movie company.
“They control the information and the imagery Americans receive 24 hours a day. The only place you can break through that is on your computer. And then you gotta remember that the internet was created by the Department of Defence. So there’s gotta be some bad things lurking in the background there. But as for information, they control it all. And they make ridiculously stupid things seem like they make sense by pounding them over and over again on Fox News and things like that.”
Still very much active as a poet, writer and radio presenter, Sinclair currently divides his time between Holland and the US. “Well, I kind of present a moving target,” he explains. “I base myself in Amsterdam, but I don’t have any kind of legal base there. I never really live anywhere more than three months at a time so I don’t have to worry about the visa problem. If I’m in Amsterdam or Europe for three months, next thing I know I’m back in the States for three months. I move around quite a bit. But I like it in Amsterdam, and if I’d any money I’d register to be a citizen.”
He’s outraged at the Dutch authorities’ recent proposal to ban tourists from Amsterdam’s cannabis cafés. “Yeah, they’re trying to do that,” he sighs. “I keep thinking of the idiocy of these right-wing people. God, of course, is talking directly in their ears so that creates a little bit of a problem in terms of sensibility.
“It’s a beautiful system whose only fault is that it is not extensive enough in legalising the production and distribution of marijuana. Those have always been illegal, but on the consumer level they’ve got this brilliant, extremely workable, time-tested system that they’ve had for about 40 years. And all of a sudden these anti-Islamist people and Christians and whoever these idiots are in government want to throw this out and return marijuana smoking to the street-level activity it is in other countries.
“It doesn’t make sense. They also want to flush all the money down the toilet. That’s so un-Dutch-like, I can’t even comprehend it. They call weed-smokers drug tourists and a public nuisance. I hate to say it, but really it’s the heavy drinkers that come over from England every weekend that are the public nuisance. Very public, very loud and very rude.”
Speaking of public, loud and rude, kicking off at the end of this month Sinclair will be embarking on a seven-date spoken-word tour of Ireland with fellow radical and former dope-dealer Howard Marks.
“I can’t promise you anything because myself and Howard haven’t done this before,” he states, “but it’s basically two old dopers up there talking crazy shit. To put it in a nutshell.”