Fred "Sonic" Smith

Fred "Sonic" Smith was one of the key architects of the Detroit High Energy rock sound as guitarist and co-founder of the legendary MC5, and while his work after the band's breakup was sporadic, what has survived is strong enough to confirm his reputation as one of the great unsung heroes of Midwest rock & roll. Fred Sonic Smith was born in West Virginia on September 13, 1949. During his early childhood, Smith's family moved to Detroit, MI, and at the age of 12 he began learning how to play guitar. By the time Smith was in junior high, he was good enough to be playing in a local band, where he met Wayne Kramer, a classmate who, like Smith, was playing British Invasion-influenced garage rock; Kramer also shared Smith's curiosity about exploring unusual musical avenues. In 1964, Smith and Kramer joined up with another of Detroit's teenage rock enthusiasts, Rob Tyner, and they decided to form a band called MC5 -- standing for "Motor City Five" and designed to make the group's name sound like a hot-rod club. While the band's early material was fairly standard-issue stuff for a local teen band of the mid-'60s, MC5's guitarists began exploring their shared passion for the blues, their budding fondness for the exploratory possibilities of jazz, and the otherworldly roar of guitar feedback. Their experiments scared away the group's first rhythm section, but with Michael Smith on bass and Dennis Thompson on drums, they soon evolved into one of the most powerful bands of their day, with the fiery wail of Smith and Kramer's guitars sounding a clarion call for a trailblazing blend of hard rock punch and free jazz wanderlust. In 1967, MC5's musical approach attracted the attention of poet and counterculture organizer John Sinclair, who became the group's manager and put a new...