Considering MC5’s sixth nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple of years ago, Wayne Kramer took a benign view of the honor.

“Either way, it’ll be OK with me,” Kramer, the band’s co-founder and guitarist — who died Feb. 2 at the age of 75 from pancreatic cancer — said at the time. “I’ve gone through all the arguments and cynicism and criticism, and, listen, if MC5 is recognized for their contribution, I think that would be a good thing. There’s a lot of people out there who love the band and love what the band represents.

“To have that appreciation confirmed wouldn’t be a bad thing. … But we’ve been here before, so let’s see what happens.”

It was not to be in 2022, when Kramer was launching a new incarnation of MC5. But it’s happening this year, on Oct. 19, when the iconic group from Lincoln Park will receive an Award for Musical Excellence from the Rock Hall, in a ceremony that will air live on Disney+.

That will, in fact, be the capper for a busy couple of weeks celebrating the band’s legacy — appropriate for October, since MC5’s lauded debut album, “Kick Out the Jams,” was recorded Oct. 30-31, 1968, at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom during the proclaimed Zenta New Year and established a notorious reputation thanks to a 13-letter epithet that led Hudson’s and other retail outlets to ban it from their racks.

Then again, MC5 — the musical embodiment of the White Panther Party and its mission of a “total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and (fornicating) in the streets” — wouldn’t have had it any other way.

In addition to the Rock Hall honor, a new book arrives Tuesday, Oct. 8. “MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band” offers a definitive account completed by Detroit area natives Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki from interviews first conducted by the late Ben Edmonds. Its publication will be marked by a series of events at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Lincoln Park Bandshell and in Oak Park.

MC5 will roll into the Rock Hall festivities with the Oct. 18 release of “Heavy Lifting,” the fourth MC5 album and first new work under the band’s moniker in 53 years. Helmed by Kramer and featuring MC5 drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson on two tracks, the 13-song set is also fortified with guests such as Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, Tom Morello, Alice in Chains’ William DuVall, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil and others.

The combination of all this will make for a true testimonial of MC5’s impact and lasting legacy, “I believe the impact of the MC5 on all the subsequent rock ‘n’ roll cannot be overstated,” explains Don Was, the Grammy Award-winning producer and Oak Park native who was a longtime friend and collaborator of Kramer’s including on “Heavy Lifting.”

“They may not have sold many records, but it’s one of those bands where everyone who listened to them went out and started a band of their own. They were a very unique, very important band,” Was said.Patti Smith, who was married to MC5’s other guitarist, Fred “Sonic” Smith, from 1980 until his death in 1994, concurs. “The MC5 is a revolutionary band, and of course, they enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a revolutionary way,” says Smith, who was inducted herself in 2007. “Fred never expected to be in the (Rock Hall). We don’t do our work to get honors, but it’s nice when you get them.”

Brighter spots

The assorted activities also are providing a kind of silver lining for what’s been a dark year for MC5.

Two months to the day after Kramer’s death, band manager and mentor John Sinclair died, and on May 9, Thompson died. With Smith, frontman Rob Tyner (1991) and bassist Michael Davis (2012) also gone, it means none of the band members will be in attendance in Cleveland, and only Thompson lived to hear that the group would be honored. He was “grateful” and “extremely happy,” according to Chris McNulty, the son he’d given up for adoption in 1969 and met in 2022.

Thompson also echoed the sentiments of many a fan when he told McNulty that, “It’s about f***in’ time!”

“Yes, it’s bittersweet — perhaps even the exact right thing at precisely the wrong time,” Kramer’s widow, Margaret Saadi Kramer, who helped manage the latter-day MC5 and co-founded Jail Guitar Doors USA with him, noted when the induction was announced in April. “Yet, I’m certain (Kramer) would have landed in gratitude for this recognition and received it like the beautiful free radical he was — an underdog victorious.”

Despite that, Becky Derminer, Tyner’s widow, adds: “We’re just so happy about it. This is, like, once in a lifetime. It’s unfortunate their physical bodies can’t be there, and to say they’ll be there in spirit is so cliché, isn’t it? But we have to celebrate this wonderful accomplishment of this fabulous band. They’re finally getting their due, and it’s about the MC5 — good job, good band.”

Of that, there is no question.

Over the course of just three albums between 1969 and 1971, MC5 established a body of work many describe as a root of punk rock, but that also incorporated R&B, blues and jazz, as well as political discourse in its lyrics. “I think the band represented a sense of unlimited possibilities that there could be a new kind of music and a new kind of politics, that there could be a new kind of lifestyle,” Kramer, who turned the band’s history into a song, “The Edge of a Switchblade,” for the “Heavy Lifting” album, said in 2018. “I think that spirit that anything is possible held up pretty well.”

Book co-author Tolinski, who grew up next to Lincoln Park in Taylor, adds:, “They were really revolutionary … true originals. The MC5 pioneered both the sound of metal and the attitude of punk while mixing in elements of free jazz and the showmanship of James Brown. That’s a hell of a package. And they were also cultural revolutionaries. I don’t know what other band you could say that about.”

Righteous resumption

Despite some MC5 reunions over the years — Davis, Kramer and Thompson, with all-star friends, for DKT/MC5 tours during 2004 and Kramer’s similarly guest-studded MC5 celebrations in 2018-19 — the idea of new band music seemed unlikely. But what began as a film and album project — “this very elaborate story about some criminals and about a heist and sticking it to the man and so on,” according to producer Bob Ezrin — morphed into a collection of songs that Kramer and his collaborators deemed more suited to the MC5 name.

“I thought this could be an MC5 project, and forget about the movie,” Ezrin, who got to know MC5 while in Detroit to produce Alice Cooper’s albums during the early ‘70s, explains. “My feeling was MC5 wasn’t five individuals. MC5 was a state of consciousness, a state of mind and, in a way, a political position. My feeling was anybody who wanted to line up behind this banner was MC5. So that’s what ended up happening.”

“We Are All MC5” even became a campaign slogan as Kramer took out another lineup of the group in 2022, fronted by Brad Brooks, who also co-wrote most of the 13 songs on “Heavy Lifting” and was part of a core recording group that included Kramer, Was and Paul McCartney’s drummer Abe Laboriel Jr.

““It’s not a retro record,” Brooks — who met Kramer during the spring of 2019 in his home base of Oakland, California — says of the album. “It was written about 2021, about the rise of Trump, George Floyd, the (Jan. 6) insurrection, about the homeless situation after COVID. It had to be about now; (MC5) was always about now. I felt a responsibility to honor the (MC5) name and try to, if I could, honor those guys and their commitment to the music and their commitment to the times.”

As for the sound of “Heavy Lifting,” Brooks says Kramer “wanted to see what would be a more modern version of ‘High Times,’ MC5’s critically lauded 1972 album. Ezrin, meanwhile, targeted “that combination of funk, punk and power that was Detroit” for what is a decidedly aggressive but sonically varied work. “The idea of an MC5 album … you can’t take something like that lightly,” notes Vernon Reid, who plays on the track “Can’t Be Found.” “I listened to it, tried to absorb the tune and get a vibe for it, and it worked out.”

William DuVall, who’d played some dates with DKT/MC5 and appears with Slash on “The Edge of the Switchblade,” took a similar approach. “I was just going for that thing I feel like Rob Tyner and the entire band were able to embody,” he says, “that bridge between soul and rock ‘n’ roll and experimental … high-energy kind of ecstatic music.”

“Heavy Lifting” will, of course, be brand new as MC5 gets its Rock Hall honor. Family members and friends are planning to be in Cleveland to celebrate, though there’s no word yet on whether any of the group’s music will be performed in tribute. All agree that the band should have been inducted from one of its six nominations — “We’re like the Susan Lucci of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Kramer quipped in 2022 — but they’re hoping to make all of the October occasions more sweet than bitter.

“Losing Wayne’s a big hole. It’s been very, very hard,” Brooks says. “I’m pretty proud of what we did, but it also makes me sad because he should be here.

“It also kinda pisses me off. He should’ve been here way longer.”