The musician was 75 years old. His passing comes just a few months after that of Wayne Kramer, which occurred in February. The cause of death is not known at this time
Credits: Jim Dyson via Getty
Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, founding member of the MC5, of which he was the drummer, and the last living original member of the band that made the history of (proto-)punk, died on Wednesday. The news was given by Detroit Free Press. The musician was 75 years old.
The cause of death is currently unknown. However, it seems that the last few months have not been easy for Thompson, struck by a series of health problems including a heart attack in April.
His passing comes just a few months after the deaths of his former bandmate, Wayne Kramer (who left us in February), and of John Sinclair, the group’s historic manager (in April); but also less than a month after the announcement that the MC5 would be among the new names inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. Becky Tyler, widow of MC5 singer Robert Tyner (died in 1991), remembers the moment like this: «Dennis was over the moon. As soon as he found out he just wanted to run home to his cat, Annie. He was optimistic, he believed he could recover.”
Thompson was born in 1948 into a musical family in Detroit – his mother was a singer, his father a bass player. As he recalled in a 1998 interview, he began playing drums at just four years old, and, five years later, he was already joined by his brother and sister who played guitar and piano. Thompson met his future bandmates in high school in the early 1960s. It was precisely in Detroit (and in the incipient garage rock scene) that the MC5 had their maturation, both personal and artistic.
In an interview from 2017, but published only this year after Kramer’s death, the former MC5 guitarist defines Thompson as “one of the most formidable percussionists ever”, adding: “He did a fine job on the drums, which no one else was doing. He listened to Sun Ra and Elvis Jones, Charlie Waits, Keith Moon and Mitch Mitchell. And he could put all these things together in a completely new way, and he knew how to carry them forward, much further than any other drummer. He played out of time. For me, he was a genius.”
Patti Smith, among others, joined the farewell for Thompson’s death with a post on Instagram where she dedicated some words from the poet Charles Baudelaire to him: «Striked like a flower in the middle of the dance».
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From Rolling Stone US
