Song of the Day 2/4: Wayne Kramer, “Jail Guitar Doors”

Wayne Kramer, who died last week at 75, is in the Rock Hall of Fame because he was the lead guitarist for the MC5, icons of the late ’60s counterculture and punk progenitors. But his most impressive legacy might be Jail Guitar Doors USA, the music program for inmates he founded with Billy Bragg.

The MC5 were most famous for their exhortation to their audience to “Kick Out the Jams,” and the live album of that title, their debut LP, is a classic of the form. The band’s combination of aggressive energy and leftist politics presaged punk but also kept them off the radio back when that mattered.

Tepid record sales led to the MC5’s early demise, and Kramer’s addictions brought him even lower. After a 1975 drug dealing conviction he spent three years in prison. When he got out he worked as a carpenter until rekindling his career in the ’90s. He kept busy ever since, writing scores for TV and movies and as guesting on guitar with dozens of artists.

In 2009 he and his wife worked with Bragg to open an American offshoot of his charity, which gives instruments and lessons to prisoners, a cause with personal significance for Kramer. In a 2015 interview he said

“I went away in ’75 and was released in 1978. Three years may not seem a lot by today’s standards but it severely impacted me. When you go, it’s very embarrassing and emasculating. It’s not like how our media portrays it. The ultimate loss of freedom is something not everyone understands. It’s a world where you feel unsafe 24/7.

Jail Guitar Doors is named for the Clash song, which mentions Kramer in its first verse. Here’s how the subject of the tune interpreted it.