Arts Listings

One film that did not make it on the fall film festival circuit this year is The Life and Times of John Sinclair. A documentary with plenty of smoke that mirrors the protest movement, it’s the story of the man who jump started John Lennon’s political career, John Sinclair.  

One of the problems with promoting his new movie is “a scene near the end where people in Amsterdam are laughing and smoking one ounce joints. This isn’t what they are looking for. They like films about people who are f.....up. They don’t want people who are unrepentant. I don’t think the movie will be a success. The grandfather of recreational drugs is not what they are looking for today.”  

A father figure in the ’60s underground press movement, founder of the Detroit Artists Workshop, the Rainbow People’s Party and the White Panther Party, he also managed rock groups like the MC-5 and led the movement to legalize marijuana. Sinclair received a 9 1/2 to 10 sentence in 1969 for giving two joints to an undercover agent. 

John Lennon, who had also been set up on a marijuana bust in England, agreed to headline the Free John Now Rally that packed Ann Arbor’s Crisler arena with a crowd of 15,000 in December 1971. His song “It Ain’t Fair, John Sinclair” was the highlight of a knockout show that included Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Jerry Rubin and Bob Seger.  

Among the rock critics on hand were a matched pair of FBI agents who wrote in a confidential memo to J. Edgar Hoover that Yoko Ono “can’t even remain on key.” They suggested that the song “probably will become a million seller... but it is lacking Lennon’s usual standards.” 

Apparently this view was not shared on the Michigan Supreme Court bench in Lansing. Three days after Sinclair’s super rally, the justices struck down the state’s “unconstitutional” marijuana laws, reversed the conviction and ordered his release. 

The Ann Arbor rally opens the U.S. vs. John Lennon and forms the centerpiece of the film’s political story. It was here that leaders of the anti Vietnam war movement formatted their plan for a series of protest concerts that would culminate in three day event at the 1972 Republican political convention. The FBI’s presence documents the White House’s anxiety over Lennon’s star power and the ability of musicians to become political Pied Pipers for the left. 

Now in post production, The Life and Times of John Sinclair is produced by Steve Gebhardt known for his documentaries on the Rolling Stones and John Lennon). It is a cultural overview of the ‘60s and the decades most famous marijuana bust.  

An earlier Gebhardt project, Ten for Two, focused on the 1971 Free John Now Rally in Ann Arbor. Although that film was briefly released in Britain, it was never shown in America because of legal worries over the INS effort to deport Lennon. After raising $50,000 in completion funding, the producers are busy marketing The John Sinclair Story for a 2007 release.  

Sinclair is arguably the hardest working man in show business He is on the road six months of year at clubs, concert halls, bar and college venues reading poetry backed up The Blues Scholars: “I’ve spent ten years trying to figure out how to do it.”  

The result is a considerable distance from rap music which he dismisses as “third grade Mother Goose rhymes done with a machine gun. Walt Whitman got rid of rhymes a hundred and 50 years ago.” 

Although he left America for Amsterdam following the 2000 election, Sinclair returns home frequently to perform and visit family. 

During a recent American tour that included Berkeley, Sinclair, a tall man with a stylish white goatee, was eager to reconnect with old friends. An important whistle stop was his hometown, Davison, Michigan, which has given the world two other media superstars, Sheryl Leach, the creator of Barney, and Michael Moore.  

In town for the I Chews The Blues Festival, Sinclair spoke enthusiastically about his life as an expatriate blues scholar. In Amsterdam he has broadcast online radio shows from local cannabis clubs. The poet has also found a welcoming audience for his work across Europe in clubs and art galleries. And in his eyes, permissive Dutch drug laws are the bomb. 

Although he has been ahead of his times in many ways, Sinclair has never been a slave to popular culture. The former president of the University of Michigan Flint’s film society seldom sees movies. “They aren’t making the old kind of Fellini, Goddard films, interesting movies about life.” The last feature film he took in was Clint Eastwood’s Bird, the 1988 Oscar-winning story on the life of jazz legend Charles Parker. 

Turning to the crowd, a lively mix of kids, teens, college students, families and friends, Moore feels at home in his hometown:  

“This is my idea of a great festival. People who you never heard of playing and having fun. This isn’t about business, it’s about playing music for your friends. No one is making a million. I don’t give a ..... about someone who has a million because they are different. They worry about their taxes. I am still focused on how I get dinner just like the average person in America.”  

Roger Rapoport’s new book Citizen Moore: The Making of An American Iconoclast will be published in December.