Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with The MC5 and the White Panther Party

“Guitar Army was our manual for revolt. It’s a rainbow-colored Howl, still resonating today with the singular value of idealism.”—Michael Simmons

John Sinclair, manager of the notorious Detroit band MC5 and leader of the leftist revolutionary vanguard White Panther Party, is the still-charging embodiment of a dazzlingly optimistic time in which change felt necessary and possible.

Sinclair was the martyr of the original war on drugs, sentenced to ten years in prison for possession of two marijuana joints. Guitar Army is the iconographic book that proclaimed “Rock and Roll is a Weapon of Cultural Revolution” for young, revved-up readers in 1972. Its author was released from prison just three days after 15,000 people came to see John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Archie Shepp, Allen Ginsberg, and other musicians and leaders demand his freedom.

The updated Guitar Army includes two dozen previously unpublished period photographs, recent writings from John Sinclair, and an introduction from Michael Simmons that leads the reader through the revolutionary times to Sinclair’s life today.

A bonus CD contains rare music recordings of MC5 band members, the revolutionary rock group UP!, Black Panther Bobby Seale on the White Panthers, and original White Panther Party rallies.