Detroit–Ann Arbor

Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan · 1966–1969

The Grande Ballroom opened in Detroit on 7 October 1966, to about sixty people, with the MC5 on the bill, and the band became its anchor, playing there at least once a week. Their manager, John Sinclair, ran Trans-Love Energies, a commune that moved in May 1968 to a big house at 1510 Hill Street in Ann Arbor. For a while the Stooges counted as a Trans-Love band too; they lived across town in their own band house on Packard Road, the Fun House their second album is named after. Sinclair recommended them to the Grande's owner, Russ Gibb, and they first played there in January 1968, on a bill headed by John Mayall.

The two bands met their record label on the same weekend. In September 1968 Elektra's Danny Fields flew in to hear the MC5, at the Grande and at a benefit in Ann Arbor's Union Ballroom where the Stooges were playing too; Fields has said Wayne Kramer told him that if he liked the MC5 he'd like their little brother band. Elektra signed both on 26 September, the Stooges for $5,000 as the small half of what Fields called a package deal. The room came apart within a year: Elektra dropped the MC5 in April 1969, the band left Sinclair's politics that June, and in July, days after both bands played a benefit for him at the Grande, Sinclair went to prison.