01/06/2026
Rob Tyner went out to the grocery store.
Berkley, Michigan. September 17, 1991. He was 46. Lived in the suburbs. Had a wife named Becky and three kids.
He drove home. Pulled into the driveway. Parked behind his son's car.
Then he had a heart attack.
He slumped forward at the wheel. His foot pressed the gas. His car rolled into the back of his son's car.
A neighbor found him unconscious.
He died 45 minutes later at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.
The obituary said he had been the lead singer of MC5.
Most readers under 40 had never heard of MC5.
But the bands he had inspired were running the world.
Here's how he got there.
Robert W. Derminer was born December 12, 1944, in Detroit.
A nerdy kid. Loved jazz. Loved science fiction. Loved cartoons. Talented artist. Drew for his high school yearbook. Could draw anything.
He grew up listening to John Coltrane records. McCoy Tyner played piano in Coltrane's band.
Robert worshipped McCoy Tyner. When he started a band, he changed his last name. Took Tyner as his own.
He became Rob Tyner.
In 1964 he joined a Detroit band that would become MC5. Motor City Five.
He had auditioned to be the bass player. The others said no. Use your voice.
Five working-class Detroit kids. Guitars. Drums. Rage.
They wanted to be Chuck Berry. They ended up something else.
They started playing the Detroit ballroom circuit. The Grande Ballroom. Loud, fast, aggressive sets that nobody else was playing.
By 1968 they were the loudest band in America.
Their manager was a poet and activist named John Sinclair. Founder of the White Panther Party.
Sinclair pushed them political.
They wrote songs about Black Power. About Vietnam. About s*x. About drugs.
In August 1968 they played Lincoln Park in Chicago. Outside the Democratic National Convention.
While the cops were beating protesters in the streets, MC5 played a free anti-war concert. They were the only national act brave enough to show up.
The set ended when the riot reached them.
In January 1969 they released a live album. Kick Out the Jams.
Rob Tyner opened the title track by screaming:
"KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERF**KERS!"
Record stores refused to stock it. Radio stations refused to play it.
The album reached the top 30 anyway.
The single became a generation's battle cry.
Rob Tyner ended up on the cover of Rolling Stone. January 1969. Huge afro. Wide eyes. Pure energy.
He was 24 years old.
MC5 should have been the biggest band in America.
They weren't.
Their manager Sinclair got sentenced to 10 years for giving two joints to an undercover cop. Their record label dropped them. Their political messaging scared off mainstream radio. Their drug use ate them alive.
They released two more albums. Back in the USA. High Time.
Neither sold.
By 1972 the MC5 had broken up.
The band that had invented half of what would become punk rock. Disbanded. Broke. Bitter.
The Ramones wouldn't release their first album for another 4 years. The S*x Pistols wouldn't form for another 3.
MC5 had done all of it first.
Nobody knew.
Rob Tyner went home to the Detroit suburbs.
He had a wife. Three kids. A house in Berkley.
He tried to keep playing. Started a band called the New MC5. Then the Rob Tyner Band. Then Rob Tyner and the National Rock Group.
None of them went anywhere. No record deals. Local gigs. Small crowds.
He turned to writing. Became a contributor to CREEM magazine. To Phonograph Record. To NME in London.
In 1977 NME sent him to England to write about the new British punk scene.
He met The Clash. The S*x Pistols. Dr. Feelgood. The Damned.
Every one of them told him the same thing.
They had grown up worshipping MC5. The band that didn't exist anymore.
The kids who had loved his band now had record deals he didn't have.
Rob wrote a cover story about them. Gave them his blessing. Came home.
He kept making music. Managed local Detroit bands. Produced demos for younger artists. Drew cartoons. Did benefit gigs for Vietnam veterans.
In 1990 he released an album called Blood Brothers. Almost nobody bought it.
He was 46 years old.
Two years before he died, he had a heart attack. His doctor told him to change his lifestyle.
He did. He cleaned up.
Then on September 17, 1991, on his way back from the grocery store, his heart gave out anyway.
He was found slumped in his car. In his own driveway.
He died at the hospital.
He left Becky a widow. His son Robin. His daughters Amy and Elizabeth.
The next year, in 1992, an MC5 retrospective box set came out on Elektra Records.
The same year, Ben Edmonds published his biography of the band. "No Greater Noise."
Suddenly MC5 was hot again.
The Clash had been screaming about them for years. Now Nirvana was citing them. Pearl Jam. Rage Against the Machine. Henry Rollins. Mudhoney.
The punk and grunge bands that ran rock music in the 90s all pointed back to one band.
The band Rob Tyner had been the lead singer of.
A decade later, the surviving MC5 members reunited for tours. Did interviews. Wayne Kramer became famous all over again as a guitar legend and an activist.
Rob Tyner missed all of it.
He had been the voice. The face on the Rolling Stone cover. The afro that defined the visual image of the band.
He died one year too early.
Here's what makes this story matter.
Rob Tyner screamed "kick out the jams motherf**kers" on a record in 1969 and accidentally invented half of what rock music would become for the next 30 years.
Punk rock owes him. Heavy metal owes him. Hardcore owes him. The entire alternative rock movement of the 80s and 90s.
He never made the money. Never got the lifetime achievement award. Never lived to see his band get the recognition.
He worked as a music journalist and a local band manager.
He had a heart attack at 46 in his own driveway. Coming back from buying groceries for his family.
Wayne Kramer, the MC5 guitarist, said it later.
"There never was a singer like Rob Tyner and there never will be another singer like Rob Tyner."
On a 1969 album cover, Rob Tyner stares straight into the camera with the biggest afro in American rock.
The original front man of the most influential band you've never heard of.
A live album. A festival riot. A scream at a 1968 political convention.
That's what's left.
His crime? Being too early.
His legacy? Every band that picked up a guitar and decided to mean it. Every kid who shouted at a microphone like the world depended on what they were saying. Every protest song that came after.
The retrospective box set came out one year later.
Rob never got to hold a copy.
~Forgotten Stories
