Not everyone can claim to have had a song written for him by John Lennon, but John Sinclair, poet, activist and former manager of Detroit rockers the MC5, can. Thirty-five years after Lennon sang at the rally held in his name, (to free him from prison on marijuana charges), Sinclair is celebrating the new edition of his book of writings from the time, Guitar Army: Rock & Revolution with MC5 and the White Panther Party, a collection originally published in 1972. It’s a trenchant yet trippy document of days long gone—a time when music and musicians were on the frontlines of change and the idea of revolution was in the air. The new edition—carefully crafted, with 40 new photos and a CD featuring MC5 music as well as rare, spoken passages—reads, not only like history, but as a handbook for cultural revolutionaries.

Who better to document those times than Sinclair, who was at the epicenter of that scene? As “the high priest of the Detroit hippies,” a community organizer, and as a journalist for the region’s underground papers, he covered the waterfront in his own color-drenched, beatnik style prose. His wife, Leni, extensively documented the era with photographs and provides many of the book’s iconic images (like the ones of the MC5 flashing their raised fist power salutes before an American flag backdrop).

With Leni and a dozen or so other painters, poets and musicians, Sinclair created the Artist’s Workshop in Detroit in 1964 as a community space, established in the name of supporting an alternative culture. He met MC5’s Wayne Kramer when the guitarist dropped by looking for a place to rehearse his ramshackle rock ‘n’ roll band. Sinclair couldn’t claim to be a fan (his allegiance lay with more experimental jazz and traditional R&B), but he welcomed the Five (who once claimed to be equally influenced by Chuck Berry and Sun Ra) onboard and eventually he became their manager, producing their earliest recordings.

From that point on, Sinclair kept a finger in every part of the region’s underground culture, not only in the press but as a producer of concerts and their accompanying light shows at the Grande (say gran-dee) Ballroom, a sort of Fillmore of the Midwest, where the MC5 were set up as house band. The MC5/Sinclair alliance had a good run, but ultimately the combination of Sinclair’s political being (he formed the White Panther Party in solidarity with the Black Panthers to much confusion of people of both races) and his marijuana doings branded him as “a threat to society” (not exactly the most effective profile for a manager of a fledgling rock band). Sinclair and the MC5 officially parted ways in ’69, but not until after they recorded their watershed album, Kick Out the Jams. The band’s own propensity toward confrontation and a slew of bad luck saw them crash and burn after only two more albums, but all three offer some wild times if getting down to greasy and gutsy rock ‘n’ roll is on your list of life’s top things to accomplish.

These days Sinclair remains tight with the surviving members of the Five—when I spoke to him, he was just sitting down to dinner with Kramer while visiting Los Angeles. In 2003, he left the U.S. for greener pastures in the Netherlands, from where he broadcasts Radio Free Amsterdam, an eclectic stew of way-out sound. As a self-appointed Blues Scholar, he fronts a band that keeps the spirit of free verse and improvisation alive. And though I was told Sinclair doesn’t like the term “protest,” as it applies to music or a movement (I let him bring it up); we talked about the history and hope for music concerned with change and liberty and justice for all people—the very things Lennon once sang about in the song “John Sinclair.”