Less than a year and a half ago, Chris McNulty was surprised to learn he was the son not of a gun, but a Machine Gun.
The Waterford resident was born in 1969 to MC5 drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson — who died May 9 at the age of 75 — and his then-girlfriend Kathleen Casey, who died last year. McNulty was adopted and raised by a couple in Sterling Heights, and it wasn’t until he was in his 20s that they told him they were not his birth parents. And even then they didn’t know who that couple was, as it was a closed adoption.
While McNulty would only have a short time getting to know them, he said he wouldn’t trade a minute of the experience.
“It’s a pretty cool story, very sweet,” says McNulty, 55, who has a wife, three dogs and two cats and works for National Seating & Mobility Inc. He discovered his lineage with help from a genealogist (and distant relative) at ancestry.com. “My first inkling to do this was really medical; when you got to a doctor’s office and they ask, ‘Does this run in your family?’ I would never know the answer to that.
“So I went into this wanting to know what runs in my family. The whole journey was so invigorating and enthralling, so exciting. I never expected that this is what I’d find.”
Thompson, born Dennis Tomich, joined the MC5 in 1965, shortly after the band formed in Lincoln Park. His explosive playing style earned him the Machine Gun nickname (after the Thompson brand submachine gun), and his style was an integral part of the sonic assault of the group’s three studio albums and hugely influential body of work that will be celebrated in October with a Musical Achievement Award from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“He was the only guy for that band,” explains Grammy Award-winning producer and artist Don Was, who was an MC5 fan while growing up in Oak Park and played with Thompson in the DKT/MC5 band he and fellow alumni Wayne Kramer and Michael Davis formed during the mid-2000s. “He was the perfect guy because he had all that energy, but he had a great groove. He was a soul music drummer at heart and just had that blend of high rock ‘n’ roll energy and groove. It wouldn’t have been that band without it.”
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The MC5 also practiced communal living and an ideology of “dope, guns and f***ing in the streets,” along with an association with the White Panther Party co-founded by manager John Sinclair — which McNulty’s mother did not feel was conducive for a child in 1969. “She told me: ‘I just didn’t’ want to raise you in that kind of a lifestyle. I was nervous about how you would turn out if you stayed in that environment. I wanted you to have every opportunity,'” McNulty says.
Music was in his DNA, however. He took up drums as a youth and played in “a junior high, garage type of band” but ultimately “chose the path of sports over music,” specifically hockey. But McNulty remained a big music fan and was well aware of the MC5 for many years before he found out who his father was.
“In the Detroit area, there are certain things you grow up with. Coney islands. The Red Wings. Motown. And the MC5,” he says. “They’re all just part of it.”
While McNulty was growing up, his father was pursuing a variety of different musical adventures — including bands such as The New Order and New Race, along with a variety of business interests. McNulty’s search to discover “my true heritage” started when his adoptive father died about five years ago. He found his birth mother first, during the fall of 2022, living in South Carolina. Shortly after the Ancestry rep told him that she’d traced him to Dennis Tomich — whose name was familiar to McNulty from reading the acclaimed 1996 book “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk.”
“Dennis appears in that book quite a bit,” McNulty says. “I went to Google Images, and as soon as I saw his picture I’m like, ‘Well, OK, I don’t need to see anything else.’ I was, like, a doppelganger. And that was exciting.” It took some additional searching to track down Thompson, who was living in Southgate — which included making contact with bandmate Kramer, who died Feb. 2 in Los Angeles, and his wife, Margaret Saadi Kramer.
“Wayne completely understood what I was trying to do and wished me nothing but luck,” McNulty recalls. “He said, ‘Y’know, Chris, I remember Dennis saying: ‘I’ve got a son out there, somewhere. I hope I get to meet him someday.'”
That day came near the end of 2022. McNulty had tried to contact Thompson via mail and Facebook messages, with no response. “I just finally got up the courage and went and knocked on his door,” he says. “He looked at me and said: ‘Well, where you been? What took so long?’
“He was under the impression that I knew about him. That’s when I said: ‘I just found out who you are. I had no idea.’ And that was the beginning.”
McNulty says he and Thompson — who he called Pops — had “your typical father-son relationship” during their short time together, “just a couple of people that met later in life. I would go and hang out at his house. He wanted to know everything about me and I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to hear the stories.
“I have to admit I was a little star-struck at first. But it went beyond meeting a rock star to, ‘Yeah, you’re my dad.’ We had some pretty deep conversations about life, about death, about love, about music, sports, the state of the world.”
McNulty says Thompson was “a very opinionated person, and extremely intelligent. Dennis kept you on your toes; when we had a conversation I best know what I’m talking about, ’cause he’d call you out. You couldn’t try to BS your way through a topic. … But I think I was able to see a side of Dennis that you don’t hear about as much, too.”
Greg Clark, Thompson’s manager, says that connecting with McNulty meant “everything” to the drummer. “It was just a huge joy for him,” Clark notes. “It was a little shocking at first, but the more time we spent with him, we realized (McNulty) really loved him. He was a huge fan of the band, played drums, loved all the Motor City music. They really became family.”
McNulty last saw Thompson on May 6, visiting him at the MediLodge rehabilitation facility in Taylor, where Thompson was recovering from a heart attack he suffered in April. It was there Thompson learned about the MC5’s Rock Hall honor after six previous nominations. “He said, ‘It’s about f***in’ time!’ — those were his exact words,” McNulty says. “He really was grateful. He said that made him extremely happy and honored. I think he was extremely humbled.”
Thompson was the last living member of the MC5, and it’s been a brutal year for the band with Kramer’s death and Sinclair dying on April 2 — both preceded by Rob Tyner (1991), Fred “Sonic” Smith (1994) and Michael Davis (2012). The music lives on, however — and there’s more of it coming.
Kramer recorded a new MC5 album, “Heavy Lifting,” that’s due out in mid-October with Thompson playing on two tracks. And Clark says he’s looking for distribution of an unreleased Thompson album called “Phantom Patriots,” while some new songs Thompson worked on in recent years are also around.
McNulty plans to be part of all of that, including the Rock Hall ceremony Oct. 19 in Cleveland.
“Everything I’m doing right now is for my dad,” he says. “I want to represent him, posthumously, as best I can. I want to be there for him and preserve his legacy and get people to know him through a different avenue — through his son, even though it was a brief time we shared. I want to make his legacy great.”
