From fan to family: A son discovers his father — and a link to a Detroit rock legacy

Growing up in suburban Detroit, Chris McNulty was a die-hard rock lover from early childhood — a fan whose passions included the Motor City's rich musical heritage and homegrown bands such as the fabled MC5.

As an enthusiastic student of rock history, he was familiar with the nuts and bolts of MC5 lore, from singer Rob Tyner's hippie Afro to the band's Grande Ballroom home base and its generational anthem, "Kick Out the Jams."

McNulty's rock fervor helped define the first five decades of his life. Then he made a discovery that would dramatically change the rest of it.

In 2022, at age 53, McNulty learned he was the child of MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson.

Getting to that revelation involved a long, twisting saga of family secrets, DNA tests, genealogical detective work and one lucky remark overheard on a golf course.

When he finally stepped onto Thompson's Downriver porch in March 2023 — steeling himself to inform a reclusive, 74-year-old former rock star he was a long-lost son — McNulty wasn't sure what to expect.

But he and Thompson clicked. Their faces were similar, their builds identical. Even their voices sounded alike. They had common interests, including, most crucially, a shared love of music.

Thompson, the MC5 drummer turned machinist, had grown into his senior years presumably childless. But McNulty at his doorstep made sense. There had been that one girlfriend, after all: Kathy, the Detroit rock scenester, back in '68 before Thompson and the MC5 departed for a stretch of European work.

From that 2023 doorstep meeting, Thompson and McNulty grew close, forging a belated father-son bond amid lengthy conversations about the parallel lives they had unknowingly experienced all those years, 35 miles apart in metro Detroit.

At first, the starstruck McNulty found himself saying "Dennis." Soon enough, it became "Pops."

"I'd call him up — 'Hey, what are you doing tonight? I'm going to swing by after work,'" McNulty said. "I loved just hanging out with him. Because I could listen to his stories over and over again."

Their relationship took root just in time. This spring, 14 months after McNulty connected with his biological father, Thompson died following a series of health battles exacerbated by a heart attack.

Before his May 9 death, Thompson was the last surviving member of the combustible, soul-fueled, revolutionary rock group founded in the mid-'60s as the Motor City Five. His MC5 bandmates —Tyner, Fred Smith, Michael Davis and Wayne Kramer — had gone before him.

Becky Tyner, widow of the MC5's Rob Tyner, remained tight with Thompson in his final years.

"Dennis would tell me, 'I always hoped I had someone out there.' Chris brought so much to him. Dennis was thrilled beyond belief by that, and he just embraced it," she said. "Chris was such a wonderful gift for that last period of his life."

There was one more late blessing for Thompson. Two weeks before his death, as his condition deteriorated in a Wyandotte hospital, the drummer got some big news from his newfound son: The MC5 had been selected for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

That April announcement came after years of dashed hopes. Six times the MC5 had been nominated for the rock hall, and six times the band fell short. Now justice was served.

And so on Saturday, McNulty will be in Cleveland, part of the MC5 family contingent as the Detroit band is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in an arena filled with fellow music heavyweights.

Thompson's final stretch of life was spent in a hospice bed fading in and out of consciousness.

"When somebody would tell him about the hall of fame, it was like he was hearing it for the first time," McNulty recounted. "We would say, 'Hey, did you hear the MC5 are being inducted?' and Dennis would say: 'It's about f-ing time!' That was always his quote. We made sure to play it up for him. And in those moments of lucidity, he was really grateful for the recognition."

Musical DNA

McNulty said he was probably 5 or 6 when he became captivated by drums. In his boyhood Sterling Heights bedroom, he'd arrange his pillows into a makeshift kit and bang along to the radio.

Growing up with the parents he knew as Mom and Dad, his enthusiasm for rock music only grew. He became a fan of bands like Kiss and the New York Dolls, lapping up magazines such as Creem and eventually gravitating to heavy metal and punk — genres firmly stamped with the primordial imprint of the MC5. In junior high, he joined a neighborhood garage band, pounding away on a pieced-together drum set.

McNulty was born in May 1969, meaning he'd been in the womb when the MC5 recorded its raucous debut album, "Kick Out the Jams," live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom that prior Halloween.

Ultimately, sports prevailed as the main pursuit for the teenage McNulty ("I chose hockey sticks rather than drumsticks"), but he remained a serious music aficionado, priding himself on eclectic tastes and a well-read grasp of American music history.

By the time he graduated from Sterling Heights High School in '87, his parents were several years divorced. An only child, he spent his teen years under the roof of his dad, a manufacturing rep named Gary McNulty, and he was largely estranged from his mom.

Gary was a kind man and good dad, Chris McNulty recalled. Still, as years passed, McNulty found himself with creeping uncertainties. For starters, he looked nothing like either of his parents, including the mom with the Italian accent and jet-black hair.

Feeling protective of the man who raised him, McNulty kept his internal confusion to himself.

"As I got older, I started to think, 'Hmm, this doesn't make any sense.' But I never got to that actual point of: 'Dad, was I adopted?'" McNulty said. "I never asked the question that we were both kind of dancing around."

But at age 29, as McNulty was set to marry the woman who remains his wife today, he was asked by his dad to sit down for an emotional life talk.

At last, McNulty learned he'd come to his parents through a closed adoption in 1969. His dad knew only a few basic details of McNulty's origins: He'd been adopted at the St. Vincent and Sarah Fisher Center, the birth mother was younger than the father, and the father had attended Wayne State University.

For McNulty, the disclosure brought relief and — once again — a sense of deference to his dad. He wasn't going to start investigating his roots anytime soon.

"I knew it could potentially hurt him," McNulty said.

But the adoption truth was now a new reality for McNulty as he embarked on married life in the Clarkston area and built a career in medical sales.

"Because of my passion for music, my wife would often joke, 'Wouldn't it be cool if your dad was some rock star?' I'd say, 'I wonder if my brother is Kid Rock or somebody like that,' " he recalled. "It's really hard to explain, but somehow I just always kind of knew."

The search begins

When Gary McNulty died in 2019, his son was still hesitant to crack open the door to explore his birth origins.

"But the wheels did start turning a little more," he said. "And it still took me a couple of years to actually do it."

Chris McNulty took the plunge in summer 2022, signing up with ancestry.com, submitting a DNA test and — now approaching his mid-50s — hoping to at least get a bit of insight into family medical history.

Before long, he was contacted by a woman named Andrea. DNA matches showed that she was a distant blood cousin of McNulty. Moreover, Andrea had a background in genealogy and said she'd be happy to help him trace his roots.

"I took a leap of faith and trusted her," McNulty said. "And I thank God every day that I said yes, because I didn't realize how hard it is to build a family tree when you don't know where you came from."

Andrea made quick strides, nailing down great-great relatives of McNulty and his mostly Slavic roots. Within weeks came the first big break: She'd isolated two women — a pair of sisters — one of whom was most certainly McNulty's biological mother.

After several weeks, McNulty managed to find contact info for one of them. He made the phone call, a woman picked up, and McNulty laid out his situation.

The woman instantly responded: "Oh, no, no — I'm not your mother. My sister is your mother. Let me contact her."

A big piece of the puzzle was now in place. Kathleen Casey, McNulty's birth mother, was now living in a small trailer in South Carolina. She'd been 19 when she gave birth to McNulty and surrendered him for adoption at Southfield's Sarah Fisher Center.

Andrea, meanwhile, was making more progress with her genealogy research. McNulty was on a Sunday morning golf outing in October 2022 when she phoned with another hot lead.

"I have a hypothesis on your father. I think I narrowed it down. His name is Dennis Tomich," she said. "But he's also known as Dennis Thompson. Now, I don't know if you're into music, but —"

McNulty finished her sentence: "He was the drummer for the MC5."

Andrea wasn't 100% sure this was the right guy. Head spinning, McNulty hit the internet.

"I went right to Google Images, found pictures of Dennis, and it was like: Oh yeah. It was unmistakable," he said.

McNulty excitedly told his golf partners of his possible find — and got some unexpected corroboration from one of them, a man in his 60s.

"He goes, 'Wait, did you say Dennis Thompson? You know, when I was 13, the MC5 had me collect money for a concert they played in a backyard,'" McNulty recounted.

The man continued: "I met Dennis, and he had this really hot girlfriend. Her name was Kathy Casey."

For McNulty, it was "just one of those moments that doesn't happen very often, where everything aligns."

"I said: 'Wow. That's my father.' "

Father and child reunion

Identifying Dennis Thompson was one thing. Tracking him down in 2022 was something else altogether.

If Tyner and guitarist Kramer were the MC5's inventive, jazz-freak carburetors, then guitarist Fred Smith (the eventual husband of rock poet Patti Smith) was the musical gear fluid and bassist Davis the piston. Thompson, exuding sweaty, blue-collar energy onstage, was the band's heavy engine block.

The Lincoln Park-bred drummer could be stubborn and cantankerous, often at odds with the leftist politics espoused by their onetime manager John Sinclair, the Detroit counterculture impresario who died this April. Thompson split from the group in 1972 before the band broke up entirely, though he would link back up with bandmates through the decades for assorted gigs.

But by the 2020s, now in his 70s, he'd slipped well off the public radar. Thompson was reclusive, with little social media presence or even an obvious email account.

"When I was trying to find Dennis, it was by any means necessary. I had to get hold of him," McNulty said. "Even if it was just Dennis Tomich, the tool-and-die worker."

Digging around, McNulty finally managed to turn up an apparent Southgate residential address, in the heart of Thompson's Downriver roots. He mailed a letter.

"Come to find out Dennis never opened his mail, unless it was a bill," McNulty said with a laugh. "He had stacks of mail on the kitchen table. This was a guy who was detaching himself."

A couple of months passed with no response. McNulty began making drives to the Southgate neighborhood, chickening out, and turning around.

"I didn't know what point he was at. I didn't want to upend his life," McNulty said. "But I finally got the gumption to go knock on the door."

The man who answered was notably unshaven and unkempt — "but definitely Dennis," McNulty recounted.

"I said: 'My name is Chris McNulty. Do you happen to know Kathleen Casey?' He said he did. I said: 'I'm her son. Which means I'm your son.' "

McNulty will forever remember Thompson's response.

"He said: 'Well, holy s-! Where you been?'"

After a short exchange, they ended that initial meetup on the porch. Thompson wasn't feeling well, but he hoped they'd make plans to link back up soon.

McNulty left Southgate that day on the verge of tears: "Oh my God. I just met my father."

It would be many weeks before they'd meet up again — Thompson had a habit of ignoring his cellphone, McNulty said with a chuckle — but when they did, the relationship quickly deepened.

"We never went anywhere. We just hung out in his house — just sitting and listening to music, watching TV, talking about his life, my life, how I was raised," McNulty said. "He wanted to know everything about me, and I wanted to know everything about him."

Their shared musical obsessions were an instant bond. When McNulty made a mixtape of some personal favorites for Thompson, for instance, they discovered they were both big fans of the Detroit rock 'n' roll pioneer Jack Scott.

"And it was funny, because he would tell me these MC5 stories, and I had to try really hard not to finish them for him because I'd been reading about it for all those years," McNulty said.

Thompson insisted he never knew that his girlfriend Kathy Casey was pregnant in 1969, a period of busy work and touring for the MC5.

McNulty, in the meantime, had connected with Casey. In her telling, Thompson knew she was pregnant but disowned her when he returned from a tour to learn she'd given the baby up for adoption.

She also told McNulty she'd thought of him every day since. But amid her regrets, she was also confident in her decision, uncertain she could have properly raised a child amid the wild rock environment she was immersed in then.

It turns out McNulty also tracked down his birth mother just in the nick of time. She passed away in August 2023.

Becky Tyner remembers Casey as "very, very pretty and sweet." As Thompson's girlfriend, she had been a regular visitor to the MC5's Hill Street house in Ann Arbor, although Tyner never realized she was pregnant.

Just a few months before Thompson's death in May, Tyner invited the drummer and his newfound son for dinner.

"Chris walked through the door, and I just couldn't speak. He reminded me so much of Dennis," she said. "The resemblance was amazing — even his voice. It was just an instant bonding. My youngest daughter burst into tears. It was all so loving and so sweet."

And Tyner could see how much McNulty meant to her longtime friend:

"Dennis liked to say, 'There's my sonny boy.' "

'Universe aligned just right'

When McNulty rolled up to the Grande Ballroom one recent afternoon for a Free Press photo session at the MC5's old stomping grounds, his vehicle sported an easy identifier: a Michigan license plate labeled MC5MGT.

It's short for "MC5 Machine Gun Thompson," a nod to the nickname his biological father earned for his aggressive drum style.

Since linking up with his biological father and becoming part of the MC5 extended family, McNulty has embedded himself even deeper into Detroit's rock world, attending shows, events, discussion panels and more.

The scene longtimers — the old Grande stalwarts who still maintain a thriving community — have gotten a kick out of the unexpected new entrant into their orbit. Some have done double-takes upon meeting McNulty, seeing his resemblance to Thompson.

Saturday's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction comes amid a bonanza of MC5 activity, including the brilliant new "MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band" (Hatchette Book Group), published last week. The 304-page volume is a definitive in-person account of the late, great Detroit band, overseen by veteran editors Jaan Uhelszki and Brad Tolinski, based on work begun by the late rock journalist Ben Edmonds.

Friday will bring the release of "Heavy Lifting," the first new album in five decades under the MC5 banner. Undertaken by guitarist Wayne Kramer before his death in February, the Bob Ezrin-produced record features contributions from Tom Morello, Slash and others — along with the final studio performance by Thompson on drums.

For McNulty, the MC5 connection has been a fun bonus atop a life discovery that reshaped his understanding of himself.

"I can't help but think that somehow, someway, the universe aligned just right," he said. "This moment happened, and we all got some closure. It's just so hard to explain. I mean, when you're sitting in front of your father, realizing this kinship we shared with music, our cadence, all the similarities — that's just so incredible."

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or & Roll Hall of Fame 2024 Induction Ceremony

Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, Cleveland

Streaming live on Disney+

Taped show to air Jan. 1 on ABC-TV