With all the research I've done and all the time I've spent thinking about the band, I'm not sure I can put their legacy into a simple sound bite. The story is far more complex than anybody knows. The legacy of the MC5 is an ongoing thing. What their legacy was then is different from what is perhaps perceived today. Twenty years from now, it may be different again.
History is a cumulative thing.
They started to get some recognition during the first wave of punk and then with the next commercial wave of punk in the early '90s, they took that a step further. You find that things in history are cyclical and maybe the next thing that people obsess over is Emerson, Lake and Palmer and quadruple record sets of band member's solos. It may be that it's going take another punk revolution for interest in a band like the MC5 to be taken a step further. It's all cyclical and everything eventually gets examined. What you find is that the fallow periods are necessary for a regenerative process to give way to another resurgence.