Get your
motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for
adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it
happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns
at once and
Explode into space
I like smoke and
lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the
feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the
world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once and
Explode
into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born
to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
Born
to be wild
Born to be wild
– "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf (Debut 1968)
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed "Born to Be Wild" at No. 129 on the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. Also in 2004, it finished at No. 29 on AFI's 100 Years … 100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. In 2009, it was named the 53rd best hard rock song of all time by VH1. In 2018, the song was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a new category for singles.
Everyone has heard “Born to Be Wild.” It has become a rock anthem for freedom and one of the most famous road songs of all time. Some critics even said the song is a generational icon. It has been featured in films and other media productions so many times that its driving beat and lyrics are instantly recognizable.
Juliette Jagger – Canadian writer, music journalist, and editor – says …
“Perhaps the real reason that the song remains at the forefront of our collective consciousness is because a at the height of the counterculture movement of the 1960s, it not only bottled that sense of reckless abandon that tends to define youth, it spoke to something that continues to hold true generation after generation and that’s our own inherent belief that we are all born to be wild.”
(Juliette Jagger. Origin Stories: Mars Bonfire on Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” https://juliettejagger.com/origin-stories-mars-bonfire-on-steppenwolfs-born-to-be-wild/. 2010.)
However, did you know John
Kay – Steppenwolf's famous lead singer and gifted songwriter –
did not write “Born to Be Wild”? It was written by Mars Bonfire,
the stage name of Dennis Edmonton, who was previously a member of the
Sparrows, the predecessor band to Steppenwolf. His brother was
Steppenwolf's drummer.
Explaining how he came up with the
song, Bonfire said …
"I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard one day and saw a poster in a window saying 'Born to Ride' with a picture of a motorcycle erupting out of the earth like a volcano with all this fire around it. Around this time I had just purchased my first car, a little secondhand Ford Falcon. So all this came together lyrically: the idea of the motorcycle coming out along with the freedom and joy I felt in having my first car and being able to drive myself around whenever I wanted.
“'Born To Be Wild' didn't stand out initially. Even the publishers at Leeds Music didn't take it as the first or second song I gave them. They got it only because I signed as a staff writer. Luckily, it stood out for Steppenwolf. It's like a fluke rather than an achievement, though.'"
(“Born to Be Wild.” Songfacts. https://www.songfacts.com/facts/steppenwolf/born-to-be-wild.)
According to John Kay, "Born To Be Wild" almost never happened. Kay says …
“'Born To Be Wild' was the third single off our first album and the record company argued about which of the tunes that remained from the album, that had not been released to date, should be the next single. So management and band were on one side and the label on the other side had this tug of war and finally the compromise was to put "Born To Be Wild" on one side, put the other song that the record company preferred on the opposite side, send it to radio, and let them fight it out. Well, within a relatively short period of time (early summer of 1968) 9 out of 10 played 'Born To Be Wild.'"
Bonfire remembers hearing the Steppenwolf rendition of his song on the radio for the first time …
“I actually didn’t hear the final version of ‘Born To Be Wild’ until months after it was recorded and released. When I did finally hear it on the radio, I just thought they did a superb job. John Kay really had the right voice for it, and their new guitar player Michael Monarch took the basic guitar riff I had given him on my demo and gave it a totally iconic sound.”
(Juliette Jagger. Origin Stories: Mars Bonfire on Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” https://juliettejagger.com/origin-stories-mars-bonfire-on-steppenwolfs-born-to-be-wild/. 2010.)
Origins Of Heavy Metal?
They lyrical line "heavy metal thunder" is said to make the tune the first popular song to use the phrase "heavy metal," which became a term for hard rock. William Burroughs is credited with coining that phrase, as he used it in his 1961 novel The Soft Machine, describing his character Uranian Willy as "the Heavy Metal Kid." Burroughs told The Paris Review: "I felt that heavy metal was sort of the ultimate expression of addiction, that there's something actually metallic in addiction, that the final stage reached is not so much vegetable as mineral."
Six years later, the term heavy metal crossed over into music through a classic rock song. Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild,” recorded in 1967 and released in 1968 on their first long-playing record, Steppenwolf, contained the famous lyric: “I like smoke and lightnin’, heavy metal thunder.”
(Richard Havers. “Heavy Metal Thunder: The Origins Of Heavy Metal.” https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/metal-music-heavy-thunder/. March 29, 2022.)
This song can get your motor running, but despite the famous lyric, it's not really heavy metal. "For me, heavy metal music had its beginnings in Led Zeppelin and beyond," John Kay said in a Songfacts interview. "We always considered Steppenwolf to be a hard rock, blues-based band, with some exceptions in terms of the material."
Of course, most people
know “Born to Be Wild” was used in the 1969 movie Easy Rider,
a counterculture classic starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda as
bikers who ride from Los Angeles to New Orleans. Another Steppenwolf
song, "The Pusher," was also used in the film.
When
the movie was in production, this was simply a placeholder, since
Fonda wanted Crosby, Stills and Nash to do the soundtrack. However,
Fonda’s plan did not pan out for two reasons. The first was that
editor Donn Cambern had used his own record collection to avoid
boredom while cutting the film (the first edit of Easy Rider
was 4 ½ hours long). As a result, various scenes were cut so they
fit perfectly with Cambern’s records, but were then difficult to
synch with independently-written tracks.
The second reason that CSN did not write the music for Easy Rider was due to a power struggle between producer Fonda and director Hopper. Hopper eventually prevailed, so Easy Rider ended up using existing rock songs. However, it was one of the first movies that made extensive use of rock songs to enhance the film (the first was probably the 1967 The Graduate). Easy Rider featured music by Steppenwolf, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Byrds, Roger McGuinn, and other 60s bands.
(Tim Londergan. “Born To Be Wild: Steppenwolf; appearance in Easy Rider; Blue Oyster Cult.” https://timscoverstory.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/born-to-be-wild-steppenwolf-appearance-in-easy-rider-blue-oyster-cult/. September 4, 2018.)
Partly because of the song's use in Easy Rider, it has become the song most associated with motorcycles, especially Harley Davidsons. The stretched out bike with high handlebars and an over-the-top paint job in the movie is still considered a “quintessentially American folk art form.” That "Captain America" bike, named for its distinctive American flag color scheme and known for its sharply-angled long front end, was partially destroyed in the film's finale, and then rebuilt by actor Dan Haggerty. (The three other bikes used in the production were stolen prior to the film's release.) According to Brian Chanes, acquisitions manager for the auction house, the bike's estimated value is between $1 million and $1.2 million.
(Tom Dreisbach. “Behind The Motorcycles In 'Easy Rider,' A Long-Obscured Story.” NPR. October 11, 2014.)
History Note:
The motorcycles used in Easy Rider were not simply rolled out of a showroom and in front of the camera. They were "choppers," crafted by hand.
Choppers are "a type of customized motorcycle usually defined by a stretched out wheel-base, and pulled back handlebars, and a sissy bar, and a wild paint job," says Paul d'Orleans, the author of The Chopper: The Real Story. "It's a quintessentially American folk art form."
The "Captain America" bike is an unmistakable and legendary chopper, and has made an enormous impact on the world of motorcycling.
The bikes in Easy Rider, d'Orleans says, "did more to popularize choppers around the world than any other film or any other motorcycle. I mean, suddenly people were building choppers in Czechoslovakia, or Russia, or China, or Japan."
Whose hands turned the wrenches? Who welded the steel? Most of the time, d'Orleans says, choppers are associated with their builders, "because they are an artistic creation. And curiously, the Easy Rider bikes were never associated with any particular builder."
John Kay
The amazing story of John Kay, the front-man for Steppenwolf, fits the theme of freedom so well. You might say “Born to Be Wild” is a symbol of Kay's life in that determination and liberty have been a part of his existence from the very beginning. He's been kicking down barriers and beating the odds with complete consistency.
John Kay was born Joachim Fritz Krauledat in 1944 – during Workd War II – in the section of Germany then known as East Prussia. He never knew his father, who was killed fighting in Russia a month before John’s birth.
Within the first year of John’s life, his mother noticed nystagmus, his rhythmic shaking of the eyes and squinting in bright lighting. With no local eye care available, she traveled with her infant son to the nearby town of Erfurt to seek eye care for him. He was provided with prescription eye-wear, but most importantly, the doctor had the lenses tinted to help reduce his aversion to the light. An understanding of achromatopsia in the 1940s was very limited. Being a very rare condition, most eye doctors had probably never been confronted with a case.
His doctor suspected a nutritional cause and suggested that better nutrition might be helpful. In post-war East Germany, food supplies were scarce. His mother had long worried that the strain of losing her husband during the pregnancy and limited food during the war may have caused his vision problems. John’s mother began to realize that fleeing to West Germany where food supplies were more plentiful might offer her son more help with his vision. (Ironically, though achromatopsia is a genetic disease, recent animals studies suggest that antioxidant vitamins may be helpful in achromatopsia.)
When John was less than a year old, he and his mother fled to what would soon become Communist-controlled East Germany. There, John’s mother worked tirelessly as a seamstress to earn money for them and to save enough money to leave East Germany. She was eventually able to pay two guides to get them across the border. When John was four years old, Elsbeth, John and his Aunt Ida crossed the border between East and West Germany.
“'Pack your rucksack Joachim. We’re going on a trip.’ That was all my mother told me the night we escaped from East Germany … We crossed near the Hartz Mountains south of Brunswick and Hannover. I remember seeing search lights moving … As the women passed under the wire, one of our guides took me by the hand and led me through, As I crouched I could hear a commotion, then gunfire, maybe a machine gun burst. Hurry, hurry, hurry just keep running implored our guide.”
(John Kay. Autobiography: Magic Carpet Ride. 1994.)
Passing quickly through a refugee camp, Elsbeth, John, and Aunt Ida traveled to reach family members who had already made it into West Germany. By the end of the year, Elsbeth and John had settled in a small attic room in Hannover, a city on the Leine River in an area of rich farmland. It was during this time that his mother would remarry.
Growing up in Hannover, West Germany, John was profoundly affected by the American rock ‘n’ roll he heard on U.S. Armed Forces Radio. Though he didn’t speak English at the time, the music’s primal energy touched something deep in him, instilling both a driving ideal of personal freedom and an abiding interest in American culture.
That vision became a reality in 1958, when the teenager emigrated with his mother and stepfather to Toronto. There, he immersed himself in the rock, R&B, country and gospel music that emanated from late-night U.S. clear-channel AM stations, while learning English from the speed-rapping DJs who dominated the rock ‘n’ roll airwaves.
(“John Kay: From Rock Star to Elephants, We Were All Born To Be Wild #Steppenwolf to #MaueKayFoundation #VisuallyImpaired.” (Transcript Provided) https://blindabilities.com/?p=3997.)
John found his first exposure to the school system in Canada to be very difficult. The language barrier combined with his vision problems together seem difficult to overcome.
“I would eventually learn the language, though those first few months were difficult. What was insurmountable, however, was again the eyesight problem. Even though I was in the front row, I now had to decipher the hand writing of someone writing in an unusual handwriting style, in a language I didn’t understand, all from a distance I couldn’t see from.”
(John Kay. Autobiography: Magic Carpet Ride. 1994.)
John, however, was not left to flounder in regular classes. He was soon evaluated by a vision consultant to the school system, who recommended Sight Saving classes, which were held at the Deer Elementary School. Sight Saving classes were structured to provide a better environment for those with visual impairments, but not completely blind. These classes were sponsored by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) and are credited by John as an important bridge from his education in Germany to the Canadian Public schools. It allowed him the additional time and vision help he needed to learn English.
But perhaps one of the most important aids John received from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind was a Wollensach reel-to-reel tape recorder. He really was unsure if he needed the Talking Book Program, which is what they were offering it for, but he knew the tape recorder could be used to record music and to record his singing voice.
“She then told me that the CNIB would provide me with a Wollensach reel-to-reel tape recorder to listen to these tapes. Seeing my window of opportunity, I immediately jumped at the offer, not for the taped book but for the tape machine itself. It allowed me (may the RIAA forgive me) to tape songs from the radio and I borrowed records to tape as well.… I also started taping my first attempts at singing in English.”
(John Kay. Autobiography: Magic Carpet Ride. 1994.)
After two years in sight saving classes, John would return to Humberside Collegiate and enroll in the 10th grade. He had lost a year, but the language barrier had been surpassed and he was ready to return. John’s colorblindness became an issue due to an interest in electronics. His complete lack of color vision would block this as a carrier path, but it kept him focused on his goal of music.
This desire to pursue music as a career began to be an obsession. By the summer of 1958, John had bought his first guitar, a $55 Kay guitar at the Simpson-Sears department store in Toronto. Stan King, a friend from Sight Saving class, loaned him a Hank Williams songbook. From this book, he learned to play chords on guitar. And, the rest, as they say, was history.
Live Your Life
Words and Music by John
Kay
I was raised in the ruins, mama, 'till I was
thirteen
Every day I heard the radio
Every night I had the same
old dream
To sing a song, oh, baby, to watch my name in lights
If
you wanna see your dream come true
Honeychild, you gotta get right
down and fight
Well I sailed cross the ocean, girl, I felt so all
alone
Many times I thought about goin' right back home
But the
Joy I found in song gave me the will to carry on
Live your
life the way you want to
Don't let fools lead you astray
Live
you dreams so you hold on to
All you need along the way
I was payin' my dues
right here in the land of the free
All the time I learned to sing
along
I could not speak and I could barely see
Still all the
while I knew where I was at
But the people that believed in
me
Lord, I could count them all in seconds flat
Well, someday I
would be, I knew it all along
A gentleman of leisure, girl, right
or wrong
And though my dream has come and gone
There's plenty
more where those came from
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