Born To Be Wild: an open-road song becomes hard rock
Mars Bonfire wrote "Born to Be Wild." Songfacts identifies Bonfire as the stage name of Dennis Edmonton, who was not a member of Steppenwolf but whose brother Jerry was the band's drummer. Steppenwolf's official biography calls the song the band's first major hit.
Songfacts records Bonfire's own account of the idea. He was inspired by a poster for "Born to Ride" on Hollywood Boulevard and had just bought a used Ford Falcon. Leeds Music did not initially favor the song, and he later called its success "like a fluke rather than an achievement." In an interview with CHMR FM, quoted by Songfacts, John Kay said Bonfire's original was a folk ballad about life on the open road. Steppenwolf increased the tempo and turned it into a rock song.
The band that made the change had been assembled in stages. Kay was born Joachim Fritz Krauledat in 1944 in East Prussia and fled with his mother to East Germany, then West Germany. The family emigrated to Toronto in 1958. Louder reports that he joined The Sparrows in 1965, that the group became a blues-based, raw rock and roll act after he arrived, and that it moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1966 before settling in San Francisco until the spring of 1967. In 1967 ABC-Dunhill staff producer Gabriel Mekler encouraged Kay to form a group. The original lineup was Kay, Jerry Edmonton, keyboardist Goldy McJohn, guitarist Michael Monarch, who was 17, and bassist Rushton Moreve. The name came from Hermann Hesse's novel.
uDiscover Music places the recording in the autumn of 1967 at American Recorders in Studio City, California, where "Born to Be Wild" was one of the first songs the band cut. The band's biography says the debut album, Steppenwolf, was recorded in four days. It was released on January 29, 1968, on ABC Dunhill and entered the Billboard chart on March 9, 1968. Songfacts reports that the single peaked at number 2 in the United States for three weeks, behind The Rascals' "People Got to Be Free."
One line in the lyric became famous on its own. Songfacts calls it the first popular song to use the phrase "heavy metal." The same page credits William Burroughs with coining the phrase in his 1961 novel The Soft Machine, and quotes his comment to The Paris Review that "heavy metal was sort of the ultimate expression of addiction." Kay disputes that the song is heavy metal. "For me, heavy metal music had its beginnings in Led Zeppelin and beyond," he said, adding, "We always considered Steppenwolf to be a hard rock, blues-based band, with some exceptions in terms of the material."
A year after its release the song found a second audience. Songfacts says it was used in Easy Rider, starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, and began as a placeholder because Fonda wanted Crosby, Stills and Nash for the soundtrack. The producers decided the song belonged in the film. Because of the movie, it became the song most associated with motorcycles. The band's biography adds that "Born to Be Wild" and Hoyt Axton's "The Pusher" were both featured in Easy Rider in 1969, which cemented the group's counterculture status and earned it a biker following.
The film's timing mattered to the album. uDiscover Music reports that Easy Rider came out in July 1969, extending the debut album's run, and that the soundtrack entered the U.S. chart that September with the two Steppenwolf songs as its opening cuts. The debut spent 87 weeks on the Billboard best sellers list and peaked at number 6.
Kay has been blunt about the song's reach. He told Rolling Stone, "Every generation thinks they're born to be wild and they can identify with that song as their anthem." In 2004 he refused Paris Hilton's request to use it on The Simple Life 2, telling the Toronto Star, "There are certain things even a rock 'n' roller will not stoop to." The song has been recorded by U2, Blue Oyster Cult, MC Shan, and The Cult. Slade used it as a regular encore in the 1970s and included it on Slade Alive!, Ozzy Osbourne and Miss Piggy performed it as a duet on Kermit Unpigged in 1994, Hinder recorded it in 2007 for TNT's NASCAR coverage, and a 2017 Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster Super Bowl ad directed by the Coen Brothers used it. In 2018 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognized it in its singles category, along with five other songs.
The rest of Steppenwolf's catalog gave it company. According to the band's biography, "Magic Carpet Ride" from The Second was a Top Five hit, "Rock Me" from At Your Birthday Party reached the Top Ten, and the title track of Monster became a surprise hit. The group disbanded on February 14, 1972, when Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty declared it "Steppenwolf Day." Kay later relaunched the band several times, and its last show was on October 14, 2018, in Baxter Springs, Kansas. Worldwide record sales exceed 25 million units, and its songs have been licensed for about 50 films.
- Steppenwolf, official band biography — steppenwolf.com
- Songfacts, Born to Be Wild — www.songfacts.com
- uDiscover Music, When Steppenwolf Showed Off Their Wild Side — www.udiscovermusic.com
- Louder, Born To Be Wild: The epic story of Steppenwolf — www.loudersound.com