FTV: Born to be Wild

 

     A lot of folks say they became fans of Steppenwolf after hearing Born To Be Wild in the movie Easy Rider.  The movie was released in the United States in July of 1969.  By then, I had already been playing their eponymous debut album for a year (and thus Born To Be Wild) as part of my ‘learning to play the drums’ album rotation.  Said album was released in the summer of 1968 and I had the good fortune to hear BTBW performed live by a local band at one of that summer’s teen dances held at the Bishop Baraga High School gym.  I didn’t understand the band’s Neru jacket and love beads style (sorry, I do not remember the band’s name) until I ran out and bought the Steppenwolf album.  The band photo on the jacket solved the wardrobe mystery.  Playing along with drummer Jerry Edmonton really upped my drum playing learning curve and I got my first real dose of Hammond B3 organ courtesy of Goldie McJohn.

     Oddly enough, the entire Hollywood journey for Born to be Wild actually began in Canada.

It was there in 1964 that brothers Dennis and Jerry McCrohan joined the Sparrows, a Toronto, Ontario based band.  Earlier in the 1960s, Dennis’s dad took him to see a concert by Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks.  In an interview with Louder’s Fraser Lewey, Dennis recalled, “I had just got my first electric guitar.  As soon as they launched into Hey Bo Diddley, with Robbie Robertson using a pick between his thumb and first finger and steel finger picks on the next two, playing a Telecaster run through an amp with distortion, I knew I’d heard the guitar sound of my dreams.”  Robertson and the rest of The Hawks would eventually spin off into a different group, The Band.  It would take a few years for young Dennis to start his own musical journey with The Sparrows.

     The leader of The Sparrows was Jack London (an English expat), so the brothers McCrohan changed their surname to Edmonton to sound like they, too, had roots in the British Isles.  Rumour has it that Neil Young may or may not have been one of the many musicians who cycled through the band early on.  They landed on the winning bet in this game of ‘band member roulette’ when they fired one singer and brought in John Kay to replace him.  When the band relocated to California, Dennis changed his name again (this time to ‘Mars Bonfire’) before he departed for a solo career.  Jerry (who retained ‘Edmonton’ for his last name) and The Sparrows then became Steppenwolf.

     Mars Bonfire may have left the band, but he didn’t burn any bridges.  He worked up a demo for Born To Be Wild but it was turned down by several publishers.  I wasn’t in any final form when Mars offered it to his old band to see what they could do with it.  According to the interview with Louder, Bonfire said, “I had been kicked out of my previous apartment for playing my guitar amplified, and had already got complaints in my new apartment.  I did the demo singing quietly and using an unamplified Telecaster.  Luckily, when Steppenwolf agreed to do it, their guitar player Michael Wilk* gave it the big guitar sound that I was dreaming of.”  

     (*editor’s note:  I am not sure if this is an unintentional slip by the author (or Bonfire) or if it is another example of A.I. not getting the facts exactly right.  Michael Wilk is a keyboard player and producer who joined a later version of Steppenwolf.  Wilk’s contributions to Steppenwolf are  prominently featured from their 25th Anniversary album on.  The guitarist in the 1967-68 Steppenwolf lineup was Michael Monarch.  The article published by Louder was based on an interview originally done by Lewry for Classic Rock Magazine – Issue # 254 in September of  2018, hence, a hint that this reprint was probably brought forward to the present after being worked over by A.I.  Hmmm, A.I. makes mistakes?).

     The spark never really caught on to ignite Bonfire’s solo career but he did find work as a staff writer for Universal Music.  As he told Lewry, “I had a regular income and could afford to buy my first car.  I drove out to the beach, then I drove out to the desert, and up to the mountains.  I had a sudden realisation that the area around Los Angeles was really stunning.  It’s very dramatic.  So that’s what caused me to come up with the ‘Get your motor running, head out on the highway’ lyric.  At one point I was in the mountains during a thunderstorm.  It was so heavy I had to pull aside and park.  And that’s when the phrase ‘heavy metal thunder’ came to me.”  Some claim that the lyric also spawned the use of the terms ‘heavy metal’ and ‘metal’ to describe a music genre that are still around today.

     How important was BTBW for Steppenwolf?  It propelled their eponymous first LP to No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard chart and it would eventually become a generational anthem.  It was also important to Bonfire as he notes, “If it weren’t for the incredible good fortune I’ve had with Born To Be Wild, I’d probably be back on the production line at General Motors of Canada in Oshawa, Ontario.  That was the only job I had been trained for.”  Indeed, Mars’ comfortable lifestyle stems from the royalties he has earned from the song.  BTBW has been covered by bands like Blue Oyster Cult, used in countless advertising campaigns, and even been lampooned in various comedic contexts – all streams of revenue for the songwriter.  The song was one of the first six inductees into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame’s new ‘Singles’ category even though Steppenwolf themselves have never been inducted into the R’n’R Hall of Fame.

     While Born To Be Wild became the ultimate anthem for road warriors of all kinds, it doesn’t reflect Bonfire’s low-key, off-road lifestyle:  “Its success has allowed me to pursue my lifelong interests in hiking, snowshoeing, weightlifting, and target practice.  All I ever really need are a pair of running shoes and some old clothes.”  So Mars Bonfire gets a good share of the credit for turning Steppenwolf’s first album into a big seller in the summer of 1968, but would that have been enough to elevate it to the rarified air as ‘one of the greatest hits of all time’?  Maybe, maybe not.  It would take off into the stratosphere thanks to the pioneering use of popular music for more than just a backdrop prop in a movie.

     At a screening of the movie Easy Rider, Bonfire realized the song was going to be more than ‘just a hit record’:  “I went into the restroom,” he recalled, ‘and there was a guy standing at the urinal singing BornTo Be Wild.  He’d only heard it once in the movie and it had already connected with him.”  I will add that this may or may not also be totally true.  When I saw Easy Rider, I poked my buddy and said, “Yeah, what a great use for the song!” because I had been playing the drums and singing along with it for more than a year at that point.

     Just as the 1968 cinematic blockbuster The Graduate, used music as a soundtrack for the whole film and not just for background music, Easy Rider followed a similar formula.  The shot of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper motoring down Route 66 on their choppers was one of many iconic moments in the film, but it almost didn’t happen.  As Hopper and Fonda were getting near the end of the production, they were running out of money.  The cash they needed to license music for the soundtrack was running short so they had to think outside of the box.  To get the licensing for the songs they would use, they invited various musicians to private screenings.  Each screening made use of their songs and then Hopper and Fonda invited them to negotiate a deal.  If a song came in over budget and the artist wouldn’t come to terms they could afford, they moved on.

     The music fit the flow of the film so well, people got the mistaken idea that Hopper shot the movie so it fit the songs.  Hopper said it was just the opposite:  “I didn’t cut the film to the music.  But later, when I put Born To Be Wild on there, it just worked, man.”  The soundtrack came together in a rather unusual manner.  Film cutter Donn Cambern used a lot of music from his own collection to make it more interesting as he previewed over 80 hours of film of Hopper and Fonda biking down the road.  A lot of this music fit nicely and was used as the music budget eventually rose close to one million dollars (and ended up as money well spent).  The budget for the rest of the film came in at only $400,000 (most of which was funded by profits from the TV show The Monkees).  The original idea was to have Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young write the whole soundtrack, but Hopper secretly dismissed them.  He told them, “You guys are really good musicians, but honestly, anybody who rides around in a limo can’t comprehend my movie, so I am going to say ‘no’ to this.  If you guys try to get into the studio again, I may have to cause you some bodily harm.”  The dismissal took place behind Fonda’s back and proved to be another  one of the things that caused Hopper and Fonda to have a strained relationship in later years. 

     Bob Dylan was asked if Rider could use him singing It’s Alright Ma (I Only Bleeding), but for some reason he was reluctant.  Instead, he scribbled out some lyrics on a napkin and gave them to the producers:  “Give this to McGuinn – he will know what to do with it.”  Roger McGuinn turned the lyric into The Ballad of Easy Rider which The Byrds contributed to the soundtrack.

They also performed It’s Alright Ma in the film.  Joining The Byrds and Steppenwolf on the movie soundtrack were The Smiths (who covered The Band’s song The Weight for contractual reasons) and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.  Hendrix would later pen his own Easy Rider tribute song entitled Ezy Ryder.  Easy Rider would bring in $60 million world wide and open the door for a new era of low cost independent films that would follow.  Steppenwolf’s second track in the movie was Hoyt Axton’s The Pusher which my band The Twig learned and played in certain venues.  My mother didn’t like the swearing in the chorus so we stopped rehearsing it in our basement and (naturally) would not play it at school dances.

     As far as Steppenwolf, their first album and the hit single of Born To Be Wild set the bar pretty high.  Often, a strong opening album like this will lead to the dreaded ‘sophomore jinx’ – a term applied to a second album that does not enjoy the massive success of a debut record.  Magic Carpet Ride was the lead single off of Second and when it rose to No. 2 on the charts, Steppenwolf avoided a second album slump.  The one thing the band couldn’t stave off was the another thing that plagues many bands – membership roulette.  After two albums, bassist Rushton Moreve was replaced by The Sparrows original bass player Nick St. Nicholas (Moreve had failed to show up for a few shows).  Lead guitarist Michael Monarch was next one out with Larry Byrom taking his place during the recording of their third LP, Monster.  When St. Nicolas left in April of 1970, George Biondo stepped in.  Byrom’s spot was taken over by Kent Henry in time to record 1971’s For Ladies Only.  The eventual outcome of the shuffle was the February 1972 disbanding of Steppenwolf.

     The 1974 reformation of the band added Bobby Cochran to the original core members of Kay, Biondo, Edmonton and keyboardist Goldie McJohn.  More personnel shuffling would take place before the band splintered again in 1976.  After a four year hiatus, John Kay and Steppenwolf would re-emerge in 1980 with the Palmer brothers (Michael on guitar and Steve on drums) along with new bass and keyboard players.  By the time Live in London was recorded in 1981, Chad Peery and Brett Tuggle had taken over on bass and keys.   A couple of more bass players came and went but it was the addition of the aforementioned Michael Wilk for the Wolftracks album that laid the foundation for the rest of the band’s career.  

     With the addition of Rocket Ritchotte (lead guitar) and Ron Hurst (on drums), keyboardist Wilk moved over to bass for the Rock and Roll Rebels LP in 1987.  It was the band’s first iteration as a four-piece but one last piece was changed when Ritchotte left in 1989 to join David Lee Roth’s band.  Short term sub Les Dudek came in for a year, followed by Steve Fister.  The lead guitar position was finally stabilized when Danny Johnson came on board in 1996.  This was the final line-up that played together through Steppenwolf’s 50th Anniversary Tour in 2018.  At the conclusion of the anniversary tour, Kay announced the band had been officially retired.

     Kay shared his thoughts about Born To Be Wild’s meaning and legacy, saying, “The song wasn’t just about riding motorcycles, but also about the independent, rebellious spirit of teenagers hitting the highway.”  He also commented that it was impossible to NOT play the song live during their shows.  Kay had mixed feelings about BTBW being used in Easy Rider:  “Initially, I thought, well, wait a minute, it’s about motorcycles.  The last thing I know Peter Fonda did was something called The Wild Angels, and that was a bit of a turkey, so you know, what’s this going to be like?”  The band walked into a private screening during the opening scene when Fonda and Hopper are making a drug deal to the strains of The Pusher.  Kay continues, “And then the ending came, and there was just complete silence in the room.”

     My lasting memory of Born To Be Wild is tied to a Cream song called Toad.  Toad was an instrumental riff used to set up Ginger Baker’s drum solo.  When The Twig played Toad, it always ended kind of flat.  I can not remember if it was Mike Kesti (bassist) or Gene Betts (guitarist) who suggested we do the big finish for Toad by doing the short middle drum break from Born to be Wild to take us straight into Born To Be Wild.  We tried it, it worked, and thus became one of our show piece songs during our 1969 to 1971 run as a band.  Thank you Mars Bonfire and Steppenwolf for a great, great classic rock song and many albums worth of memorable tunes – truly you all were Rock ‘n’ Roll Rebels!

 

Top Piece Video:  Rock and Roll Rebels – Still rocking in 2005 – and this is well after he ‘retired’…BTW – that IS Michael Wilk playing keys, not guitar on the first Steppenwolf album as the AI version of the original Classic Rock Magazine article stated . . .