Steppenwolf – "Born To Be Wild" (1968)

I like smoke and lightnin’

Heavy metal thunder!

A couple of years ago, I told you about teaching the following lyrics from the Spiral Staircase’s 1969 hit, “More Today Than Yesterday,” to my oldest grandson, Jack – who was not quite three years old at the time:

I love you more today than yesterday

But not as much as tomorrow

I was surprised when my daughter sent me a video of Jack singing those lines to his little brother Hunter a few days later:

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Jack has picked up the lyrics to several other sixties pop hits from me since then – including Spanky and Our Gang’s “Lazy Day”:

Baby, you and me 

And the honey bee 

Lazy day, lazy day

But the song that he really latched on to is Steppenwolf’s stick-of-dynamite classic, “Born To Be Wild.”

What can I say?  The kid has good taste!

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Last night, Jack and Hunter were at my house for dinner and a bath.

When I heard Jack singing “Born To Be Wild” while playing with his toy cars, I called him into my home office so we could watch a Youtube video that featured the song accompanied by Easy Rider footage of Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson riding motorcycles.

Today I got this message from my daughter (Jack’s mother):

Jack said he taught his whole [daycare] class the “Born To Be Wild” song today!  He told [his wonderful Polish-American daycare provider] what it was called so she could type it into her computer, and then they found the video with the motorcycles.  She had never heard the song.  Jack  said the whole class loved it, especially Mack. 

Jack – who will turn five in July – is the oldest child in his daycare group.  Mack is about a year younger.  There are two girls about Mack’s age, then Jack’s brother Hunter (who is two and a half) and a couple of younger kids.

I believe that Mack loved “Born To Be Wild” – Jack is a Pied Piperish figure for Mack – but I doubt that the youngest kids (at least one of them isn’t old enough to walk yet) were really into it.

Here’s Jack singing “Born To Be Wild” while playing in his basement: 

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Click here to see the Youtube video that I showed Jack, and that he had his daycare provider play for all his little friends.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Steppenwolf – "Born to Be Wild" (1968)

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

When I was a young attorney at the Federal Trade Commission many years ago, my friends and I got together and played co-ed softball every Thursday night in the summer.

I’m as competitive as the next guy, but these games were strictly for fun.  We tried to divide the people who showed up so the teams were even.  You could play any position you wanted to play.  (I’m left-handed, but I insisted on playing an inning at shortstop each week.)

On occasion, someone who didn’t get what the game was all about would ask what the score was.  “IT’S TIED!” I would respond.

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We drank beer during the game, and when it got to dark to play, we would go to a local neighborhood bar and continue drinking beer.

I had no sense back in those days, and I didn’t know when to stop drinking.  The jukebox at the bar we went to had “Born to Be Wild” on it, and I would punch it upon around midnight, when I was about 99% out of mind.

I loved to accompany the record by drumming on the table, my thighs, or whatever was handy.  I especially loved pounding along with the drum fill that leads into the last verse.  (You can hear that just over two minutes into the song – at the end of the long instrumental break.)

On occasion, I would get a tad rambunctious while helping out Steppenwolf’s drummer, and the proprietor of the bar would ask me politely to SHUT THE F*CK UP OR LEAVE THE BAR.

I miss those softball games. :-(

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“Born to Be Wild” was written by Dennis Eugene McCrohan, who went by the name Dennis Edmonton . . . until he decided to go by the name – are you ready for this? – Mars Bonfire.

Dennis was a Canadian who was a founding member of a band called the Sparrows.  His brother Jerry  joined the band when the original drummer left, followed by singer/songwriter John Kay.   

The Sparrows eventually became Steppenwolf.  Dennis/Mars was never a member of Steppenwolf, but his “Born to Be Wild” – the song that introduced the phrase “heavy metal” to the rock ’n’ roll vernacular – was the band’s first and biggest hit single.  It made it all the way to #2 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in August 1968, and stayed in that position for three consecutive weeks.

What was the record that kept “Born to Be Wild\” out of the #1 spot?  The Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free” was #1 for five straight weeks – including the three weeks that “Born to Be Wild” was #2.

“People Got to Be Free” is a very good song, but “Born to Be Wild” IS A STICK OF DYNAMITE!  In fact, “Born to Be Wild” is THE stick of dynamite when it comes to rock singles.

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Mars Bonfire wrote several other songs for Steppenwolf, and put out a couple of albums as a solo artist.  But “Born to Be Wild” overshadows everything he ever did musically.

In 2015, he was awarded the “Cultural Impact Award” by the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (“SOCAN”) for writing “Born to Be Wild.”  You best believe SOCAN got that right.

Mars Bonfire

More recently, Mars Bonfire became a prolific hiker and hike leader.  From Men's Journal:

Mars Bonfire launched his music career writing and performing the Steppenwolf hit, "Born to be Wild."  And since his retirement from the music business in 1995, he's actually been spending his time in the wild, devoting himself to hiking the Sierra Club's list of nearly 300 peaks surrounding Los Angeles.  This past November, Bonfire finished checking off every peak on the list — for the 25th time.  The list has varied year to year, but averaged 272 peaks during Bonfire's effort, meaning he hit 6,800 peaks. 

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 Click here to listen to “Born to Be Wild,” a worthy member of the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME. 

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: