Destiny and Destination

Song 306: This week’s playlist track is Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf, written by Mars Bonfire. In the summer of ’68, before my senior year at HS, I had started working on a film project, along with a few friends, and later that fall a group of us would form our high school’s first official film club. I had written a script for a sort of Man from Uncle-style spy movie, and one day my group managed to get permission to film in part of the high school. The scene would include a rock-and-roll band playing on the auditorium stage, and one of my friends had agreed to act as the guitar player for the band. I suggested a couple of cuts for him to play, and he said, “We should do some newer songs instead.” He started with Break on Through, which I of course already knew, but after that, he played a newer track that I didn’t recognize, which was a riff tune built around an E chord riff that moved from the 5th tone to the 6th, and then to the 7th. Hearing the guitar alone, I thought the riff seemed very simple, and I wasn’t sure it could support a whole song, but then, a week or 2 later, I heard the new Steppenwolf 45, and it quickly erased any doubts I might have had. In fact, having heard the guitar riff before hearing the actual single made the record sound even more impressive for the way the band crafted such a rocking classic around that simple riff. This one, like their follow-up single The Pusher (Song 202), would create some internal conflicts for me as I struggled with a religious background that viewed the devil’s music as a dangerous influence, because these cuts seemed to embrace the dark side of human nature that my parents kept warning me about, but by the time, 2 years later, that I heard this track as a golden oldie in the opening sequence of Easy Rider, I could enjoy it without guilt, just as I had enjoyed the motorcycle ride my cousin gave me in the summer of ’66 (see Not Everyone’s Favorite Day post from 5/8/16). For many years I dreamed of the moment when I too would head out on the highway on a motorcycle of my own, but at some point that dream lost its appeal, and these days, I’d rather listen to this track on the CD player inside a 4-wheel vehicle when I’m racin’ with the wind along the 2-lane or 4-lane blacktop and concrete.