{"id":505682,"date":"2026-02-28T17:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T17:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/505682\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T17:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T17:42:13","slug":"born-to-be-wild-by-steppenwolf-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/505682\/","title":{"rendered":"Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mars Bonfire can pinpoint the exact moment he knew his song Born To Be Wild was going to be more than just a hit. \u201cI remember going to a screening of Easy Rider<\/a>. I went into the restroom and there was a guy standing at the urinal, pissing away and singing Born To Be Wild. He\u2019d only heard it once in the movie and it had already connected with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Easy Rider, released in 1969, was one of the first successful films to use popular music that wasn\u2019t a backdrop to the dancing and singing on screen. Like the previous summer\u2019s hit film The Graduate, it used music as pure soundtrack, with Born To Be Wild accompanying Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding their choppers down Route 66.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of cinema\u2019s most iconic montages, but the perfect choreography was a fluke. \u201cI didn\u2019t cut the film to the music,\u201d said Hopper, \u201cI cut it to the picture. But later, when I put Born To Be Wild on there, it just worked, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\n

\"Steppenwolf\n<\/p>\n

Steppenwolf in 1969 (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But the song nearly didn\u2019t make the film at all. Hopper and Fonda were running low on funds as production neared completion, and they didn\u2019t have enough money to license the music they wanted. So they slapped the songs in place, invited the various musicians to private screenings and suggested they negotiate. It worked, and the rest is history.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t cut the film to the music. But later, when I put Born To Be Wild on there, it just worked, man.<\/p>\n

Dennis Hopper<\/p>\n

Cut back to the beginning of the 60s. The young Mars Bonfire (born Dennis McCrohan) is taken by his father to see a matinee show by Ronnie Hawkins And The Hawks (who later evolved into The Band<\/a>) in a Toronto club.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had just got my first electric guitar,\u201d Bonfire recalls. \u201cAs soon as they launched into Hey Bo Diddley, with Robbie Robertson using a pick between thumb and first finger and steel finger picks on the next two, playing a Telecaster run through an amp with distortion, I knew I\u2019d heard the guitar sound of my dreams!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Steppenwolf\n<\/p>\n

Steppenwolf in 1969 (Image credit: Don Paulsen\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In 1964, young Dennis joined local band The Sparrows, along with his drummer brother Jerry. The band were led by English expat Jack London, and the McCrohan brothers changed their surname to Edmonton to sound more British.<\/p>\n

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With a revolving-door membership policy that may or may not have welcomed Neil Young at one point (it\u2019s complicated), the band eventually fired their singer and replaced him with John Kay. They all wound up in California, where Dennis changed his name again (to Mars Bonfire) and began a solo career, while the rest of the band became Steppenwolf.<\/p>\n

But Bonfire\u2019s relationship with the band didn\u2019t end there. He had demoed Born To Be Wild, and after it had been turned down by several publishers, he took it to his old bandmates. The song still needed some work to turn it into the anthem we know today.<\/p>\n

Steppenwolf – Born To Be Wild (Easy Rider) (1969) – YouTube
\n\"Steppenwolf<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI had been kicked out of my previous apartment for playing my guitar amplified, and had already got complaints in my new apartment,\u201d says Bonfire, \u201cso I did the demo singing quietly and using an unamplified Telecaster. Luckily, when Steppenwolf<\/a> agreed to do it, their guitar player Michael Wilk gave it the big guitar sound that I was dreaming of.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If it weren\u2019t for the incredible good fortune I\u2019ve had with Born To Be Wild I\u2019d probably be back on the production line at General Motors of Canada.<\/p>\n

Mars Bonfire<\/p>\n

And those famous lyrics?<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to be a staff writer for Universal Music,\u201d Bonfire explains. \u201cI 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, and I had a sudden realisation that the area around Los Angeles was really stunning. It\u2019s very dramatic. So that\u2019s what caused me to come up with \u2018Get your motor running, head out on the highway\u2019. At one point I was in the mountains during a thunderstorm. It was so heavy I had to pull aside and park. And that\u2019s when the phrase \u2018heavy metal thunder\u2019 came to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steppenwolf – Born To Be Wild (1969) – YouTube
\n\"Steppenwolf<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Steppenwolf\u2019s recording was a huge hit in the summer of 1968, reaching No.2 on the US Billboard chart. Bonfire recorded more relaxed versions of the song for his first two solo albums. But it was its inclusion in Easy Rider in 1969 that turned it into an anthem for a whole generation. It\u2019s been covered and lampooned to the point of exhaustion (see sidebar, left), soundtracked dozens of adverts, and earlier this year it was one of six initial inductees into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame\u2019s new Singles category. Steppenwolf themselves have never been inducted.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the song that has become perhaps the ultimate road anthem has given writer Mars Bonfire with a steady income that funds a low-key, off\u2011road lifestyle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it weren\u2019t for the incredible good fortune I\u2019ve had with Born To Be Wild I\u2019d probably be back on the production line at General Motors of Canada in Oshawa, Ontario \u2013 that was the only job I had been trained for,\u201d he says. \u201cIts 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 254 (September 2018)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mars Bonfire can pinpoint the exact moment he knew his song Born To Be Wild was going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-505682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}