Jerry could hear the whole band, almost as a conductor.” I was either singing and/or playing guitar, so you’re listening to what you’re doing and the rest of the guys around you, you hear as a secondary thing. But perhaps more than anything else, being the drummer, he was able to provide rhythm, and sit in the middle of the band and hear the band from a perspective that none of us other guys could.
“He wrote songs, he sang some of the songs. It’s been in dozens of movies since, and went on to be inducted into both the Grammy and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.īuy or stream “Born To Be Wild” on the album Steppenwolf.“Jerry was not just our drummer,” said Steppenwolf frontman John Kay, eulogizing Edmonton in later years. The legend of “Born To Be Wild” was enhanced enormously in 1969, when it was chosen for the soundtrack of the counter-culture film classic Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Listen to uDiscover Music’s Steppenwolf Best Of playlist. By the autumn of 1968, Steppenwolf were on their way to another huge US hitwith “Magic Carpet Ride,” and were in the Top 10 again the following year with ‘Rock Me.’ Much later, in 1999, a reissue of “Born To Be Wild” took it into the Top 20 there for the first time, at No.18. The song topped the Canadian chart and had some European success, but surprisingly ran out of gas at No.30 in the UK. But it was to sit in runner-up spot for three weeks behind the Rascals’ “People Got To Be Free.” “Born To Be Wild” spent the next few weeks racing up the Hot 100 and, by August 24, was sitting at No.2, apparently ready to take the chart crown. The track made its US chart debut at No.70, the highest of 11 new entries that also included Vanilla Fudge’s rocking cover of the Supremes’ “(You Keep Me) Hangin’ On,” Booker T and the MGs’ “Soul Limbo,” and Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle.” Debate will probably always continue about whether “Born To Be Wild,” produced by Gabriel Mekler, was the first heavy metal song, But it’s certainly up there among the earliest and most influential.
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