Post by erik on Mar 5, 2022 18:21:55 GMT -5
The band behind "Born To Be Wild" is in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight with a politically-charged bit of hard rock from the winter of 1969-70.
MONSTER (Steppenwolf; ABC/Dunhill; 1969)—With their name taken from the 1927 novel by the German writer Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, with John Kay as their front man, was arguably the most popular hard-rock counterculture band of the time. Originally formed in Los Angeles in 1965 as The Sparrows, the group changed its name to Steppenwolf in late 1967; and early the following year, the band recorded the classic 1960’s rock anthem “Born To Be Wild” which, with lyrics that included the term “heavy metal thunder”, supposedly inspired the term Heavy Metal, though neither Kay nor other members of the band had that in mind. Both that song (which hit #2 in September 1968), and their cover of the Hoyt Axton-penned anti-drug song “The Pusher”, found their way into the popular lexicon via their use in the classic 1969 Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper counterculture masterpiece Easy Rider. Not surprisingly, Steppenwolf also waded a bit into the political turbulence of the times with their late 1969 album release Monster, where they openly questioned the continuing war in Vietnam. The album managed to reach #17 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart despite being mercilessly panned by a shocking number of supposedly “with-it” rock music publications. The title track, originally nine minutes at length, and consisting of three parts—“Monster”; “Suicide”; “America”—needed to be cut down to four minutes in length to get any AM singles release; and in that form, following its release in December 1969, it peaked at #39 for the first two weeks in February 1970. The band’s final Top 40 hit came in October 1974, when “Straight Shootin’ Woman” peaked at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100.
MONSTER (Steppenwolf; ABC/Dunhill; 1969)—With their name taken from the 1927 novel by the German writer Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, with John Kay as their front man, was arguably the most popular hard-rock counterculture band of the time. Originally formed in Los Angeles in 1965 as The Sparrows, the group changed its name to Steppenwolf in late 1967; and early the following year, the band recorded the classic 1960’s rock anthem “Born To Be Wild” which, with lyrics that included the term “heavy metal thunder”, supposedly inspired the term Heavy Metal, though neither Kay nor other members of the band had that in mind. Both that song (which hit #2 in September 1968), and their cover of the Hoyt Axton-penned anti-drug song “The Pusher”, found their way into the popular lexicon via their use in the classic 1969 Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper counterculture masterpiece Easy Rider. Not surprisingly, Steppenwolf also waded a bit into the political turbulence of the times with their late 1969 album release Monster, where they openly questioned the continuing war in Vietnam. The album managed to reach #17 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart despite being mercilessly panned by a shocking number of supposedly “with-it” rock music publications. The title track, originally nine minutes at length, and consisting of three parts—“Monster”; “Suicide”; “America”—needed to be cut down to four minutes in length to get any AM singles release; and in that form, following its release in December 1969, it peaked at #39 for the first two weeks in February 1970. The band’s final Top 40 hit came in October 1974, when “Straight Shootin’ Woman” peaked at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100.