Steppenwolf

For a band whose active career lasted only half a decade, Steppenwolf's monster impact more than matches the phrase "heavy metal thunder" they coined in their first hit, "Born To Be Wild," which revved its motor under the opening credits for the hippie cinema masterpiece Easy Rider. Their swirly, ethereal organ riffage on "Magic Carpet Ride" plays against founder John Kay's gravel-voiced vocal like a musical tour through Oz being led by a prison-toughened biker. And despite the uncontrolled availability of controlled substances, the band sounded like they meant it in their leather-lunged, pre-rehab cover of Hoyt Axton's anti-drug blues "The Pusher." In Next Steps, we hear from Steppenwolf's last album before their first breakup, and singer John Kay goes solo.

Burned out from the relentless grind of the road, Steppenwolf Mk. 1 pulled the plug on Valentine's Day of 1972, after touring behind the For Ladies Only concept album. That platter's acoustic "Tenderness" sketches an oh-so-macho man struggling in transition from a John Wayne world to an Alan Alda-esque future. Hank Snow's loved-'em-and-left-'em hillbilly anthem "I'm Movin' On," taken from John Kay's debut solo album Forgotten Songs and Unsung Heroes, gets a bluesy makeover that obscures its country roots. And Kay dropped the trademark growl for "My Sportin' Life," a singer-songwriter-style reflection on past rockin' days from his second solo disc, released not long before he opted to re-form Steppenwolf.

With a voice that snapped and growled like the wolf of the steppes for which his band was named, Steppenwolf leader John Kay blasted out of the speakers like a Harley at full throttle. At a time when letting your freak flag fly was the counterculture's national sport, songs like "Born To Be Wild" and "Magic Carpet Ride" psychedelicized the airwaves with a denim-and-leather-clad call to let freedom rumble. No wonder Peter Fonda chose "Born To Be Wild" as the music to run under the credits of Easy Rider, the film that enshrined '60s hippie outlaw philosophy in Technicolor®. The original group disbanded in 1972 — oddly enough on what was proclaimed by then-Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty as "Steppenwolf Day" — but they still howl in all their digitally remastered glory, right here.