Born to Be Wild

In 1967, John Kay, Goldy McJohn and Jerry Edmonton founded Steppenwolf in Los Angeles after leaving the Canadian band the Sparrows, and guitarist Michael Monarch and bassist Rushton Moreve joined through notices placed in record and musical instrument stores around the city. The following year, the group recorded "Born to Be Wild" for their self-titled debut album. The song had been written by Mars Bonfire, a former member of the Sparrows whose brother was Steppenwolf's drummer, and he had originally conceived it as a ballad. Bonfire first offered it to other bands, including The Human Expression, but Steppenwolf recorded it in a sped-up and rearranged version that transformed the material into a roaring piece of riff rock.

Released as the band's third single, it reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and was kept from the top spot by "People Got to Be Free" by the Rascals. It became Steppenwolf's signature song. The second verse contained the lyric "heavy metal thunder", the first use of that phrase in rock music, though it described a motorcycle rather than a musical style. Some writers later described the track as the first heavy metal song.

After the song appeared in the 1969 film Easy Rider, it came to denote a biker attitude in popular and counterculture, even though the lyrics never mention motorcycles. In 2004, Rolling Stone placed it at number 129 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In 2018, it was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a new category for singles.