It's been years and years since rock music was still important and had great relevance. Artists were not pop bunnies who sang with computer voices, but stars with guitars, poets, explainers of the world.
Today it is time to celebrate one of the unforgettable heroes of the true Rock: John Kay, the man behind Steppenwolf and "Born to be Wild" and the sound of the movie ["Easy Rider"] turns 80. these days. The man is a legend, everyone knows the song. But no one the secret story of Steppenwolf's singer: He was born to be wild behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War, a boy, hunting after a great dream...
Joachim Krauledat can't help it. But as the native Thuringian, who made a world career as John Kay with his group Steppenwolf, is celebrating his 80th birthday these days, his big hit "Born To Be Wild" will still ring in everyone's ears. This is how the Rickfield Gas Station from the movie looks today
His german Hometown Arnstadt venerated John Kay his own monument two years ago
The song, which the Canadian Mars Bonfire wrote for the German native and his band Steppenwolf, became famous in the 1969 film "Easy Rider". And he still is. The fact that the Steppenwolf comes from Thuringia is because, on the other hand, no one buys it. But it's true: Joachim Krauledat sang the global hit "Born To Be Wild" - but with this unpronounceable name you can't become anything. And certainly not with your first name! Joachim! No, the name has to go.
It may be that Joachim Krauledat, who later became the first GDR citizen to achieve rock fame, thought exactly that back in the 1960s when he set off for New York with his guitar under his arm. In any case, Krauledat has been calling himself John Kay ever since. Nobody thinks about Joachim, Mother Krauledat and the East Prussian town of Tilsit, where Joachim's cradle was in 1944. The end of the war took the family to Thuringia, where Joachim's mother fell in love with an American, whom she followed across the pond in 1958.
There Joachim becomes infected with the beat bacillus. He hitchhiked across Canada and the States for two years before joining the rock band The Sparrow. But he is not successful. Quite the opposite. But Kay doesn't give up. After reading Hesse's "Steppenwolf", he now changes the name of his band and makes a new attempt. “Born To Be Wild” is the name of the number that catapulted the boy from Thuringia to the top of the charts overnight. Peter Fonda happens to be looking for a film score for his outlaw opus "Easy Rider" - he chooses "Born To Be Wild" and makes the song a legend.
Since then, Krauledat has sold more than 20 million records, he has hits like "The Pusher" and, with the lyric "heavy metal thunder" from "Born To Be Wild", he delivers a phrase that today describes an entire genre of music. Only once in all this time did he comment on his origins. Instead of John Kay, Joachim Krauledat sang in the piece "The Wall": "Wall of cold fear / you won't hold me". The moment of the illegal border crossing also became present again for a moment in this one song: "This is not a game / my boy / don't make a noise / and pay attention to the man with the gun," his mother said shortly before little Jochen crawled through the wire fence to become a pop star in faraway America.
