Steppenwolf - Born To Be Wild

First performance: 00/09/1968


Coverinfo

Bruce covered the song 5 times at full and 11 times as a snippet:
 
 
2008-08-30 Roadhouse At The Lakefront (The), Milwaukee, WI

1994-11-13 Castaic Lake, Castaic, CA
With Jackson Browne. Bruce takes part in the eleventh annual Love Ride charity motorcycle ride. The Love Ride is a 50-mile motorcycle caravan with tens of thousands of participants, including celebrities Proceeds from the event (this year the ride raised $1,070,000) go to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The rally finished at Castaic Lake, just outside Los Angeles, where a post-race Jackson Browne concert was held. Browne performed three sets and he was joined onstage by Bruce Springsteen during the third.
 
 
Final formal show of the 1992-93 World Tour. Lapointe is a guitar technician (roadie) and he sings and plays guitar on "Born To Be Wild" (this performance is also available as pro-shot video and circulates on the same set as the pro-shot April 11 footage from Verona). You can hear Bruce introduce him before the track.
  
1968-09-00 Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ 
Springsteen (along with fellow Earth-band members John Graham and Michael Burke) entered Ocean County College in September 1968. Bruce ended up staying for three semesters, dropping out in December 1969 shortly after his parents moved to California. Earth is believed to have performed several times at Ocean County College during the September to December 1968 period. Springsteen even contributed a piece of poetry to Seascape, the school's Literary Yearbook. The twenty-six mentioned songs are taken from the only known Earth-era repertoire listing. The document is likely to have been created by Springsteen in September or October 1968. The amount of tracks displayed, their sequencing, plus the header and numbering notation by Bruce, all point to this as being an inventory of Earth's live repertoire of 'cover' material. For this reason it is of greater historical significance than an individual gig setlist, particularly in that no Earth audio is circulating. A few of these songs are performance hold-overs from the The Castiles-era. Since Earth was a three-piece band it's hardly surprising that material from both Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience (the era's two premier three-piece bands) are abundantly represented. 
 
 
  
photo credit Billy Smith
 
 
  •  Snippets
during LIGHT OF DAY
 
1988-07-02 Stockholms Stadion, Stockholm, Sweden
1988-06-29 Stadion Feijenoord, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1988-06-28 Stadion Feijenoord, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1988-06-22 Villa Park, Birmingham, England
1988-06-19 Hippodrome De Vincennes, Paris, France
1988-06-15 Stadio Flaminio, Rome, Italy
1988-06-11 Stadio Comunale, Turin, Italy
1988-05-23 Madison Square Garden, New York City
1988-05-22 Madison Square Garden, New York City
1988-05-06 Tacoma Dome, Tacoma
1988-04-05 Capital Centre, Largo
 
 
 

Songinfo

"Born to Be Wild" is a song written by Mars Bonfire and first performed by the band Steppenwolf, The song is often invoked in both popular and counter culture to denote a biker appearance or attitude. It is sometimes described as the first heavy metal song, and the second verse lyric "heavy metal thunder" marks the first use of this term in rock music (although not as a description of a musical style).
 
 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

Lyrics

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild
Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild