(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) This is Polyphonic Press, the podcast where two music fans pick a classic album completely at random. Using the patented random album generator, they are given an album to review from a curated list of over 1,000 classic releases spanning multiple genres. And now on to the show, here are your hosts, Jeremy Boyd and Jon Van Dyke. Hey, welcome to Polyphonic Press, I'm Jeremy Boyd and I'm Jon Van Dyke. And let's not waste any time, we've got the patented random album generator right in front of us here. So let's hit the button and see what album we're going to be listening to this week. And the album we're going to be listening to is Steppenwolf, Steppenwolf. Oh, I think I have this on record. Cool, I am familiar with Steppenwolf. I don't know if I'm familiar with this album. It's their first album. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I've got it. So let's see what it says on allmusic.com. It says Steppenwolf entered the studio for their recording debut with a lot of confidence. Based on a heavy rehearsal schedule before they ever got signed. And it shows on this album, a surprisingly strong debut album from a tight hard rock outfit who was obviously searching for a hook to hang their sound on. The playing is about as loud and powerful as anything, being put out by a major record label in 1968. Though John Kaye's songwriting needed some development before their in-house repertoire would catch up with their sound and musicianship. On this album, the best material came from outside the ranks of the active band members, born to be wild by ex-member Mars Bonfire, which became not only a chart-topping high energy anthem for the counterculture, a status solidified by its use in Dennis Hopper's movie Easy Rider the following year, but coined the phrase heavy metal, thus giving the genre specific name to the brand of music that the band played and which was already manifesting itself in the work of bands like Vanilla Fudge and the just emerging Led Zeppelin. The Don Covey soul cover of Sookie Sookie, which has a single by the new group, actually got played on some soul stations until they found out that Steppenwolf was white. Two superb homages to chess records in the guise of Barry Rides Again, written, though adapted might be a better word, by Kaye based on the work of Chuck Berry and the Willie Dixon cover Hoochie Coochie Man, and Hoyt Axton's The Pusher, an anti-drug song turned into a pounding six-minute tour de force by the band. The rest, apart from the surprisingly lyrical rock ballad A Girl I Knew, is by the numbers hard rock that lacked much except a framework for their playing. Only The Ostrich ever comes fully to life among the other originals, but the songs would catch up with the musicianship the next time out. And there's 11 songs on the album, and if you're listening along, which we encourage you to do, I've linked the album in the show notes to both Spotify and Apple Music. What we do is we take a break after side one or the first half of the album and discuss halfway through, and so the first side starts with Sookie Sookie and ends with Your Wall's Too High. So if you want to stop there and listen to our commentary halfway through. All right, so here we go. Here's the first song on the album, Sookie Sookie. All right, and ending the first side of the album with Your Wall's Too High. Um, yeah, this is pretty good so far. Uh, I do see what the reviewer was talking about with some of the original songs not being as strong as the others. Yeah. Um, especially with, uh, Barry Rides Again. It was a fun song, but kind of a little more of a novelty song. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, uh, I do agree. I mean, it was kind of fun, but, uh, definitely not the best song on the album. It seems to be almost sort of like a filler. I think it was an excuse to play Chuck Berry's stuff. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, these guys were all fans of the stuff from the 50s and stuff like that. So. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they started out in Toronto before they were Steppenwolf, they were called the Sparrows, and, um, they started out, like, playing clubs, uh, in, well, in Toronto and, and, you know, touring all over the place, really. And, um, yeah, they're, I'm basically, and this is actually the advice that I would have for any band starting out is start out as a cover band and slowly, but, and that's really what they, they did is they started out playing clubs and as a cover band and, and, uh, yeah, I'm sure Chuck Berry was part of their, their repertoire. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I would say you could definitely be a cover band, but, uh, if you do write originals, absolutely throw them in if you think they're good enough. Exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah. Um, but yeah, no born, I was, I, I've, I've heard born to be wild my whole life and I always loved that song, but I hadn't heard it in a while and I was just, I was just really appreciating the, the structure of that song, how well put together it is. Um, like the, like the instrumental breakdown, the, when the chorus, like the chorus, the first time he sings the chorus, um, he does something. And then the second time the drums are doing the sort of rhythm on the tom-toms and it just, the way the, there's like the break in the instrumental when he sings the line born to be wild, just to emphasize that line. It's just, it's almost, it's almost perfect. It's just, it's so well executed. Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's kind of like a perfect little track from that period. It's a, there's a reason that became the classic it is. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, I have a new, new appreciation for that song and not that I didn't like it before. It's just, okay, wow. This is, this is like, I'm, I'm, this is why this song was such a big hit. Um, and, uh, and yeah, I mean that, that last song, your wall's too high. It was pretty good too. Uh, more of a psychedelic sort of thing. Um, well, it was 1968. It was 68. So yeah. Uh, but, uh, yeah, no, I mean, it's clear that these, these guys are a great band. I mean, if nothing else, the, the, the playing on it, even the songs might not be the greatest, but the playing on it is really what shines here, you know? Um, yeah. Um, I've always liked Sookie Sookie. I thought that's a, that was a really good song to open with. Um, it's, it's a very strong one. I think it might be the second strongest on this side of the record. I think so. Yeah. And, and the cover of hoochie coochie man, uh, that was really good. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I think like in this era, I, I don't think Steppenwolf really gets the, the recognition nowadays that they really deserve. Um, cause a lot, everybody talks about like, if we're thinking about like the early heavy metal bands, yeah. Hard rock bands, any hard rock or heavy, but whatever you want to call it, Led Zeppelin, obviously black Sabbath, um, deep purple, like these are the bands that sort of get thrown around and then Steppenwolf almost aren't in that conversation. Yeah. Um, not sure why they were really prolific. They were almost as prolific as like, uh, um, Creed, Creedence Clearwater revival were around this period, late sixties, early seventies, the same few years they were putting out a record pretty much every year, if not two at the same time at, uh, CZR was they're obviously sort of a different take on rock and roll, but, but they were about that prolific. Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah. And I don't know why like they had, like they had a bunch of hits and they had, I guess they still, I don't know how to haven't listened to classic rock radio in a while, but I would imagine that they still get played. Um, yeah, they don't get played as much. I think born to be wild gets played every once in a while, but there's a lot of, a lot of good stuff that they put out and it should, should get more attention. I do believe. Yeah. Um, and like I was looking like there's their second album. Uh, I mean, obviously that's not this album, but their, their second album and then, uh, like second album has magic carpet, right? I mean, that's a, that was a big hit for them. Um, yeah, that one gets played sometimes too. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I'm not sure why they never, like they seem to be, they seem to have been forgotten in some ways. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't even realize they're the band that does born to be wild. Yeah. They just know the song. They know the song, but the band still gets forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I have noticed that sometimes too. So yeah. And you know, it's, it's, I mean, that is the song that coined the phrase heavy metal. That's where the term comes from. So you would think that that, you know, they would get more credit, but yeah, it's, it's unfortunate that they've been sort of lost in the shuffle. Um, I can, like, I, I do, I guess, I, I guess I do understand. Like if you think about the first Led Zeppelin album, every one of those songs are strong. There's arguments to be made for sure whether they really wrote those songs or not. And there's lots of lawsuits and everything. Well, yeah, that's, this is where it gets muddy. Uh, yeah. Cause it's like, well, if they, well, at least they're writing their own stuff here. Uh, yeah. Oh, I don't know. I was going to make a point, but then I started to realize, wait a minute, you know? Uh, so I, yeah, maybe Black Sabbath, maybe Black Sabbath is a better example of, of having a strong debut album, um, of original material. Um, and they sort of get, get talked about, but, um, yeah, I, I think, I think they, they deserve more credit than what they get for sure. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I guess we will move on to the second side of the album and, uh, I think it's a little stronger than the first we'll see, but, uh, it starts with the song Desperation. So here we go. Okay. And ending the album with the Ostrich. Um, yeah, I, this is, uh, this is a pretty solid album. Um, some of the songs aren't quite as good as the others, but yeah, I, I think overall it's, it's pretty, pretty solid. Um, I think I like the second half a little bit more than the first half overall, even though the first half had Born to be Wild. Um, I, yeah, I think, I think, I think the second half was a little stronger. All right. Yeah. I, I, uh, I kind of liked the Ostrich. I think that's a pretty good song actually. Um, the Pusher is always a classic. Um, that's a good one. Yeah. It's a, it's a pretty strong album. I mean, uh, for a debut, it's not bad at all. No. And it shows the band off really well. Um, it is definitely, it's, it's, it, it is sort of, um, I think the weaker songs on the album, I think the, the band is still sort of still trying to figure everything out in terms of songwriting and, and they just, they're just, you know, there's potential, obviously there's potential there. It's just, they're not quite fully formed yet. It's not bad. It's just not, it's just not quite there yet. Um, yeah. By the time their second album came out, I think it was, uh, they're a little bit more, um, fully formed a little more on top of it. Um, but, uh, yeah, that's not to denigrate this album at all. I actually really liked this album. Yeah. So yeah, I do too. And, uh, I was actually reading, uh, kind of a, uh, kind of a funny story, uh, song about the pusher. Uh, it was actually written by a guy named Hoyt Axton. Um, and he, uh, he wrote a bunch of songs actually. Uh, but anyway, he, um, he didn't know that it had become a hit. And this is on, uh, Wikipedia said, Axton sometimes recalled in his shows how he discovered many years after the pusher had been a hit that the song had never been published. Uh, he asked his mom, Mae Boren Axton, who ran his publishing company, how it had been missed. So basically the, the song he had written the song got credit for it, but it never went through a publisher. So we never got any royalties from it. No. And he says his mom told him that she refused to publish it because of the swearing in the song. And I can see he could be pretty upset. He said, no, no, it's like whole toy does mom, mom, mother, mom. It's a biblical curse. It's not a curse word. It's God damn the pusher, man. And she says, Oh, now I get it. And then she published the song. I'm shaking my head here. Can you imagine having learning that you, the song you wrote became a hit. And then you're looking at in the mail, looking at the checks you're getting. It's like, how can we never get any checks for this song? It's like, Oh, I never published that one. Why? Cause I didn't like the swearing. Oh my God. How can you, how frustrated would you be? I would be very frustrated with that. Yeah. But, um, this, uh, like, yeah, the ostrich is a great song and it's a good example of where they would go, uh, in the future. Um, I also liked, um, take what you need. I thought that was a pretty good song too. I like the, the false ending where it, it, the false. And then suddenly new verse shows up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was, uh, that was pretty good. Um, but yeah, I mean, overall, I, I really enjoyed the album and I, I think, uh, like, I think they're, they're a great band and, and, um, yeah, I think they just, they continue to, to improve from here. And that's the thing about the music industry at this time is they were being a lot more experimental. Not only that, but they were, um, if a band that they saw the potential in artists and sometimes, you know, nowadays, or at least for the last little while anyway, is if, if they can't produce a hit there, they're dropped. And, uh, and, and in, in these times, it was almost like, well, we see the potential in you. You may not be, and you might have two or three albums to realize your full potential and sort of, there was that nurturing of the artists that, that happened at that time. Although they definitely got hits out of these guys on the first time around. So absolutely. Yeah. But yes, they were, they were willing to let them sort of develop their sound. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I guess that brings us to the, to the question is, uh, would you listen to this again? Well, I've got it. So yes. Yeah. I know that. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. No, I really, uh, I really enjoyed it. Um, but, uh, anyway, I guess we'll end the episode there. Uh, thank you so much for listening. If you made it this far, uh, we want to hear from you whether you agree or disagree with our review of the album. Uh, you can do that by going to the contact page at our website, polyphonicpress.com slash content contact. And, uh, while you're there, you can check out previous episodes and lots of cool information and stuff about the show. And, uh, if you feel inclined, you can help us out on Patreon. You can go to patreon.com slash polyphonic press. Uh, you can get these episodes the day before they go live. So, uh, if you, uh, feel like helping out the show, you can do that as well. And, uh, I think that just about does it. Uh, I'm Jeremy Boyd. And I'm John Van Dyke. Take it easy.