An afternoon spent listening to Steppenwolf's first album yesterday left me reasonably underwhelmed. Perhaps I wasn't listening to it loud enough but one song seemed to bleed into the next and with the obvious exception of Born to be Wild, which was operating on a completely different level and a couple of others, it all sounded a little generic and utterly in the shadow of that big song of theirs and of The Doors, who took the same ingredients that Steppenwolf seem to favour but were willing to take them all the way.
Still, this seemed like one of the better tracks on the album and was the flip side to Born, which along with the wonderful Magic Carpet Ride, remains the song the band are best known for. There's a strangely moral and slightly prudish lyric here about a woman who appears to sleep around rather too much and is unable to form long-term commitments as a consequence. Watch out girls! Hardly counter-culture. Born to be Wild? Still it rolls along nicely as a tune even if the band's sentiments seem resolutely stuck in their time and place.
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