With landmark power-chord anthems like "Born to Be Wild," the popular late-1960s band Steppenwolf coined the phrase for the bombastic, fast-paced genre it created: heavy metal, one of the most popular musical styles of the late twentieth century. The group came to prominence in 1969, when "Born to Be Wild" was featured in the opening sequence of the landmark film Easy Rider (1969). The song became a call-to-arms for a generation of rebellious youth, and its reference to "heavy metal thunder" became the tagline for the musical style it adopted. "Born to Be Wild" ultimately reached number two on the Billboard singles chart that year. By 1999, the song had appeared in more than sixty films and television programs.

Steppenwolf's founder and lead vocalist John Kay was born as Joachim Krauledat in the former East Germany in 1944, where he grew up listening to an Armed Forces Radio playlist that featured...