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An Interview With John Kay

Part 1...questions 1-12

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Q#1: When you started, did you ever think that you would still be active 30 years later?

A#1: Well of course, when we started out years ago, I don't think anybody planned 30 days ahead, let alone consider that 30 years would some day come. I must also say that there was really no master plan or some ingenious revelation that is responsible for us still being around. It was really two factors more than anything, I believe....number one, the fact that there were enough people on various parts of the globe that were into what we were doing, be it the old stuff or the more recent recordings.....and the other one was that a number of people within our 'Wolf organization have seen to it that we have always made the very most out of what we had to work with as far as fan loyalty, reputation in the business, doing good, consistent live shows, so that we were maximizing on what there was for us. It was a roller coaster ride, and there were times when things were not going our way, and so then you had to be kind of tenacious, and stick to it, and grit your teeth a little bit, and play twice as hard and hope that the word of mouth brings on another wave of resurgence of your popularity....and that really has been the case.

Q#2: Complete this sentence: Steppenwolf is about......

A#2: That's not that easy, because when you are in it you have a totally different perspective than when you're outside of it standing looking at it and I'm not sure whether I am the person most qualified to say what Steppenwolf is about. Maybe some of the fans that are part of the Wolfpack Fanclub, and so forth, who have been following us (some of them for up to 29 years) would be more qualified. And I think it varies from person to person. Certainly the cards and letters with their respective stories about Steppenwolf music or songs or lyrics would indicate that. Steppenwolf is about giving a damn and doing it to music, I suppose.

Q#3: For those younger fans who didn't grow up in the 60's, what is Steppenwolf named after and why did you choose it?

A#3: Steppenwolf was originally a book written by Herman Hesse, (a German author) and it was a book I was totally unfamiliar with when the band that became Steppenwolf was in its infancy. The young man who lived next door to where Steppenwolf started to rehearse (by the name of Gabriel Mekler, born and raised in Israel) he had read the book. When it came time to put a name on the demo box that was going to go to the first label, he said "Well, what is the band called?" and aside from the obvious joke names and other obscene suggestions which were not marketable, he finally said, "Well look, how about 'Steppenwolf'? I think it's a word that looks good in print, and it denotes a certain degree of mystery and power and you guys are kind of rough and ready types." Everybody said that sounds pretty interesting and if we don't get a deal we can always scrawl another name on the box and send it to somebody else, so let's go with that for now. Well, that's what it's been now for many years and, to be honest, it's been a very good name.

Q#4: When I talk to college kids today, the 60's is almost a myth to them. It's a fabulous time. They wished they could have lived through it. Are your memories of the 60's as groovy as the kids think it was? Was it as good as we think it was?

A#4: Well, I supposed to some extent our experience is perhaps a little bit outside the mainstream in the sense that we, Steppenwolf, were just catching our first big wave of success. So, in addition to living through the 60's in the way that all other Americans, or for that matter people in various parts of the world were, we had the added bonus, so to speak, of having our music hit the charts and all the rest that went with the success of a rock & roll band. My personal recollection of the 60's was one of a tremendous amount of activity, both in terms of what we were up to (zipping all over the country and the world and TV shows and recording and what have you) and to some extent also a very frantic time as far as what was going on in the streets and the halls of government etc. Were they as groovy? Well, I personally feel it was a mixed bag of blessings...I felt this was a rare opportunity for the idealism and the energy of youth to join forces with the experience and know-how of the previous generation and like two horses on the same wagon pull us, as a species, forward in terms of our joint development. Unfortunately, what seemed to have happened is the normal youth with its arrogance and it's ignorance thought it knew it all, and naturally the older generation knew that they didn't know it all and resented them claiming to know it all and so rather than kind of shaking hands and working together it was an "us and them" thing, and it manifested itself in many different ways, the majority of which, to my way of thinking, were not really productive. Since then, things that have been the fallout of the '60s, some people like to kind of point at that and say well all they gave us was drug abuse and so on and so forth.....I happen to disagree with that strongly. I feel that the '60's were a vibrant, exciting, progressive time. There were the normal bandwagon jumpers who did it because it was the thing to do at the time. But those who really were progressive thinkers and had something fresh to say and play, and so on, I think that's why so many younger people who ready about or see documentaries realize that they unfortunately missed a very vibrant, important time. So, when it's all said and done, I guess the short answer is...with hindsight and with the time-span that permits certain wounds to heal a little bit, it probably is a bit more rosy in our recollection than it was, but I'm certainly not one to trash the '60's. I think it had a tremendous amount of things to offer that have been absorbed by society since and that still are with us today in a positive way.

Q#5: Could you describe your personal politics and how you got there?

A#5: At the core lies the fact that I was born and raised in post Second World War Germany. As a result, I witnessed how, what was at the point a relatively new concept for the German population (The Weimar Republic notwithstanding which was in ill-fated, short-lived attempt of democracy) to see the population after World War II be politically interested and motivated and active with frank discussions and a lot of back and forth as to which road to take with the new nation, etc. That was something that, although I was a boy, I witnessed in our family, in our adult neighbors and what have you...and when I came to Canada I learned that to a certain extent that whoever wins the war gets to write the official version of the war. The history books vary somewhat from nation to nation. Perhaps because of my interest in history (be it ancient history, mythology, recent history) coupled with growing up in a country at a time where politics and the actions of human beings and the results thereof where very much stamped on all of our consciousness. The Hitler regime certainly did not leave one single life untouched in Europe during that period. All of those things combined, I think, were at the core of my on-going interest in paying attention to the world around me and when I, through rock & roll and other forms of American roots music eventually found my way to folk music, I found that there was a type of music where politics or social commentary were well known. Eventually, through the likes of not only Dylan and many others of a similar persuasion, I found that there was a type of music where making comment on the times and conditions one lived in was considered appropriate. So, that's how I kind of segued from there into what Steppenwolf eventually did with it's hard rock.

Q#6: There are a number of Steppenwolf songs that are anthems for a generation. Was there a moment when it became clear to you that that's what they were, or were they that from the moment they were created?

A#6: I have never sat down to try and write an anthem, so to speak. There have been times to when the musical idea to which I wrote melody and lyrics suggested that it could be a powerful song, but until you've written the lyrics you really don't know whether there is the making of an anthem. Certainly "Born To Be Wild" has become one, and to some people "Magic Carpet Ride" is one. "Born To Be Wild" (this is how ironic life is) almost never happened. "Born To Be Wild" was the third single off our first album and the record company argued about which of the tunes that remained from the album that had not been released to date should be the next single. So management and band on one side and label on the other side had this tug of war and finally the compromise was to put "Born To Be Wild" on one side, put the other song that the record company preferred on the opposite side, send it to radio, and let them fight it out. Well, within a relatively short period of time (early summer of 1968) 9 out of 10 played "Born To Be Wild." After that came Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda and did Easy Rider, and, of course, "Born To Be Wild" and "The Pusher" were in that film and helped to spread the name Steppenwolf internationally through the success of the film. And once that all took place, that song, "Born To Be Wild", had at that stage reached it's global anthem status. When we played in a soccer stadium in Buenos Aires a few short years ago with The Cult and went into "Born To Be Wild", all these Argentinean kids sang in perfect phonetic English every line. We had never been to Argentina in 29 years, so it's one of those things that just outgrew its constraints and became its own animal. As a performer the only time, I think, that you really sense the power of a song is when you observe the effect that it has on the audience. When they're really transfixed by it, when they forget where they are and they're no longer concerned around them, but strictly this response to the song or the music, then I think you have an inkling of it. I think that past a certain stage, early on when you finally realize yes I will be able to do this successfully for a while and it is something I do for a living, I think that at a certain point you loose the ability to completely put yourself back into the shoes of what it was like to be in the audience. Certainly not in the sense that you could put yourself into the shoes of the audience and see yourself the way they see you..... you can see other performers, like I often do, but I think it removed a degree of objectivity past a certain point.

Q#7: Do you think of yourself as disabled? When answering could you talk about how sight problems might have affected your response to music?

A#7: I was born with a birth defect that left me lacking in the eye department...I'm totally color blind, which means that my world is black and white and gray....I am very light sensitive....hence, I've been wearing dark glasses since I was about 3 years old and I'm so-called legally blind, which means that I can't drive and a few other things. Perhaps because of the fact that I grew up in Germany after World War II (and then later during my high school years in Canada), but in Germany with people returning (those that were lucky enough to return) with limbs missing, families that lost (as did my father's family) up to 6 boys in the war and so on and so forth, it seemed relatively insignificant by comparison to real suffering. Certainly my mother understood my difficulties and tried to help me in whatever way possible. One of those attempts at helping me took the form of her managing to get me into the Rudolph Steiner School in Hannover, Germany where we lived after we escaped from East Germany in the 50's. This was tremendously helpful to me since I could not read the blackboard and schools were overcrowded in post-war Germany....this sort of private attention really helped me to learn, not only in the normal sense, but also their way of teaching was one that broadened one's horizons and taught the humanities..... and it was no wonder this particular school had been banned during the Hitler regime because they were far too humane, I think, in their view of the world and its inhabitants. In any event, there were certain benefits, I think, that I derived. I was always fairly tall and big for my age and would perhaps with normal eyesight have gravitated towards physical pursuits. It turned out that team sports were really not in the cards. However, as a young child, music...albeit in the early years it wasn't rock & roll...it was the Russian Cossack music and other things that I did not necessarily understand the lyrics of, but that as one of the Neville Brothers said, "Music from the heart goes to the heart"....somehow, this music connected with me in a way that the pain and humanity of it connected deeply with me....and it gave me my first inkling that music was more than just something that's in the background while you do your homework, or whatever. When rock & roll came....(that is after the goose bumps and the Little Richard baptism and so forth)....after that I knew what I had as a boy in the way of a daydream. You're in that adolescent period where you don't really think about reality 10 years from now, but what you'd like to be if your wish list could be granted, so to speak. It was at that time also that you realize the lack of sight was something that....sometimes you didn't need it. Stevie Wonder, I suppose, and Ray Charles and others will tell you that the ears work very well even if the eyes don't so, overall I have made peace with that situation a long time ago. And in Canada, when I went to certain special classes where some of the people were outright blind, I had the good fortune of making a friendship with a fellow that I'm still in touch with who's one of Canada's finest blind skiers.....totally blind. And when you see the capabilities of others who are worse off in that sense than you are in keeps it in perspective for you.

Q#8: Tell me about the culture of American music, coming to it as an outsider and what did you find in the music that was so compelling?

A#8: My first exposure to American music of any kind was through the Armed Forces Radio Network in Germany......Little Richard was the first one that connected with me in a manner that was beyond "this is a nice tune." This was one where I didn't understand a word, yet the rhythm and that guttural, primal, intense vocal performance, that pounding piano and buzzing saxophone. There was just something about that that I just literally sent chills or goose bumps up and down my spine. I became addicted to listening to rock & roll wherever I could find it, which was quite limited in the mid to late 50's in Germany. When I then came to Canada during my high school years and learned to speak English, some of which I accomplished by listening to the radio all the time. I was like a kid in a candy store. The radio dial, particularly my first summer in Canada when I knew no one, had no friends and really no place to go, I would listen to everything -- country music, R&B from Buffalo, Sunday morning black church service music also from Buffalo, 100 miles away. It was still at a distance. While obviously Canada was nothing like Germany, nevertheless Canada wasn't quite like the US either. So, after my first 5 years in Canada (which were very good years, I'm very fond of Canada and think very well of Canadians and enjoy visiting there) when I came to the States, first to Buffalo and then to California (where I was later to spend 20 years of my life) much of what I had fantasized about as a child in Germany was not necessarily to be found there in the sense that the rock & roll movies that I saw in Germany and in Canada (Don't Knock The Rock and Alan Fried stuff) they were, as so much of Hollywood stuff is, somewhat distorting what it was really about. It was only when we were in Steppenwolf and we were traveling through all the states that I started to absorb the realities or the geography and different cultural groups and regional territories that were the birth places of some of the roots music that in various combinations created rock & roll. That is one of the reasons that some years ago I moved to Nashville, TN. Because you can draw a circle around Nashville (a 500 mile radius) and you will cover a lot of territory that in one form or another (be it blue grass, Appalachian music, the Delta, Clarksdale, New Orleans, or what have you, Macon, GA and so on and so forth) there is so much in the way of blues and country and various other types of music that were the building blocks of that music that I still to this day love to perform. I feel very much at home here. There are many things that as a stranger initially threw me for a loop. The whole civil rights movement that I observed primarily from Canada was something that puzzled me to no end. I didn't have the background in American history to comprehend many of the underlying demons that were at work there. With time and my interest in history per se, I have been and still remain to this day an amateur student of American culture and history. I find it a fascinating and endless subject.

Q#9: There was a period of time when you buried Steppenwolf and then embraced it again. I would if you could talk about this period and what lead you to have this new incarnation?

A#9: Steppenwolf initially was like so many rock bands....you had five guys who were like the three Musketeers. They were in a garage, they had their instruments, we're all in this together, etc. We were one of the lucky ones who actually saw that happen. Then comes the success and then also comes the inflated ego. Certainly the late 60's, with its lifestyle preferences such as drugs and what have you, didn't help to keep the young egos totally in check. We had, for instance, our guitarist was barely 17 years old.... there was friction beginning to develop which was not helped by the fact that our record company insisted on two albums a year to be delivered by us....the fact that we were writing our own material and also were expected to tour to promote the releases and possibly have young babies and families and what you at home, not withstanding we were to deliver two albums. Well, the workload was pretty substantial. The lack of sleep, the drugs, the egos, the "yes" people, whatever, started to cause the beautiful dream to have sort of a dark cloud behind it. And initially (I would say '71) I pulled the plug on Steppenwolf because I felt that the fun had, quite frankly, gone out of it.....it had become work......we were dancing to somebody else's schedule, etc. On top of that, there was a degree of second guessing within the band with respect to, well you know, this new tune � is that really Steppenwolf? And I would say, well, wait a second guys....when we did our first album any tune that we felt had merit, that we could do a credible job on was Steppenwolf. I mean, that's what we played. It didn't have to be "Born To Be Wild" number 14. Something of a different shade or color was perfectly acceptable. What happened here? Well there were differences of opinion, one thing lead to another. Eventually I said, "I'm pulling the plug and I'm going to sit still here for a little bit and I want to do a solo album that's based more on where some of my personal musical roots were, etc." that lasted for two solo albums worth. On the heels of that, our management company said, well you know, there's (they also handled several other acts) a big time agent over here from Europe and we're doing a big tour over in Europe with one of our other groups. He said, "There is a real interest in a Steppenwolf farewell tour. Would you consider going there?" Well, I consented to go as long as my own band, The John Kay Band, could be the opening act for this tour......the idea being that I could recruit some of the Wolf following for my own efforts. We went.....the tour was enormously successful.....but, more importantly, the fact that we had been apart from each other now for a considerable period of time caused the batteries to have been somewhat recharged. There was a degree of fun again and so forth. So it was decided upon our return from Europe that we would take our new stuff into the studio and see what we'd come up with. The results were encouraging and resulted in us signing with CBS Records (Mums distributed by Epic CBS) for three albums in the mid 70's. Unfortunately our new management company decided to become a motion picture production company.....they did Death Wish and some other things......all of a sudden things started to unravel and in relatively short order (by '76) the same sort of difficultird that we had countered in '71 and my dislike of what was beginning to develop caused me to pull the plug on the Wolf thing for a second time. Naturally, this sort of thing can cause people in the management and record company end of things to pull their hair out. What are you doing? Well listen, I have a life. I have also a wife. I have a daughter, and I never pictured myself as being in the employ of somebody else's needs.....this is supposed to be something that represents my own view of what my life should be about, which is a degree of freedom to do the things that fulfill me in some fashion.......so call that self indulgent, call it being a prima donna, but that's how it is. Well, OK. Off I went for a couple of years. We went to Hawaii a lot, the family became a family once again, since we had time together, we explored the Southwest. My daughter was about 8 or 9 years old. And, all of a sudden, those experiences, for a change, started me writing tunes of various kinds and resulted in a solo album for Mercury Records cut in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with some southern players. Oddly enough, Larry Byrom, who had been a Steppenwolf guitarist during the Monster album and the Steppenwolf Seven period (one of our better efforts, both of those), was the house guitar player at the Muscle Shoals studio I was at. So, I had a partner there in crime, so to speak. It was an enjoyable experience. However, on the heels of the release of the solo album something totally unexpected happened which was that word reached me that there was a band out there in 1979 calling itself Steppenwolf. I thought, well that's odd, I don't remember going on the road! So we looked into it and it turned out that an ex-member that we had fired in the mid '70's had not been able to make ends meet, had come across some unscrupulous so-called agent and put themselves out there with some other bar musicians as Steppenwolf and were trashing the name. It was something that didn't sit well with myself and Jerry Edmonton (the two of us being co-owners of Steppenwolf Productions, Inc. and so on and so forth). To make a long story somewhat shorter, by 1980 after numerous attempts to use the judicial system to put a stop to these bogus activities and not getting really the response that we had hoped for, I went out on the road as John Kay and Steppenwolf, and the reason for the name change, I guess, is fairly obvious because by that point there had been more than 2, and at one point there had been 3, separate, bogus Steppenwolf bands.....because it's one of those things where, listen, if I can hold up a gas station and nobody calls me to task on it, then the guy watching the first guy hold up the station goes across the street and does it too. So we had numerous bands out there and I finally had enough.....so in January 1980 out on the road we went as John Kay & Steppenwolf. There was a tremendous amount of damage to be repaired.....the group's name has been trashed and left basically in the, sort of, beer bars on the outskirts of secondary markets.....and only almost non-stop touring for the better part of four and a half to five years enabled us to gradually rebuild some credibility to the name. It was a real character building period and one that I would gladly pay handsomely for being able to avoid ever having to go through again. But having gone through it, I will say this.....I now appreciated many things in my life and certainly my profession and the success of what we do professionally much more so than when I was a young 24 year old who was handed his first gold record and who sort of "yeah we paid our dues."......"after all we did this for 2, ..or was it 3 years.....so this bowling trophy is appropriate". You have no sense of what....no grip on reality until you see someone who's been struggling for 25 years and still can't get arrested beyond just the local club level and who's vastly talented. So this experience in the 80's certainly put things somewhat more in perspective and has enabled me to enjoy the fruit of our collective labor.....probably more so than at any other period in my life.

Q#10: How do you think people perceive John Kay and who are you really?

A#10: John Kay, as perceived by a lot of people, is the guy in the black leather pants with the dark glasses who kind of growls his songs and, as a young woman in the late 60's told me, "Well, you know, I was afraid to do this interview because I saw you on stage and you looked like you were going to jump off the stage and kick the crap out of the first three rows." She was from New York and she used this term, "you look like a hitter." I said, well I'm very intense about what I do but I generally like to treat people the way I like to be treated and don't get physical or aggressive with anyone unless I feel I've been unduly provoked. There is John Kay the private citizen, very definitely. But what a lot of people, I think, are confused by is the John Kay on stage is not a different John Kay, It's just another facet of John Kay. Maybe I'm quirky in this way, buy I happen to think that most of us, if we really think about it, we tend to let different aspects of our personalities show or come to the surface depending on where we are, with whom, under what circumstances. I'm one way with my mother. I'm somewhat different with my wife, with my daughter, with my business associates, with my band mates. There are degrees of, just different aspects of, the personality. When I'm on stage, I do have this sort of attitude. This is my territory. I'm up here, this is my turf. I don't let audiences intimidate me. This is what we do. We care about our fans and our audience. It's not like we want to do that BOC thing, you know, "on your feet or on your knees" kind of thing. I don't view ourselves in that way. It's just that we play fairly intense, fairly aggressive music and when I sing and spit out my lyrics, so to speak, it tends to come out in a sort of intense, and to some people somewhat intimidating or frightening, kind of way. That's something that wasn't really done by design. I think that partially it was because of the dark glasses, which hid my eyes, the leather pants and the connection with Easy Rider and motorcycles. I mean, once that was established that was something that a lot of people focused on. It was sort of like we need something quick, something that we can have as a cubby-hole for this band. Let's see...leather pants, dark glasses, "Born To Be Wild," Easy Rider, motorcycles. Hey, biker band! And it went into that little pigeon-hold and when afterwards we would have an album like Monster, which was a social, political concept album, people were scratching their head saying, "Wait a minute. We just put you in that other biker band pigeon-hole. I'm not going to take the trouble now to reevaluate." I mean media, generally speaking, likes to tag you and then move on. They don't really come back to reassess you. Once in a while you have someone like David Bowie who managed to reinvent himself with every album and it was expected. Which Bowie do we get this time, kind of. But with us if was sort of "Born To Be Wild," OK, we know who and what they are and that tag will stick. That was one of the problems that band itself was, sort of, arguing about that led to my pulling the plug on the band the first time...because there was a one dimensional perception of the band that some of the media and others had of us which was limiting and was sometimes difficult for us to overcome as an obstacle with songs Snowblind Friend" which were acoustic and not what they expected.

Q#11: Can you draw a character portrait of the average Wolf Pack member, the average fan who is the core audience?

A#11: The Wolfpack, our fan club, is comprised of an astonishing variety of lifestyles and people and characters. Now, one thing that they have fairly well in common is that the majority of the membership tends to be somewhat older. That's a given because the ones that are most intensely into what we do are people who kind of grew up with our music. There are younger faces that have joined their ranks in the interim and we are very pleased about that. But the older group (35 and older, so to speak) they are a fairly diverse lot. You will see someone who probably Monday through Friday wears a three-piece suit. We have doctors, lawyers, Indian Chiefs. We have one guy from Germany who comes every year for Wolf Fest, our annual fan fair in Nashville, which is just for the Wolfpack Fan Club. He is a molecular, God, atomic molecular something. He's one of the leading guys in his field. He comes to visits at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and gives lectures. The German government set him up at the University of Leipzig to put their whole research computer department together and so forth. Well, this guy looks like a hippie. He told us one time, "I love to study" (and what he studies is stuff that's way above my head) "by cranking Steppenwolf music full blast while I'm studying." Well, that flies in the face of what my mother always told me when I was doing homework. You know, no music, no this, no that. Well, there are people from Denmark, from Holland, from Norway. They all come to Wolf Fest and obviously many people in the United States and Canada. When we go and play outdoor shows what's always interesting to me is the first three to four to five rows are the teens. They are somewhere between 12 and 22 or so. And the further back you get, the somewhat older they get until you get to that crowd that is not as physical in the way they express their excitement about watching you play. But they're back there and I love this particular.....this motley combination of ages and lifestyles.....you'll see guys with motorcycles and leather jackets. You'll see people bringing their kids. The second or third generation kind of combination of fans is what enables us to go out on stage and say we're on-going. Not only in the sense that we have new records, new songs to add to what is already familiar to the fans, but as we're doing this, in addition to our stalwart, loyal fans from early on, younger faces are joining their ranks. So there's a refreshing, constant addition of something that stimulates us.

Q#12: What made you write you autobiography?

A#12: Writing Magic Carpet Ride, my autobiography and that of Steppenwolf for that matter, was something that came about through the normal, anecdotal sort of story telling. You're on the tour bus with somebody or you meet someone backstage somewhere and somebody starts to "oh year that reminds me of when we" and so forth. Well, there were a lot of these sort of "you ought to write a book" comments and, quite frankly, I was always too busy with other things and I probably would not have been able to write a book earlier, that would have contained what, for me anyway, was a very important part of the book which is that the boy that came from Germany and had a day dream that became reality in America. In spite of the fact that things weren't letter perfect as the success came and the ups and downs and the griping and the, you know, there was good and bad. But overall, I wouldn't have traded my position with others and I wouldn't have changed much if I had to do it over again. But the thing that was lacking was that during the hectic periods of activity what was lacking?....was the ability of stepping back and taking a look at who I am now, where have I been , how much have I reached in terms of my own personal goals and how do I feel about where I am today? And that was something that really snapped into focus for me when we had overcome the de facto destruction of the name Steppenwolf in the early 80's with the bogus bands and we had rebuilt and we had some new records that were coming out.....we had a combination of musicians who were not just good players and writers and knew their way around a recording studio, but who were really quite fond of each other, who enjoyed each other's company, who could go out for 20 weeks in a row (which we did in the late 80's for several years on end) and enjoy each other's company and respect each other as people. That part was something that had unfortunately been lacking during the early years of success due to our immaturity and the crazy lifestyle and the hectic pace. When I settled in Tennessee in 1989 and within 18 months thereof we put out one of our best efforts in quite some time on IRS Records called Rise and Shine, at that point when I looked around and said, "Man, you are right now in your life where you really want to be". The last few years in LA you were sort of saying, "well, someday we're gonna probably want to pick up here and go somewhere else because things are changing and I'm changing and not necessarily in the same direction." When looked around where I was in Tennessee, I liked the people I saw.....I certainly liked where I lived and I was at peace with my lot in life more so than any other time preceding, and I felt at that point, that I was ready to write the book because I didn't want it to end or just, you know, we had a lot of hit records and we were as crazy as everybody else and we were face down in the gutter.....that sort of thing didn't do much for me. There had been a lot of show and tell books and a lot of books about the excesses and the mondo successes and I wanted to tell a story that I had thought might be of interest to not just someone who is a dyed in the wool Wolf fan, but someone who might read this book because there's actually a human story there that's not half bad in terms of interest potential. And so when I had reached a point where I felt it had come full circle, I had visited the former East Germany after the wall came down and had rediscovered members of my family that I had literally not seen in over 40 years. When the little town that I spent the first five years of my life in, when they asked us to do a benefit for the local orphanage there, and we did.....there was much affection on the part of these people and there were family members of mine that came that we got to visit with......and when I returned to Tennessee from there, I felt that loop that started with the little boy in Arnstadt, East Germany that escaped with his mother in '49 to West Germany and who went off to see America and sing rock & roll for a living, he had returned to the source, so to speak. And there was a degree of completion in all of that made me feel now it's time to write this book.



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