Deep Cuts: Easy Rider, Electra Glide in Blue, and Being Evel

by Pablo Kjolseth

Spring is a time when the open road calls out for us to “head out on the highway, looking for adventure and whatever comes our way.” Those words, of course, are from the 1967 Steppenwolf mega-hit “Born to be Wild,” which also served as the theme song for Easy Rider, directed by Dennis Hopper and released in 1969. Hopper claimed he was trying to make the first American art film and that it was the first real independent movie to ever be distributed by a major company. The film was meant as a modern western—one that replaced horses with motorcycles and cowboys with outlaws, fusing Billy the Kid with Marlon Brando from The Wild One by way of drug-addled hippie rebels. Easy Rider came out in July and famously has Peter Fonda’s character postulate near the end of the film that “We blew it.” When you consider that in August of ’69 the Manson family murders made international headlines, and then later in December of ’69, the free Rolling Stones Altamont concert would put the nail in the coff…