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To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (168518)	12/2/2008 10:35:20 PM
From: Peter V	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Was Mars Bonfire a biker? Hardly. When he wrote the song he was driving his first car, a "badass" Ford Falcon (a timid car if there ever was one). <G> thestar.com Dennis Edmonton joined Leeds Music in Los Angeles as a staff songwriter. For him, it was a happy time. He renamed himself Mars Bonfire, rented a small Hollywood apartment and bought his first car – a second-hand Ford Falcon. "I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard one day," he later recalled, "and saw a poster in the window saying `Born to Ride,' with a picture of a motorcycle erupting out of the earth like a volcano with all this fire around it. "All this came together lyrically in my head – the idea of the motorcycle coming out, along with the freedom and joy I felt in having my first car and being able to drive myself around whenever I wanted." That night he wrote "Born to Be Wild." Shortly afterward, brother Jerry called. A new band was coming together – did Bonfire have any songs? "It was summertime," Kay said in his book to explain the success. "Kids were out of school and wanted to hear more exciting, get-it-on, high-energy music ... "It also came out during a very turbulent period, the summer of 1968 – the Vietnam War on television every night, student demonstrations on campuses, the Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, urban rioting, the Chicago convention," he recalled. "The song's lyrics and message spoke to a generation which craved some excitement and some escape." The following year, 1969, "Born to Be Wild" made the soundtrack of the smash motorcycle road movie Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, securing its place in rock history. "At this point, `Born to Be Wild' has a life of its own," Kay told the Star from his home in West Vancouver shortly before leaving for wildlife sanctuaries in Uganda and Kenya. He and his wife Jutta Maue-Kay head the Maue Kay Foundation, helping animals, children and aboriginal societies in Africa and Southeast Asia. For details, see mauekay.org and youtube.com/mauekay. Kay has a million stories. "When the Mars robot rovers were launched (in 2003), they played `Born to Be Wild,'" he said. "Every bar band in Rangoon must know this song," a guide told him a few years ago when he was touring Burma for the foundation. "If not, they will not be hired." Like a true nature's child, Mars Bonfire serves as a Sierra Club guide to southern California mountain peaks of 5,000 feet or higher. Today he is leading what is billed as a "strenuous and dangerous hike along narrow, steep, loose and rocky ridge" to two peaks north of Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains. "We can climb so high," his song says. "I never want to die."