March, 1969

Happy Birthday to me.

It is an irony, if that word applies, that so much energy is poured into the first birthday and yet it is the one none of us can personally remember. There are loads of old, yellowed photos and the makeup of these photos varies little from home to home. There will be the baby in a high chair, mangled cake on the tray before him or her and two pudgy baby fists smearing icing and – usually chocolate – cake all over the his or her face. My first birthday would follow this custom but the excitement of the event had lost some of its luster being baby number five with one’s mother only a couple of months away from delivering baby number six.

My first birthday would consist of the standard cake, a half-hearted version of happy birthday, sung over the din of my brother and his friends watching TV in the next room, my father yelling at him to keep quiet and my oldest sister trying to teach me how to blow out a candle, and me, utterly fascinated by the little flame attached to the top blue and white spiral candle. So intrigued by the flame that I, more moth-like than is safe for a one year old, keep reaching for it rather than attempt to blow it out in a salivary baby spray. After a few attempts to grab the flame the candle is blown out for me and removed. As for mangling the cake, I’ve little interest and the photos from that day show me, as is now the custom, looking distracted with my hand, obviously placed, on the candle-less cake in front of me.

A year has passed since I was born. Two days hence John and Yoko will get married in Gibraltar and in Charlemange, Quebec, a one year old Celine Dion is mangling her first cake and wondering how she will overcome the crushing weight of being sibling number 14 at the bottom of her familial totem.

Number 1 hit from March, 1969
Dizzy by Tommy Roe

February, 1969

A joke in my family is that my first steps were backwards. Kneeling on the floor, my pregnant mother held out her arms to me, I wobbled, hesitated, and then made a few quick steps back away from her. Then, having made my point, I fell flat on my ass. But as much entertainment there was to be found in the rotund little bundle of seriousness I was at 11 months, the house on this particular afternoon was filled with the noise of other people’s kids. It was my sister Debrah’s birthday party.

The birthday menu was always the same: Duncan Hines ready mix cakes decorated with sweet tinned icing, topped off with edible silver ball bearings, pastel-coloured cookies provided by the neighbourhood moms, and a tray of strange little balls of chocolate called mice cookies that bore little resemblance to either cookies or mice. All this was washed down with reconstituted syrup drinks of cherry and orange and everything was served in plastic cups, on paper plates civilly underscored by paper table cloths and serviettes. These would be the unvarying notes of birthday party sonatas throughout my childhood. My sister Debrah, sibling number three, was turning eight. Debrah was also the only person, without the aid of booze, who could make me laugh. And during the screams, giggles and frenzied energy of the boyless party that was taking place in the kitchen, I was stationed in the corner, in a playpen, holding myself up to peer over the rail of this overturned prison cell. From the table, Debrah, could see that I wanted out so she came over to where I was. Fueled by good intentions and sugar, my sister pulled me up and out of jumble of plastic toys and snoopy blanket and carried me to the table with her; not an easy feat as I was still a very fat baby. She sat at the head of the table and held me in her lap. There was a photo of me and Debrah in that moment. in the photo paper plates, covered with the remains of half eaten cake, filled the foreground, and showed my sister and I, she smiling broadly with her arms wrapped around my chest trying to support my weight as I slid off her of her leg. She looks happy and I look remarkably distracted. The photo was lost many years ago and with it a faded substitute for my own actual memory of that day.

I am one month from my first birthday.

Believe it or not, a top 10 hit from February, 1969
Sugar, Sugar by the Archies
(song actually co-written and sung by Canadian Andy Kim)

January, 1969

There are moments in the lives of all people, and in the lives of all families, that just slip past unnoticed never to become an indelible memory. The framework of the period exists with only the most basic tidbits of information. Things like where people worked, what state they may have been in, or even what grade someone was in at school are just a few of the rudimentary blocks that remain. Nothing of note has left an imprint. There are no tales, no shocking pieces of gossip or family drama to help cement events into the collective conscious of those who lived through the time. It is the forced mental hibernation particular to January when almost everything freezes in the brackish, grey ice of an east coast winter.

It is the first month of the last year of the 1960’s: a decade of chaotic - often unwanted – change, upheaval and tragedy. Where once, just a few months earlier, the Beatles sang about revolution they now only asked for everyone to just let it be. And after perfroming from a rooftop, the Beatles retired from public performances and were never seen together again. This maybe would have struck a tragic chord within our own family had my older sister been a Beatles fan and not a Rolling Stones fan. Whatever the song, at the end of the 1960’s, everyone was just coming down.

Number one hit from January, 1969
Crimson and Clover, Tommy James and the Shondells

December, 1968

The end of the year brings three things into the house – a Christmas tree, a menorah and my grandparents. My grandfather was a carpenter one generation removed from his Welsh homeland. His father had moved here from Wales at the height of the schooner building industry that helped forge the town. My grandfather followed suit becoming a woodworker. He was a short but solid man with a rosy face and easy smile and during the holidays he was not often seen without a shot of rum in a glass. My grandfather loved to tell stories and he never looked happier than when he had both a drink and an audience. Now later in life, he had exhausted all his tales to his own kids and contemporaries and so, my grandfather packed up his repertoire of stories and moved onto his grandkids.

Every story started with a question. “Did you know there was a ghost living under the cliffs at Arnes Cove?” or “Did you know that the gulls never fly over the Dead Man’s Patch?” or the sometimes, something less ethereal like “Did I ever tell you about old Mrs. Hicks?” And whether or not the question went answered he proceeded with his yarn about ghosts, cursed pieces of land or the woman who ironed her fish before eating it. The only thing these stories had in common was that they always took place in another town either across the bay or across the ocean - always somewhere just out of the reach of verification. On this December evening my older siblings helped decorate the tree and my grandmother was doing her best to conceal her concern for her what she considered her Jewish grandchildren. I was being held in my grandfather's lap and from this corner of the room I laughed for the first time.

My mother was very excited to hear her newest child laugh for the first time as my grandfather bounced me on his knee. Not soon after I started laughing I threw up over my grandfather’s wool ‘holiday dress pants’ and my mother took me away to wash me up and to put me to bed. My grandfather took some pride in the fact that he was the one to make me laugh for the first time. This story continued in the family for a while, usually brought up during the holidays. Many years later my grandfather, his mind raped by the cruel rot of Alzheimer's, confessed that my laugh was most likely the result of the tiny sip of rum he had given me and also the cause of my throwing up afterward. So many decades later and it was this tiny piece of info that tugged at what was left of his mind.

It is the month in which Douglas Engelbart first publicly demonstrated his system known as hypertext. The Apollo spacecraft put men in orbit around the moon, allowing humans to see the whole of the planet Earth for the very first time. And by the end of December, 1968 was quickly becoming history.

Hit from December, 1968
Lady Willpower, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap

November, 1968

The Atlantic winds blow so hard the rain does not fall down but lashes horizontally. The house grumbles and moans its complaint against the storm and in the harbour boats, both small and large, cling to their moorings, dipping and weaving in a violent jig with the weather. The steady gale occasionally lets up for a few moments and in the brief quiet the solid house creaks its relief and then, without build up, the house is slammed again. And if my siblings watching TV, my mother quietly engaged in her recently taken up hobby of knitting, or my father down the hall listening to music belies the ferocity just through the window it has more to do with the fact that it is not so much a storm as just another November evening near the point in the ocean where the warm Gulf Steam becomes frigid and converts itself into the North Atlantic Current. Short of the power going out, violent winds and torrential rain in November went mostly unnoticed.

My father had a small room just past the stairs – too small to be called a den and too big to be called a closet – that he took over as his own. Inside there was a recliner, shelves he built and filled himself and a stereo. It was off limits to kids. I do not remember when exactly I got to spend time listening to music (and later reading) in that room with my father but I cannot help but think it would have been on a blustery November night when everyone, stuck inside, just did what they enjoyed – whether lazy or productive – the November gales demanded neither explanation nor apology.

The music my father listened to was out of fashion and perhaps a little too sentimental but he savoured every word and note and to him there was none better than Nat King Cole; a man whose honeyed voice sang not so much truths as wishful thinking. And in the face of a fading marriage what comfort my father took in Cole’s bittersweet words is known only to him. A wet, cruel November evening in a small, safe harbour with my father trying to glean the deeper meaning of simple love ballads from another time well serves at my eighth month of life.

Not from 1968, but from my first year,
When I Fall in Love, Nat King Cole

October, 1968

NASA has launched its first manned Apollo mission in the run up to beat the Soviets to the moon: billions of dollars and rubles spent in a glorious attempt to out piss the other. While down on Earth, at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their arms in a black power salute after receiving their gold and bronze medals for the 200 meter run - frightening the crap out of an entire swath of middle America. And if America hadn’t already had enough of the stuffing knocked out of its cushy global perch, Jacqueline Kennedy not only remarries, but remarries a foreigner by the named Aristotle Onassis. With the threadbare veil of post war bliss pulled away by assassination, civil unrest and a war broadcast daily into their living rooms it was clear that, yes, Camelot was over.

I am 7 months old, defined only by the people and the actions around me. What I know of global, or even local issues for that matter, do not extend beyond the bars of my crib. But the stories are there, transferred from mother to sister to relative to me and it was becoming clear that as I entered my second half year I was not what one would call a happy baby. I busy myself with putting whatever objects I find into my mouth and to a seven month old me this well serves. But it has come to the attention and concern of my mother that I do not laugh at the things most babies laugh at; rattles, funny voices or even the failsafe raspberry blown onto the belly all fail to garner the desired response. I was not like my brothers and sisters they said. My father, more pragmatic in the area of child rearing, saw little need for concern and if, for the time being, the house was made the less for one absent note of laughter then so be it.

I would laugh eventually, as soon as I saw something funny.

Hit from October, 1968
Simon Says, 1910 Fruitgum Company

September, 1968

I am six months old – half a year: a fat, hairy, six month old baby who has learned at an early age, albeit unknowingly, that there is no social equality in the politics of beauty. My mother, having another go around with being pregnant, has invited the neighbours over for an afternoon tea and to let it be known that she was pregnant. It was an announcement, given the fecundity of my parent’s marriage, that was becoming less and less newsworthy. Feeling both expansive, but moreover just curious, my mother decided to invite the new neighbour, Mrs. Eastman. The Eastmans were an efficient family of four that had moved in down the street a few weeks earlier.

It was a small gathering and most were more interested in talking to the new neighbour than talking about my mother’s next child – although there was some discussion as to whether this was my mother’s 5^th or 6^th child. I am not sure that even my mother was certain. My place during tea would be on my Snoopy blanket on the floor of the dining room that opened onto the kitchen: not under anyone’s foot but in clear view and laying on my back, happily sucking on my feet - an ability I have since lost.

My mother noticed that Mrs. Eastman, most likely taking a break from the run of questions she was fielding from the neighbours, was playing with me. My mother felt it was a good time to talk to her herself. Mrs. Eastman stood to greet and thank my mother for the invite. After the small talk, polite nothings and inane questions, Mrs. Eastman turned to my mother and asked what church she went to. My mother paused for a moment, slightly taken aback by the question, steadied herself and replied that she did not attend any church. Mrs. Eastman, not breaking eye contact, continued to study my mother’s face as if searching for any signs that this could be a joke. My mother was not joking. Mrs. Eastman then looked to me lying on my Snoopy blanket contentedly sucking my toes and asked about where, then, I had been Christened. Again, my mother, having long tired of this line of questioning and this subject altogether, replied that none of her children were “christened”. Mrs Eastman, as my mother would tell it, had forgotten her place as newcomer and guest, and continued, “Why?”, she asked. My mother, as was her fashion when she was about to end any discussion, made a small, almost imperceptible, step forward towards Mrs. Eastman and said that “christening” her children would be very inappropriate. My mother then stooped down, scooped me up off the floor and walked out to the back porch for it was a very warm September.

Number 1, September, 1968
Hey Jude, The Beatles

August 1968

It is late summer by the sea and blueberries, blackberries, partridge berries and a little local fruit called the bakeapple (whose name was derived from baie qu'appelle... berry called what?) are ripening in the marshlands and wooded areas that surround the town. From every house comes the smell of baking and what was once, centuries earlier, a vital source of vitamin C, has now evolved into pies, tarts, cakes and all manner of “grunts” and “duffs” speckled with red, black, orange and purple juices. In backyards all over town spindly, tripod-ed barbecues are being fired up to cook foil-wrapped cod, salmon and trout and people will eat outside most evenings until the first chill of autumn sets in.

But before I got to enjoy my first idle, august supper on the grass it was time for me to have my immune system boosted. I am barely just able to sit up on my own and it is decided that this rudimentary motor skill is as good a benchmark as needed to begin the needle work. My father drove both me and my mother to the hospital in the big Buick. The car was wide and low and lolled over the street in an almost indolent fashion. Given the lack of child safety in this springy, rolling tank of a family car, the drive to the hospital was probably more dangerous that the threat of tetanus, polio, and diphtheria that I was being taken there to be inoculated against. Resting comfortably in my mother’s lap with her arms being my only seat belt, I had a perfect view of the hard, sharp edge of the dash that would stop me in the event of that perfectly executed head-on collision: just before the momentum-increased weight of my mother came crushing from behind to finish me off. In such incident I would become a tiny crushed corpse that could only be identified by his omnipresent hat! No, the typical mid-sixties sedan was not designed with family safety in mind and any allusions to passenger protection were long lost down the crack where the back and the seat met. What would prove even more perilous is the impending event where my father would have to teach my sister how to drive less than a year from now.

I do not take kindly to needles and my recently discovered vocal prowess is put to good use as my screams echo throughout the same hospital in which I was born just 5 months earlier. And as I am being skewered against exotic and extinct diseases, my mother, in an act perhaps deemed progressive, or at least representative of its time, left my father to deal with me and my gripes as she left the room for reasons then unknown. Many years later, my aunt told me she went to find the nurse my father with whom my father has had the affair in their one and only confrontation. Whatever happened, from here on my father is seen more and more holding me in old family photos.

Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, 5th Dimension

July, 1968

It is an intensely hot and humid summer made all the more insufferable by the architectural deficiencies of a 100 year old house. The house is a large, two story Queen Ann style cube built for a sea captain in the late 1800’s and has had a connection, albeit a sometimes tenuous one, to my family for almost as long. In accordance with July tradition the family is packing up for a summer vacation to the cottage: a converted shed located in a small cove set back on little beach. It was once used by fishermen more than a dozen decades previous to store gear during winter and more recently, according to rumour, as a holding house for illegal booze heading into the United States during prohibition. It was purchased by my father about 15 years before and to turn it into livable summer house became his obsession. Much to my father’s credit he turned the rundown, two story shack into a charming, two story shed and while in those days it lacked the civilized niceties such as running water and electricity it was a perfect parcel of Earth designed for the delight (and risk it would turn out) of kids.

The cottage was a two hour boat ride away and at the age of 4 months, it would be my first time on the water. My father had bought a retired longliner and commandeered it back into service for no other reason, it seemed, than to transport the family back and forth between town and cottage. On my first trip my mother stayed with me in the cabin listening to music while my father had the unenviable task of running the boat, trying to keep the rest of the kids from falling overboard and to console my oldest sibling and sister, now 14, to stop sulking about not being able to bring her friends with her and that she would have a good time. They both knew, of course, that it was not going to be. Tied to the back of the longliner was small rowboat that weaved and bobbed between the peaks of the wake like a dog protesting its leash.

After a couple of hours, the longliner slowed and putted and belched its was around a curiously formed rock cliff known as Tom’s Nose and just a couple of hundred yards in the distance, across the shallow cove, was the cottage and the rocky beach before it. The boat slowed to a stop and my father let loose with the anchor. For it was a curious oversight that while my father built a dock to shore a larger boat, the cove, from about 100 feet out was not deep enough to accommodate the old fishing boat’s large, ocean-going keel. It sometimes made for dangerous maneuvering to get the passengers from the longliner to the rowboat and onto the shore. Despite the risks and inconvenience, the shallow cove may have been the only place in this northern part if the Atlantic where the summer sun was capable of warming the water to swimming temperatures. My mother, demonstrating the adeptness of a lifetime of ocean-side living, coupled with many years of child rearing, skipped from the gunwale of the longliner to the rowboat, with me in her arms, with ease. About 30 minutes later everyone was ashore and my first family vacation, known only to me by story and faded photos, had begun.

My first family vacation must have been when my parents made up because it was announced about two months later that my mother was about two months pregnant.

Number 1 song, July 1968
Hello, I Love You, The Doors

June, 1968

In early June of 1968, Factory hangabout and misandrist Valerie Solanas demonstrated her resolve against patriarchal oppression by attempting to assassinate that bastion of masculinity and all round tough guy Andy Warhol. Firing a decidedly select three bullets - any more would have been certainly ungracious and any less ungrateful - Solanas felled Warhol but he managed to survive. This would have been bigger news that month if not for the fact that just over a day later a more successful assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy. At three months of age I live in a tumultuous world of violence and bloodshed and a world that finds me becoming an increasingly fatter baby. Having essentially two mothers in those first fews weeks it seems I am receiving twice the food. It is at this point that my mother feels it necessary to take back fully the reins of motherhood. She thanked my grandmother for all her help and sent her back to her husband who had for the past several weeks, only seen his wife on occasional visits to our home.

The warm, early summer air meant time spent outside, at least time spent in the back yard. My mother would hang laundry while listening to the radio. She would then unfold an aluminum tube lawn chair and sit in the sun and read with me, secured in a baby carrier, at her side. The tiny, vivid pink wild roses that grew at the far end of the garden mixing with the salty ocean air and fresh laundry detergent would be orchestrated bouquet of my first summer. And June would be a tableau of my mother, a yet unknown other sibling or two, and the radio playing from the kitchen window. Perhaps it was here that we both heard for the first time that James Earl Ray was arrested trying to leave London with a fake Canadian passport and subsequently charged with the murder of Martin Luther King. That cannot be confirmed but what is known is that I am not seen without a hat as, I am told, my hair was growing into a coarse nest of spikes that could not be controlled. I am, at three months of age, a fat baby in a bonnet perched in the grass, highlighted by the itinerant shadows cast by laundry lazily moving back and forth in the warm ocean air.

It is the end of June and my mother’s brood of five are around all day as school is out for the summer. Pope Paul VI condemns birth control and most North Americans choose to ignore him. My mother, even though she is not Catholic, thinks that some things are best ignored.

From June, 1968:
Revolution, The Beatles

May, 1968

I am barely two months old and my world is little more than the faces, hands and baby bottles that come within the limited range of my infant vision. My life is an unremarkable regimen, of sleeping, eating, shitting, washing, rinsing and repeat. It is a quintessential newborn’s life. My mother has returned from the hospital ready to get back to her life. My grandmother has decided to stay on a little longer than planned and one assumes her decision to remain was to not only help take care of her new grandson, but to take care of her daughter as well. As to my father’s indiscretions, these were not mentioned. In my first few weeks of life, my father spent most of his time at the hospital with my mother while she was recovering. Whether they resolved their issues by my father’s apologies carried on a flood of guilty tears or the more practical act of negotiation and agreements, what they did to steady their shaky marriage is known to no one but themselves.

I have a brother who is 12 years older than me. What happens in the mind of the first son when his 12 year reign of being the only boy is breached by a new male within the house is unknown to me and only theorised by the experts. In my house there was always tea in the afternoon: sugary, milky tea served with curiously flavoured biscuits of lemon, caraway and buttermilk. It was during one of these afternoon teas, as the story is told, that I made my first loud cry. Upstairs my mother was changing me and my grandmother was downstairs preparing tea. My grandmother yelled to my mother upstairs. My mother left me alone on the change table, went to the top of the stairs to see what my grandmother wanted. I am told it was not an instant later that I let loose with a horrible howl. My mother ran back into the room where she had left me to find me on the floor, naked and screaming. Standing next to the table was my older brother. Whether by confession by my brother or simple deduction by my mother it was clear my brother had rolled me off the change table. I was not hurt but from them on I got to take my afternoon nap in a baby carriage that was kept in the kitchen. My first scents would be bread and biscuits and tea and my first sounds would be the shared gossip, issues and laughter of neighbourhood women.

As to my brother, one can only assume he was punished in a manner befitting attempted murder. One assumes.

A radio hit in May, 1968
Troggs, Love is All Around.

April, 1968

I am the fifth child born into what was even then considered an unfashionably large family. I am also the second son. With my mother being out of the game for a while, my grandmother - my mother’s mother - came to help out. A Jewish émigré from the Soviet Union, she was an oddity in our little town and if it bothered her to stand out it certainly didn’t show. My grandmother met her future husband and my future grandfather in another town in another province and from the start it looked as if the only thing they had in common was that they were both far from home. My grandparents married and my grandfather took his new wife with him to his home back east. He returned to the comforts of the familiar and she remained a long way from home.

My grandmother meant food, and warmth and songs sang in a wonderfully strange tongue. She was a mother of three and grandmother to many more but at that point in time she was the person who changed my shitty diapers, wiped my snotty nose, fed my hungry face and sang to me songs now long forgotten. And in month that witnessed worldwide student protests, the introduction of the movie’s puritanical rating system of G, PG, R and X and the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, my grandmother made my first month as good an introduction to the world as one could hope for.

Number 1 song in April, 1968
Thanks to MickaMan for the video montage

Welcome to Stackable Plastic.

It has been a fact of my life that while I am often unable to remember what I had for dinner last night I can tell you of each and every song I enjoyed through most of my 38 years. Clearly, it would be impossible for me to recall the songs I heard while I was, for instance, 5 months old, but there are family stories that predate my own personal recollections that are all somehow connected to a song. Not too much later my own memories are forged: earliest memory, first day of school, death of a loved one, loosing ones virginity, college, breakups and everything big and small set to a soundtrack either unwittingly or by choice. Songs we loved and the songs we hated all support the framework of one’s life.

I have decided to recap my life in story and music. Month by month and year by year and eventually, after hundreds of posts I will have caught up to the present and also caught up to myself. Besides, if you don't tell your own story, who will?

Enjoy.

March 23, 1968, Year 1, Day 1.

I was born in a small eastern fishing town. My mother and father, already the parents of teenaged kids, felt they could kick start what had become a somewhat languid marriage by having more children. My mother, taking a break between her fourth and sixth child, was pregnant with me and it was during this pregnancy my father had taken up bowling at the town’s newly opened lanes. My mother, fully stretched by the burden of both young and teenaged children had little interest in bowling. Her mind was more focused on the clawing thought that my father, out of the house more and more frequently for bowling, was having an affair.

My mother’s suspicions were confirmed very late in her pregnancy with me one evening. She had started cleaning the dinner dishes as my father was heading out for another bowling night. Through the ‘freedom window’ over the kitchen sink my mother could see both the harbour and my father’s 1965 teal green Buick LeSabre rolling backwards down past the house to the street. The car turned onto the street and then lurched forward, dragging its dancing ghost of white exhaust behind it as my mother continued watching as he pulled up to the intersection where the car stopped. It was then my mother saw the passenger door open and a woman, in a long, dark coat get in, close the door behind her, and lean over to kiss my father on the lips as the car drove off out of sight.

My mother, with little more to look at than the early spring slate grey water of the harbour, continued washing the dishes. After she had finished cleaning my mother put on her coat and went to visit her friend next door. From here the story gets a little fuzzy and the hushed tales of relatives and family friends were a little conflicted and contradictory. It is assumed that what transpired between my mother and her friend was sworn to either secrecy maybe it was just an act of decorum but in the end it appears my mother had a breakdown. It is widely accepted that this breakdown prompted an early labour and she was rushed to the hospital that very evening.

Several attempts were made to contact my father and the only certainty was that he was not at the bowling alley. Later, it was established that he was at the home of his new girlfriend who, as it turned out, was a nurse from the hospital. Nurses and doctors were often from out of town in places like my hometown and they did contractual tours of duty for experience and/or extra pay. It was from this pool of transient healthcare professionals my father chose his girlfriend and perhaps it was a stroke of fortuitous scheduling that the same nurse was not the one on duty the night I was born.

It was not an easy delivery. My mother – either unable or downright unresponsive – was not terribly co-operative in my arrival. There are so few details available about my delivery that only the faintest sketches of story and rumour exist. I know it caused my mother 100+ stitches and that, at 11:57 pm, March 23, 1968 I came into this world. I also left the hospital a few days later and my mother stayed behind for a couple of more weeks. My grandmother stepped in to help out and as for my father, story goes he felt guilty, broke up with his girlfriend and gave me the exact same name as his own thereby making me a ‘third’ in the line.

So, a screaming, blood-covered baby boy just shy of 11 pounds came into this world seemingly occupied by deceit, lies, large cars and a little bit of drama in a small town by the sea. But, again, only seemingly.

Number one song on the day I was born:
Steppenwolf, Born to be Wild