Born To Be....

I found an autobiography online, so I'm gnawing my way through it, a few pages at a time. It's "Magic Carpet Ride : The Autobiography of John Kay and Steppenwolf" by the leader of Steppenwolf, widely regarded as the first heavy metal band for their first big hit "Born To Be Wild" ("I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder, racin' with the wind...")

Kay was born Joachim Fritz Krauledat in 1944 in the land then known as Tilsit, East Prussia, Germany (it's now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.) In his early days, it was just he and his mother; his father, Fritz, died in World War II combat a month before Joachim was born.

His mother took the baby in early 1945 to escape wartime conditions, and they eventually made their way in 1949 to Hanover, West Germany, where he grew to learn English and love American rock and roll.

Their next stop as refugees was Toronto, Canada (1958) where the teachers could not pronounce his name and began to refer to him as "John K." 1963 saw him and his mother move to Buffalo and become American citizens. A couple of years later, John got his first piece of US Mail - from the draft board.

Something I did not know was that John Kay, composer and performer of many great songs, is legally blind. The draft board ruled him 4-F (medically ineligible) because he has achromatopsia. From birth, he has been extremely sensitive to light and legally blind, as well as colorblind. He mentions in the book that he loves to have his house decorated up for Christmas, but had never seen all those pretty decorations and lights in anything but black and white.

...hence the dark glasses

And that was the reason his mother took him halfway around the world as a kid, to avail themselves of Western medical care and better nutrition, which doctors advised her to find for Joachim.

Just think: one of our favorite performers started off as part of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free! What a story.