Easy Rider Soundtrack

Cinema Sounds: Easy Rider « Consequence of Sound

1969 represented the end of the ’60s in more ways than one. While Woodstock has come to symbolize love and peace, the Altamont Free Concert destroyed the hippie movement due to Meredith Hunter’s death at the hands of the Hells Angels. The Beatles started the year with their infamous rooftop concert, but by that fall, John Lennon had officially decided to break the group up. While Lennon was writing “Give Peace a Chance”, Charles Manson murdered Sharon Tate and other across the Atlantic. In the middle of all this change and chaos, Easy Rider is one of the best representations of the end of the ’60s as a cultural movement. The film follows two bikers nicknamed Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) as they ride across the nation hoping to make it to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. On the way, they run into a hippie commune trying to survive outside of society, a square ACLU lawyer, and two prostitutes with whom they experience a bad acid trip. The surprising end of the movie unintentionally sums up the way that 1969 has gone. It starts hopeful but ends in spiritual failure.

The soundtrack to Easy Rider by itself does a wonderful job in conveying this idea. It kicks off with Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher”, one of most blatant songs about drugs from the ’60s. Within the first minute,  John Kay’s declared that “the pusher don’t care/if you live or if you die.” “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”, this isn’t. Rather than sticking with the whole idea of free drug use, the song works to distinguish between drugs like marijuana and hard drugs like heroin. In the movie, the song’s accompanied by Captain America stuffing the cash he got from a drug deal into his fuel tank, adding a visual layer to the track’s meaning.

While “The Pusher” tells a more cautious lesson, “Born To Be Wild” pushes in the opposite direction. The second Steppenwolf song on this record is all about going on a great adventure. What better images to support it, than shots of the two riders starting their adventure across the country. With Doors-style keyboards and one of the heavier guitar riffs to come out of the decade, “Born To Be Wild” shuns the responsibility of the soundtrack opener for the chance to “explode into space.”

Next up, “The Weight” by The Band plays over scenes of the two riders moving through the desert with a passenger they picked up. As the sun sets over the rocky territory, the track creates a feeling of community. It works for the hippie ideal of everyone living together in peace and sharing what they can. The next number, “Wasn’t Born To Follow”, by The Byrds, exemplifies one of the problems with this idea. Everyone has their own personal goals for what they want their life to be like. Living in a community that shares everything would leave nothing for the individual. In the song, the narrator wants to go everywhere from “the valley beneath the sacred mountain” to “beneath the white cascading waters” where he wants to die. Jimi Hendrix’s “If 6 was 9″ also shows this problem as Hendrix states that he’s got his “own world to live through.