EASY RIDER MUSIC LICENSE

EASY RIDER MUSIC LICENSE

When Easy Rider became a successful film upon release, a decision was made to release a soundtrack album, and most labels agreed to license their tracks to Dunhill/ABC. Roger McGuinn, making his solo performing debut, contributed new recordings of Bob Dylan's 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)' and his own specially written 'Ballad of Easy Rider,' actually co-written with Dylan, who was not credited. So, the film's music consisted of such 1968 rock radio favorites as Steppenwolf's 'The Pusher' and 'Born to Be Wild,' the Band's 'The Weight,' the Byrds' 'Wasn't Born to Follow,' and the Jimi Hendrix Experience's 'If Six Was Nine,' with such humorous changes of pace as the Holy Modal Rounders' cosmic folk song 'If You Want to Be a Bird' and Fraternity of Man's marijuana-smoking behavior guide 'Don't Bogart Me.' Hopper had little trouble persuading various record labels to grant the screen rights to these songs at a time when re-used rock wasn't heard much in movies.

(In the liner notes to the 2000 CD reissue, Hopper claims that he canceled a proposed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young score when he became enamored with his own selections other accounts claim the film studio insisted on the music used in the rough cut.)

Even then, director Dennis Hopper didn't have much special music written, instead mostly using songs he'd heard on the radio in 1968 while he was editing the film. It turned out to be a telling portrait of America's cultural divide in the late '60s, and no small part of its impact was the soundtrack music, which eschewed a traditional score (the filmmakers couldn't have afforded that, anyway) in favor of rock music. Easy Rider was the surprise box-office hit of the summer of 1969, a low-budget film about a couple of hippies who use their profits from a drug deal to drive their motorcycles across the Southwest and attend New Orleans' Mardi Gras celebrations, encountering adventures and tragedy along the way.

Easy rider music