Easy Rider at 50: Peter Fonda Is Gone But The Music Lives On

On Friday evening, I went to Radio City Music Hall to see a 50th anniversary screening of Easy Rider. The soundtrack to the movie was played live by various musicians including John Kay of Steppenwolf and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds. It was my first time seeing Kay perform ever while 19 Septembers have passed since I saw McGuinn perform at the Boston Folk Festival.

The event, which was announced in July, was to have featured Peter Fonda as MC. But Fonda passed away of lung cancer last month at the age of 79. However, a vocal recording of Fonda commenting on the event was played. He sounded quite ill yet retained a generous spirit and good humor reminiscing how he had to talk Jack Nicholson out of quitting acting and overcome co-star and director Dennis Hopper's objections.

I've seen live musical accompaniment to silent movies, but not a talkie. The music wasn't synced to the movie. Indeed, when the music went on longer than the scene, the movie faded to black and picked up where it left off after the song. It worked exceptionally well. Equally exceptional was Kay whose voice is every bit as powerful on "The Pusher" and "Born To Be Wild" at 75 as he was at 25.

Although this was a tribute to Fonda, the audience had an extraordinary connection with Nicholson from the moment he hit the screen. He brought a different energy to the film. I'm sure audiences from 1969 had the same kind of connection because it was this role which turned him into an overnight sensation after more than 30 films under his belt.

I was struck by the contrast between Fonda's low key optimism as Captain America with Hopper's paranoid pessimism as Billy until the roles reversed in the film's penultimate scene. Although Nicholson's George Hanson is only in a third of the film, it is his words on freedom which resonate every bit as much in 2019 as they did in 1969. "Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual and it's gonna scare 'em."  Today, this can be said in equal measure of both Trump supporters and the so-called Resistance. It's very hard to publicly reject both sides because fear makes people dangerous.

Of course, the film ends on the darkest of notes. But Kay saw to it the evening didn't end that way. "We couldn't do this evening with Peter, but we'll do it for him," said Kay right before he launched into "Magic Carpet Ride". While that song doesn't appear in Easy Rider it was an appropriate choice to end a magical evening.