John Kay (musician)

John Kay ( born April 12, 1944 in Tilsit in East Prussia as Joachim Fritz Krauledat ) is a German - Canadian rock musician in North America.

Life

During the escape from East Prussia his mother, Elsbeth Krauledat born Zimmermann fled with the toddler in front of the advancing Red Army to Arnstadt in Thuringia. The father Fritz Krauledat had fallen in World War II, two months before the birth of his son. 1948 Mother and son fled again from the Soviet occupation zone to Hanover, where his mother married a second time. The radio station BFBS of the British armed forces of the color-blind and light-sensitive Joachim listened Anglo-Saxon music. 1958 the family emigrated to Toronto, Canada and moved to Buffalo in the U.S. later.

In Canada, John Kay founded in 1965, the group Sparrows, from 1967 in California, the group Steppenwolf was that in 1969, world famous by the now classic song Born to Be Wild, the title song of the film Easy Rider. With its loud rock lexicon arrogant rasping voice of the lead singer of this band was always equipped with his trademark sunglasses. However, the glasses had concomitant congenital achromatopsia his poor eyesight; he is considered legally blind (blind according to legal regulation, his eyesight is about 21% ) and may not even get a driving license.

After several line-up changes, the group split up actually, but they play a few concerts every year. John Kay moved in 1989 with his wife Jutta, whom he met in 1965, to Tennessee and lives with his family near Vancouver, Canada.

As Kay had named his band after the novel Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, whose birth town of Calw invited him to the 2002 International Hermann-Hesse- Festival. Similarly, other groups inspired by Hesse, such as Anyone's Daughter.

In 2004 he was inducted into Canada 's Walk of Fame.