According to the official Steppenwolf website, the band was named for a Hermann Hesse novel of the same title. But Steppenwolf wasn’t their original name, as the group was born from the ashes of another Canadian band.
The only remaining member of Steppenwolf today is John Kay, a West German-born rock music fanatic who had immigrated to Toronto as a teenager in 1958. There, he was able to engage much more deeply with the emerging music genres in North America. In 1965, Kay joined up with the Sparrows, a successful band that AllMusic calls “a kind of missing link in the history of Canadian rock,” as they ultimately spiraled into irrelevance. The Sparrows were once known as Jack London & the Sparrows in 1964, until London’s departure the next year. More lineup changes, including the addition of Kay, spurred them to rename themselves again to just The Sparrows.
As the Steppenwolf site tells it, Kay journeyed down to Los Angeles where producer Gabriel Mekler encouraged the singer to give music another shot. Kay gathered former Sparrows Jerry Edmonton, Goldy McJohn, and Michael Monarch to join him, and Steppenwolf was born.
