Peter Fonda, The Poster, & Healing From My Crash

Birthday remembrance of a great actor and his role in my journey

I met the man & made sense of the myths: Actor and creative powerhouse, Peter Fonda, died on August 16th, 2019, which happened to be my birthday. It seems ironic that he left this life during media fanfare around the 50th anniversaries of his film “Easy Rider” as well as the Woodstock Music & Art Festival —cultural touchstones that came to symbolize how people “look for America.” They’re also touchstones for how I remember emotional traumas around my 12th birthday.

August 16, 1969, was the release date of the “Easy Rider” film soundtrack album. It was also Day Two of Woodstock, miles away from where I lived in the sleepy Appalachian village of Avis, Pennsylvania. I was having an intentionally low-key birthday. No cake or party was fine by me. My parents were going through a loud divorce. To numb out raw feelings and family drama, I turned to my friends and to music. Like The Beach Boys song, there was safety “in my room,” with a radio, a record player, and a broken down Silvertone guitar (I wrote my first song that summer). I coped. I endured. I’m still here, older, wiser, and way more forgiving.

Meanwhile that August 1969, the “Easy Rider” LP magically appeared in my record library. God knows how the LP landed there, but I carefully analyzed every track of hard psychedelic blues, trippy novelty tunes, blazing production, and pastoral country rock. I thought I’d find “answers” in this music, connecting particularly with Steppenwolf (who I’d see in concert later that year) and the “cosmic cowboy” sections by Roger McGuinn and The Byrds.

“Wasn’t Born to Follow” (written by Gerry Goffin/Carole King and first submitted to The Monkees), was like a sonic Maxfield Parrish painting—a transcendental airlift from the grimy violence in the “Easy Rider” narrative (it would be years before I’d see this R-rated film, but I’d gotten reports from school friends who’d seen it on the sly).

Weeks passed and, like the magic act of the LP, a large black and white poster of Peter Fonda mysteriously appeared on my bedroom wall (the unverified theory is that my cousin Carl abandoned it and pinned it to my wall when I wasn’t around). The poster showed him puffing a cigarette on a souped-up motorcycle ( a still from the film “Wild Angels”). That image impressed my young mind as a symbol of autonomy and self-reliance. The hippie-fied promises of a “Woodstock Nation” soon filled my head. I believed solutions to life’s woes could be found in the shape-shifting rustle of the counterculture, with guys like Fonda on point.

As an actor, director, and screenwriter, Fonda notched up a respectable filmography, as part of a Fonda dynasty with his more famous father Henry and sister Jane. Following a different drum, Peter played everything from a priest to a Faustian demon to a reborn parent. If you think of good actors as good storytellers, he was a master (he also dabbled in music:

(a 1967 single written by Gram Parsons; the B-side was a sturdy cover of Donovan’s “Catch the Wind”).

Fonda’s 1971 film “The Hired Hand,” is a revisionist western that I enjoyed way more than “Easy Rider.” I discovered "HH" on DVD about when I’d read Fonda’s 1998 biography “Don’t Tell Dad” (a worthy read for students of the creative process and growing up with Hollywood culture). These topics were my icebreakers when I met him in October 2010.

The occasion was the Chiller Theatre Convention in New Jersey. Chiller is an annual 3-day Halloween event of music and meet-and-greets. People pay to get autographs from and selfies with a range of celebrities. I was working a table with Davy Jones, selling CDs, books, and posters. We were in a big room, encircled by pop stars, pro-wrestlers, Ann-Margret, Linda Blair (no relation), Elvira, Mickey Rooney, Big Bird, Richard Dreyfuss, and various sitcom, sci-fi, and Star Trek actors (Patrick Stewart visited our table). Across the way was Peter Fonda, running a table with his wife. 

During a lull in activities, I crossed over to Fonda’s spot. I was greeted by a gracious and stimulating man. He was pleased that I was a fan of “Hired Hand”, and he treated me to back stories—explaining why he used a Gnostic prayer for the cowboy burial scene, and why he hired a musician recording in a shed to do the soundtrack. That spun-off into a discussion on the merits of budget recording. He mentioned “the Monkees connection” with “Easy Rider” and gave me a message to pass on to Davy. Then it got busy, and we went back to work. Two days later we shared hellos at a dinner. I went home with a bright memory of a man who clearly loved his craft.

It has been instructive that my birthday intersects with Fonda’s demise and the faded mythologies of “Easy Rider” and a counterculture “Woodstock Nation.” I grew out of those myths, but I also grew up with them. They taught me to create, to take risks, to think out of the box, and to not be afraid to surrender to God when I crash. My life has an incredible soundtrack to go with it, and I’m grateful every day is an opportunity for a new song, riding a wild road to inner peace and outer acceptance.

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