Steppenwolf hell! It was mother Maybelle’s boy Hoyt Axton that wrote and sang the song. John Kay just covered it.
That's like saying "Paul Anka wrote and sang the song, 'My Way'. Frank Sinatra just covered it." :-)
A careful reading of the song information at the youtube link I provided, will reveal that it plainly denotes that Hoyt Axton wrote the song. However, I bet that (besides you and me), not more than a handful of people here ever actually heard Hoyt's own various renditions of his song (which I believe he didn't release until a couple years after the Steppenwolf version was already a "hit"). The popular, most well-known version (of course) was the Steppenwolf one I posted, which had been used in the movie "Easy Rider", and that's the one some people back then would actually choose to not listen to because of the lyrics, once they were aware of them. I believe that the "Steppenwolf" version was the one the poster I replied to here was referring to, none of the other virtually unknown versions that are out there.