Bob Seger: End Of An Era

By Steven P. Wheeler

Last night in Philadelphia, American rock icon Bob Seger and his illustrious Silver Bullet Band gave their final concert performance. After more than 50 years, the 74-year-old father of blue-collar and heartland rock is moving into retirement and hanging up his road shoes.

The epitome of the rock & roll American Dream, the Michigan native, who was a local sensation for a decade before the rest of the country caught up, is rock’s original Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man. He will forever remain a shining example of the seemingly forgotten rock & roll ethic of hard work and sticking to one’s vision in the face of trivial trends and cosmetic imagery.

Toiling in national obscurity for ten long years before scoring big with his classic 1976 album Night Moves, the veteran troubadour definitely paid his dues. And today his music remains as American as baseball and apple pie. In short, his musical legacy is that of a survivor who never gave up, never made excuses, worked harder in the face of adversity, and finally achieved the stardom that eluded him for so long.

This is a sad day for me personally because Bob Seger has been the musical heart and soundtrack of my life from the time I was 13 when I first heard the unbridled rock & roll energy of Live Bullet and Night Moves within weeks of each other. I was hooked and I never looked back. His joyous rockers and melancholy ballads have served me well through my youth, my adulthood, and continue to in my graying years.

Like other Seger fans, I have all 18 of his studio albums, his two live albums, and seemingly every stray song that he has ever recorded, right up through his most recent I Knew You When, which arrived in 2017. I’ve seen his concert parties about a dozen times, starting in 1980 with the final one this past February.

I was also fortunate enough to sit down and interview the man himself two times—each time during major personal life developments in Seger’s life, one happy and one sad.

And no matter the circumstance at those times, Bob was always the same personable, witty, modest and open guy; the most unassuming superstar who ever graced a concert stage. Never once did Seger shy away from questions, often pausing to think back across the years, while being candid and thoughtful in his responses.

At the beginning of one of our sit-downs, Seger excused himself to blow his nose as he was fighting a bit of a cold. When he returned, he mumbled, “I gotta quit smoking.” When I mentioned that it was easy to quit, he looked at me quizzically before blurting out: “It is??” When I responded, “Sure it is, I’ve quit hundreds of times,” the trademark and contagious Seger laugh reverberated around the room.

It wouldn’t be the last time either as the rock & roll legend was always quick with a laugh that punctuated nearly every statement as we covered vastly different topics from his personal tribulations and joys, and, above all, his one-of-a-kind music.

On a personal note, it was nice to hear that he had different priorities than many of his artistic stature, as when he put the brakes on his career at its peak in 1988 to take care of his dying mother. Or when he went on a professional sabbatical for ten years, starting in 1996, because he wanted to be sure to do his best and be a good father and raise his kids. Unlike his own alcoholic father who abandoned Bob, his mother and brother when the future star was a vulnerable ten-year-old kid. Seger is one superstar who has always put family first.

Since the mid-Sixties, Bob Seger has seen and done it all but without the reality show dramas or sensationalistic tabloid headlines. Perhaps that’s why you’ve never seen him as the subject of those tawdry Behind the Music tales.

The man is a legend and he will be missed as he rides off into the sunset, but don’t go mistaking this tribute for any kind of sad obituary. No, this is a joyous sendoff to an artist who has given myself—and millions of other fans—so much happiness and good times, while also reminding us that when we take stock in our own lives and reflect on our communal ups-and-downs we are truly never alone.

I have put this lengthy compilation of my lengthy Seger interviews together to celebrate the words and music of one of our greatest musical artists, filled with songs that you know like the back of your hand and some personal favorites that you may not.

I hope you’ll take the time to pore over these words and music as I wish Bob and his family—wife Juanita, son Cole and daughter Samantha—well as he turns the proverbial page and enters his well-deserved place in retirement.  

Detroit Made

Born in Detroit in 1945, Bob Seger was the second of two sons to Stewart and Charlotte Seger. His father, who played several instruments and turned his youngest son onto music at a young age, was also an alcoholic who abandoned his family when Bob was only ten. Leaving him, his older brother and mother struggling to make ends meet.

Growing up poor in Ann Arbor, Seger was transfixed by the music of his childhood from Little Richard and Elvis to James Brown and Wilson Pickett. Seger wrote his first song “The Lonely One” when he was young teen and the dye was cast. He formed his first band The Decibels with some high school buddies and while they did record a demo of “The Lonely One,” the band was short-lived.

In ’63, he joined another local band The Town Criers with his future drummer Pep Perrine, before moving on to The Omens, which led to him meeting a young music entrepreneur named Edward “Punch” Edwards, beginning a business/artist relationship that continues to this very day, 54 years later.

“[Punch and I] have been together since the beginning in 1965. I think that’s a world record for an artist and a manager. It’s like a long marriage. There’s a constant ongoing drama with us. We constantly step on each other’s toes.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“We’ve been together since the beginning in 1965,” Seger explained. “I think that’s a world record for an artist and a manager. It’s like a long marriage. We fight a lot and then we get along a lot. The way it works is that I mainly maintain the creative end and when we have problems, it’s usually when he gets too involved in the creative side. And we also have problems when I get too involved in the business end [laughs].

“There’s a constant ongoing drama with us, but I think it works pretty good for me. Although there are times when I really get angry, but we’re trying to really define it a little more lately, where I’m really more on the creative end and he’s really more on the business end. But we constantly step on each other’s toes [laughs].”

By 1965, Seger had started his own band, Bob Seger and the Last Herd. They recorded his very first single “East Side Story,” which became a local hit in Detroit as ’65 turned into ’66, and resulted in him getting a recording contract with Cameo-Parkway Records run by the controversial and future music mogul Neil Bogart.

Following the burgeoning success of “East Side Story,” Seger and his Last Herd band cut four more singles—“Persecution Smith,” “Vagrant Winter,” the yuletide James Brown tribute “Sock It To Me, Santa” and “Heavy Music.” It was “Heavy Music” that really brought Seger to the top of the Detroit music scene in 1967 and the single was literally on the verge of gaining national attention. But in a precursor to the decade-long struggles that lie ahead, it all came to nothing.

“I recorded ‘East Side Story’ when I was 20 or 21,” Seger told me during our 1991 interview, “and then with ‘Heavy Music’ the next year, we kept calling the record company and they weren’t answering the phone. Finally, we sent a friend over who was in New York City and he got there and the doors were padlocked [laughs].

“It was Cameo Parkway Records. It was Neil Bogart’s company. He was like a boy wonder back then. This was before he started Casablanca Records. He was like 24 years old and he was running Kama Sutra, Cameo Parkway and a few other labels. Basically, he got in a little over his head moneywise, and Chubby Checker sued him, so that didn’t help him keep the doors open.

In an answer to why these early recordings haven’t been officially released over the past six decades, Seger noted that “Neil sold it all to Allen Klein, which was a great thing. I’m being facetious now. I think Klein still owns some of my early stuff like ‘East Side Story,’ ‘Persecution Smith’ and ‘Heavy Music.’ I own the publishing, but he owns the rights to the masters. And I’m not wanting them to make money off my songs.”

While Seger can laugh at the Cameo-Parkway disaster now, this was only the first of a steady stream of disappointments that would mar his early career.

Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man

‘Cause I was born lonely down by the riverside
Learned to spin fortune wheels, and throw dice
And I was just thirteen when I had to leave home
Knew I couldn’t stick around, I had to roam

Ain’t good looking, but you know I ain’t shy
Ain’t afraid to look a girl, hey, in the eye
So if you need some loving, and you need it right away
Take a little time out, and maybe I’ll stay

But I got to ramble (ramblin’ man)
Oh I got to gamble (gamblin’ man)
Got to got to ramble (ramblin’ man)
I was born a ramblin’ gamblin’ man

The following year, after signing with Capitol Records, and changing his band name to The Bob Seger System, Seger finally scored his first big national hit, the infectious soulful rock classic “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” which cracked the Top 20.

Seger’s debut album of the same, released in January of 1969, also included Seger’s cult hit, the angry anti-Vietnam tirade “2+2=?,” which helped propel the album into the Top 100 on the Billboard Album Charts. It was pretty heady stuff for the 23-year-old and he seemed on his way to stardom.

The Follow-Up Flop

With the success of his debut album, a bona fide hit single and his career seemingly ready to take off, Seger was instead thrown a major curveball by Capitol and his manager. For the all-important follow-up album, Noah, released in September of that same year, a second singer-songwriter, Tom Neme, was brought into the band and Seger’s bright future was extinguished just as quickly as it came.

In fact, so distressed was Seger that he chucked it all in. “I quit my band when we were doing an album called Noah.” Despite still being called The Bob Seger System, Seger only wrote two of the album’s ten tracks (the title track and “Death Row” which was a holdover from the previous album). He co-write two others (the powerful “Innervenus Eyes” and the ridiculous six-minute vamp “Cat”).

It was a bizarre follow-up to the promise of the band’s debut album as Seger’s band was now largely being helmed by another vocalist and guitarist. All Seger told me about that time now is: “With that album, Punch and the record label were pushing me to write less and let other people in the band write and sing more. So I left the band after that album, but then the band wanted me back and [Tom Neme] was let go.

“That retirement was for only like six weeks. It was just one of those things. I just didn’t like the guy’s songs. It was like the Eagles hiring Barry Manilow, and then six weeks later they were telling me, ‘I think we made a mistake’ [laughs]. That’s the nuts and bolts of what happened.”

Noah rightfully died a death, and with the dawn of a new decade things returned to normal with The Bob Seger System’s third release, Mongrel. Filled with raucous rockers like “Lucifer,” “Highway Child” and “Leanin’ On My Dream,” Mongrel was the best of the band’s three albums and while it didn’t do as well as their debut, lacking a hit single, it did manage to climb into the bottom of the album charts.

A New Direction

Life is like a big river
It’s sink in or swim, depends on you
You can take or you can be a giver
If you got love
You’re gonna get through

Despite gaining some strong critical response and modest commercial success with Mongrel, Bob Seger the songwriter was wanting to branch out in his musical direction so he broke up the band and decided to try things on his own. A hint towards this more versatile direction was buried on Mongrel in the form of a ballad called “Big River,” in which one could hear a glimpse into the style he would later perfect.

“I also wanted to write ballads,” Seger explained. “The problem was that it was very difficult for my bands to play anything with any kind of ‘sensitivity’ or ‘delicacy’. They were always big bashers and every time I’d write a ballad, they’d just bash it to death.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“I also wanted to write ballads,” Seger explained. “The problem was that I wanted to start writing some different kind of material and it was very difficult for my bands to play anything with any kind of ‘sensitivity’ or ‘delicacy’ [laughs]. They were always big bashers and every time I’d write a ballad, they’d just bash it to death.

“After the Mongrel album, I wanted to really do my own thing. In 1971, I made an album called Brand New Morning with just myself on piano and guitar and I did some live shows by myself for like six months.

“I love to rock, I really do, it’s ultimately my favorite thing to do but I think you also need a balance as a songwriter. I saw that with the Beatles. They could rock really hard and they could also do ballads and cover both ends, and that’s what I wanted to do.”

Just prior to recording Brand New Morning, Seger did release a one-off single with Capitol called “Lookin’ Back,” a pointed critique of the Nixon-era conservative movement and the song did seep its way into the Top 100 on the charts to keep his name out in the public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptbYM5A7K64

Brand New Morning, however, featured no other musicians and was a subdued work that sounded more like songwriter demos than a proper album and following its release, Capitol Records ended its contract with Seger after four albums.

He was now band-less and without a record contract. A lesser artist may have thrown in the towel but for Seger it was back to square one, with more than a few hard-learned lessons under his belt.

Turn the Page

Out there in the spotlight
You’re a million miles away
Every ounce of energy
You try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body
Like the music that you play

Later in the evening
As you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers
Ringin’ in your head
You smoke the day’s last cigarette
Rememberin’ what she said

Here I am
On the road again
There I am
Up on the stage
Here I go
Playin’ star again
There I go
Turn the page

Over the next several years Seger managed to record three albums—Smokin’ O.P.’s, Back in ’72 and Seven—on his manager’s record label, Palladium. Not settling on any one group of musicians between 1972-73, Seger cut a lot of cover songs on Smokin’ O.P.’s and Back in ’72, mixing in some of his own material.

While the first two albums managed to barely crack the Billboard Album Chart, Seger’s songwriting growth was reaching new heights. There was his immortal road ode “Turn the Page” (featuring an iconic sax intro from Tommy Cartmell, who would later become known to Seger fans as Mr. Alto Reed) and the Chuck Berry machine gun lyrical approach of “Get Out of Denver,” which became a modest hit in 1974.

More importantly, during the recording of the Seven album, Seger had put together a collection of top Michigan musicians and dubbed them the Silver Bullet Band. Although they only appeared on a handful of the songs on that vastly underrated gem of a record, he would take them on the road endlessly over the next few years and build up his fan base one city at a time.

Whether opening for the likes of Kiss and Bachman-Turner-Overdrive, Seger and his Silver Bullets were beginning to win over new fans as they bounced from being second or third on the bill in arenas to headlining small clubs across the country.

No audience was too small to the musical field general, and his band was getting tighter and tighter with every performance. This was old-fashioned doggedness and survival. As Seger noted when told me proudly, “I’ve never had to have a day gig.”

The Silver Bullet Band

After drifting through the early part of the ‘70s, Seger became a mainstay on the rock & roll highways and biways with his now-famous Silver Bullet Band beginning in 1973.

The original members of this Michigan-based ensemble were bassist Chris Campbell and saxophonist Alto Reed, who have remained with Seger since 1969 and 1971, respectively; guitarist Drew Abbott, who remained until 1982; powerhouse drummer Charlie Allen Martin, who was with the band until 1977 when he was paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a car; and keyboardist Robyn Robbins, who replaced Rick Manasa in 1974, remained until 1980. After Robbins’ departure, former Grand Funk keyboardist Craig Frost joined the fold and is still a Silver Bullet member to this day.

“The Silver Bullet Band got together in October of ’73 and in 1974 we played 265 nights. We were just trying to build a following. We did whatever it took. You have to go out and earn people’s respect, and with respect comes loyalty. And that takes years of road work with very little payoff, let me tell you.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

Seger gets downright giddy when he talks about those salad days on the road, when live performances were necessary to feed the machine since record sales were yet to turn the tide. Life on the road was down and dirty; it was survival.

“We played a lot in those early days, and I mean, a lot. The Silver Bullet Band got together in October of ’73 and in 1974 we played 265 nights, right on through the Beautiful Loser album. Even when we were making albums we were playing 265 nights. That’s a lot of shows, let me tell ya,” he said, with a laugh.

“We were just trying to build a following, ya know. We did whatever it took. We did third on the bill, we did second on the bill, we headlined some clubs. Literally whatever it took, and looking back I think it worked.”

He takes a moment and brings up his good friend Don Henley to ram the point home: “Henley is out touring now and I told him, and I’ll tell anybody that will listen, ‘You have to keep coming back and build and solidify that audience.’ If they loved your concert this time, they will love you six months from now. I’ve found that the people love you when you come back to the towns that really enjoy your stuff.

“That, to me, is really important,” he continued, before his philosophy on life and his career seeps in: “I never took anything for granted. Never.”

For Seger, it wasn’t just about financial survival, it was keeping an eye on the bigger picture and that to him was always about improving and getting better. “What we would do is play like a bar gig for three nights and then get a nice concert slot somewhere, then more bar gigs. We would work constantly because you have to get in front of as many people as possible and that’s how you figure out your strengths and weaknesses.

“You really have to gauge how they’re responding to you and that’s the only way you can get better and within the band you have to be able to criticize each other as a way for everyone to grow as a unit. Honesty, persistence, and doing whatever it takes to continue doing what you love is the answer if you ask me.”

“We used to drive to Florida, play a show, and turn around and drive back to Michigan because we couldn’t afford to stay there. I’m not kidding you. We used to call it ‘soul driving’ and I held the record. I drove us from Miami to Detroit, 25 ½ hours non-stop. Good times.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

In this day and age of instant fame and celebrity, Seger remains adamant that no success is more rewarding than that which comes with hard work and sacrifice. “I’ve seen so many groups that my manager, Punch, tried to get started,” he said. “And he used the same basic formula that he used with us: keep playing, keep playing and keep playing. Because the more you play, the hungrier you get to be accepted by enough people to make some sort of a living at making music.

“But some of the younger bands out there seem to want to go out and wreck hotel rooms and tv sets right away. A majority of new bands today want it too fast and too easy,” he says, matter of factly. “They get a hit record and they make the assumption that everyone knows them now, so they don’t have to work too hard on the road. It’s just not true.

“You have to go out and earn it, and you have to earn people’s respect, and with respect comes loyalty. And that takes years of road work with very little payoff, let me tell you.”

The Beautiful Loser

He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man
He wants his home and security
He wants to live like a sailor at sea

Beautiful loser
Where you gonna fall?
When you realize
You just can’t have it all

As Seger slowly and methodically built up a loyal fanbase by tirelessly playing on the road and as his songwriting evolved and improved, Capitol Records decided to take another chance on him in 1975 after dumping him four years before. The resulting album, Beautiful Loser, was a solid step forward towards the Bob Seger we know today.

That assessment became clear when I asked whether he felt he finally was finding his songwriting voice. “Absolutely,” he said, without hesitation. “Beautiful Loser was a turning point for me as a songwriter. I think that was the first album where I really consistently started writing some fairly good songs.

“Part of the problem in those days was that we were on the road so much that there really wasn’t a lot of time for me to really focus on songwriting, so we put our emphasis on being a touring act for many years. We used to play 250 to 275 nights a year, so there really wasn’t much time for songwriting.

“Since the Beautiful Loser album, I think that has slowly started to balance out now where I write and tour about equally now, which has helped me make a dramatic improvement with my songwriting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG-wuWNIyzI

“I’m not a natural writer of songs, like a John Lennon was or like Don Henley is. When Don was making his last record [1990’s The End of the Innocence], I would sometimes watch him write lyrics in the studio and then go sing ‘em. I would never even dream of doing that. I sit and tinker with my songs and the lyrics and finalize them two weeks before I even go in the studio to record them.

“A lot of my growing confidence at that time had to do with the example that my friends Glenn [Frey] and Don [Henley] set when they hit big with the Eagles. Glenn actually came to me when I had finished Beautiful Loser and said, ‘Now you’ve got it, now you’re getting it.’”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“It just comes much more easily to other writers. Producer Jimmy Iovine is a friend of mine and he worked with John Lennon and was telling me how John would just snap off the most incredible lines right in the studio. It’s not that way with me [laughs].”

Seger was also gaining more confidence while being inspired by positive feedback from his friends. It was an interesting case where a one-time student had found massive success before the teacher. “A lot of my growing confidence at that time had to do with the example that my friends Glenn [Frey] and Don [Henley] set when they hit big with the Eagles. Glenn actually came to me when I had finished Beautiful Loser and said, ‘Now you’ve got it, now you’re getting it.’”

He was also finding a lot of inspiration with the wealth of singer-songwriters who had cropped up during that period. “By that time it had become the era of the singer-songwriter, with people like James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell, Tom Rush, people like that. It was about the narrative song and it was a really rich vein to get really inspired by.”

In addition, Seger was becoming much better in the recording studio. “Starting with the Beautiful Loser album, I started using the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section on my records. I used them on my albums mainly for expediency. They recorded things really fast and they made things sound like records very quickly. They had their own studios and I’d go down there and sing with them, as did Bob Dylan, the Stones, Stevie Winwood, Joni Mitchell, and just a myriad of people.

“Working with the Muscle Shoals guys was a really fast way of recording three or four songs, whereas the Silver Bullet Band and myself would take a lot longer in the studio because we weren’t studio-wise in those days.

“We stopped using the entire Muscle Shoals band in 1979 after the Against the Wind album. And since then I’ve used the main guys from the Silver Bullet Band—Chris Campbell, Alto, and Craig Frost—as well as a wide array of session musicians.”

Live Bullet

“You are here because you want the real thing.
Let’s bring on Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band NOW!”

After a decade of slugging it out in bars, dives, clubs, or supporting national acts, with the release of Beautiful Loser in April of 1975, Seger began to get some critical praises and more national notice as it became his highest charting effort up to that point, although it still didn’t make it in the Top 100. But, in Detroit, the album took his local stardom to an all-new high, allowing the 30-year-old veteran to headline a large arena for the very first time, at Seger’s dream venue, Cobo Hall, for two nights in September of that year.

While the decision to record the shows was a last-minute idea by his manager Punch Andrews, a thought that Seger only reluctantly went along with it as he was wanting to focus on his performance and showing off his red-hot band to his hometown fans. In retrospect, it was a fateful decision that literally captured a road hungry band at their absolute performance peak.

When I bring up that classic live album, Seger smiles knowingly, saying: “It’s pretty ferocious, yeah. That album was just two nights at Cobo Hall. I have to give credit to my manager, Punch, because our show was becoming so popular and the band had become so ferocious onstage, he just wanted to capture it on tape.

“It seemed like the perfect night to do it because it was the first time we ever really headlined anywhere in a huge arena. That really was the first time we ever headlined anywhere. You had these six guys who were living like road rats. We were more station wagon drivers than musicians in those days.

“It’s pretty ferocious. I think what Live Bullet shows is that we were very hungry musicians, and also maybe a little desperate and I think that shows too on that album. We were a rock & roll band to be reckoned with. I love that record. I really love to listen to it, even to this day.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“We used to drive to Florida, play a show, and turn around and drive back to Michigan because we couldn’t afford to stay there. I’m not kidding you. We used to call it ‘soul driving’ and I held the record,” he said proudly. “I drove us from Miami to Detroit, 25 ½ hours non-stop. We’d get bored so we’d have contests. I remember trying to get out of the car that night and my legs were asleep [laughs]. Good times.”

As for the resulting album, which featured early Seger classics like “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” “Turn the Page,” “Heavy Music,” “Katmandu,” “Get Out of Denver” and the brilliant double-shot of “Travelin’ Man” and “Beautiful Loser.” Seger’s impassioned vocals on the latter sounded almost like a final plea for people to accept him for what he was and not what he could never be.

“I think what Live Bullet shows is that we were very hungry musicians, and also maybe a little desperate and I think that shows too on that album,” he adds. “We were a rock & roll band to be reckoned with, that’s for sure.”

“I love that record. I really love to listen to it, even to this day. I wish we could get that kind of raw energy back. It’s not that easy. I really miss that drummer, Charlie Martin. He was a tremendous driving force in the Silver Bullet Band. He had that accident where he was paralyzed from the waist down not long after that, and that was a real loss to the band.”

Another thing that the Silver Bullet Band did for Seger is that having a band allowed him to focus on songwriting. He was no longer struggling to be the lead guitarist in his band and that opened up his creative mind with an all-new light.

“Dropping the lead guitarist role was a major factor in my career. It took away from my voice, and it took away from my songwriting, too. I wanted to write everything like Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, everything with great riffs. But that was somewhat of a cop-out because I was building songs around a riff. I began to really work on the craft of songwriting.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“It reached a point around that time where I sat down with my manager and my band and said, ‘Look, I need more time to write songs and to do it well.’ And dropping the lead guitarist role was a major factor in my career, because I was a real prisoner,” he pointed out. “It took away from my voice, and it took away from my songwriting, too. I wanted to write everything like Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, you know, everything with great riffs.

“But, to me, that was somewhat of a cop-out because I was building songs around a riff, and that’s all there was. It was much more difficult for me to write songs that had melody and chordal structure and more interesting structures. I began to really work on the craft of songwriting.

“I couldn’t really do that and also be a player. I’ve never really been a great player of anything,” he said modestly. “I play well enough to write songs. That’s the one thing I’ve been a little sad about, because I do love playing, but I’ve accepted my role in life.”

When I mention his simple yet memorable piano solo in “Still the Same” or his lead guitar solo in “Her Strut,” he laughed and said, “Well, I still love to play guitar and piano onstage, and I’ve still got a Neanderthal rip-and-tear approach that I like to show off once in a while.”

Stardom…Finally

So you’re a little bit older and a lot less bolder than you used to be
So you used to shake ’em down but now you stop and think about your dignity
So now Sweet 16’s turned 31
You get to feelin’ weary when the work days done
Well all you got to do is get up and into your kicks, if you’re in a fix
Come back baby, rock and roll never forgets

This time-honored American philosophy of hard work, dedication, and never say die attitude finally paid off at the end of 1976, when Seger released his tenth album Night Moves. 1975’s Beautiful Loser album had brought him respectability and the stellar concert collection Live Bullet brought him more fans, but Night Moves made him a star.

This sterling collection of soulful rock and introspective ballads came across as one man’s vindication, the musical diary of a survivor. This was followed by six consecutive platinum and multi-platinum albums over the next 15 years when Seger became an elder statesman of heartland rock and a bona fide superstar.

As for whether he knew that Night Moves was going to be the album that forever changed his career, he replied: “I really did think it was going to be something special while I was making it. I did Beautiful Loser at Muscle Shoals [with the illustrious Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section] and I did half of the Night Moves album there as well. And I could tell by the reaction of those musicians that I was onto something.

“When I played them things like ‘Mainstreet’ and ‘Come to Poppa,’ they were going nuts. It was like a major step forward from Beautiful Loser to them and these guys played on some of the greatest albums in history.

And we felt really strong about the song, “Night Moves.” “We recorded that song in Toronto [with just the Silver Bullet Band rhythm section of Chris Campbell and Charlie Allen Martin, and some local Canadian musicians], and no matter how many times you listened to it you didn’t get tired of it. We discovered that during the mix. I think we did something like five mixes and Punch and I called each other the next day and said, ‘Wow, it doesn’t matter which mix I listen to, it sounds really cool.’ That was a good feeling.

“So, yeah, I had hopes that the Night Moves album would be the one and by god, that was the one. We went from station wagons to jets after that album came out,” he says with a laugh. “We never did a bus tour, we never were in-between.”

Because his massive success happened so late in his career—31 years old in the 1976 rock world was like being a dinosaur—it begs the question as to whether or not, it was a blessing in retrospect. Seger took a moment to think, saying, “That’s a really good question. I never really thought about it like that.

“It’s interesting because the actor Dennis Quaid is a good friend of mine and, a couple of years ago, he was just doing movie after movie after movie, and he looked at me and said: ‘Whaddya do when your reality exceeds your dreams?’

“And I think that’s what happens to these young bands when they get success too young and too fast. They end up taking themselves too seriously. I feel sorry for guys like Axl Rose and these young guys who find success so young where it happens overnight for them.

“I mean I was 31 when Night Moves became a hit and that was considered really old at that time, so I had more than ten years of struggles, of almost hits, and ups-and-downs to help keep me grounded once things took off and I consider myself to be fortunate that it happened when it did.

“Although,” he continued with a knowing grin, “during those ten years I certainly wanted it to happen then, and was really trying to make it just as hard in those days. I don’t know. I guess things happen when they happen for a reason.”

Platinum Paranoia

I take my card and I stand in line
To make a buck I work overtime
Dear Sir letters keep coming in the mail
I work my back till it’s racked with pain
The boss can’t even recall my name
I show up late and I’m docked
It never fails

I feel like just another
Spoke in a great big wheel
Like a tiny blade of grass
In a great big field

With the platinum success of both Live Bullet and Night Moves, both albums surpassing five million in sales, Seger had finally hit the big time, but, with it, came a pressure he had thus far never had to deal with: expectations. For someone who has always been his own harshest critic, Seger now felt the weight of the world on his shoulders as he had to now produce an album for millions of new fans that would not be released under the radar of scrutiny.

It was something called Platinum Paranoia. “A friend of mine, the music journalist Timothy White, came up with that phrase,” Seger admitted, “and I would say that I fell into that after the success of Night Moves.

“I think that’s a natural thing to go through at first, and I did go through that a bit when I was making Stranger in Town, which was the follow-up to Night Moves. And I still had that a bit when I was making Against the Wind. Yeah, I had ‘platinum paranoia.’”

The resulting album, Stranger in Town, alleviated those worries when it became the biggest selling studio album of his career, chock-full of classic hits, from the driving rock of “Hollywood Nights” and “Feel Like a Number” to the softer gold hits like “Still the Same” and “We’ve Got Tonight.”

Not to mention the immortal “Old Time Rock and Roll,” which would crack the Top 40 twice. First in 1979 and again a few years later when it was used for Tom Cruise’s memorable lip-sync performance in his underwear in the 1983 hit comedy, Risky Business.

Against the Wind

Well those drifters days are past me now
I’ve got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out

Against the wind
I’m still runnin’ against the wind
I’m older now but still running
Against the wind

In 1980, Seger’s fame climbed even higher as he scored his first and only Number One album with Against the Wind. Despite the success of the album, there were some fans who scratched their head at the lack of trademark Seger-styled Motor City muscle, with the one exception of the FM rock hit, “Her Strut.”

When pushed on that point, Seger acknowledged the concern that some fans had at the time. “You’re right the edge is gone. I think I was a little tired at that point and it’s a pretty mellow album. I really like that album and I can listen to it all the way through, unlike some of my other albums, but I get what you’re saying.

“At that point though,” he continued, “when it was time to make another album, those ten songs were the best songs I had. I had some other rock stuff for that album, but those songs just didn’t measure up to what ended up on the album. I always feel that I’m in competition with myself.

“That’s something that me and Henley and Frey always talk about. You can’t worry about what Tom Petty or anyone else is doing. You just have to do what you do and try to do your best to the max at any given time.

“There’s probably a little Eagles influence on that album as well because I was hanging out a lot with those guys throughout the time I was making Against the Wind. And I was feeling a little mellower and I really love the Eagles, ya know.”

Of course, the most famous song on the chart-topping album is the title track, which has certainly stood the test of time and includes one of Seger’s greatest lyrical lines: “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

Ironically, the writer himself questions the memorable line, even asking his friends for feedback. “Oh, yeah, I definitely wasn’t sure about it,” he says now. “The only thing that bothered me about that phrase was the grammar. It sounded grammatically funny to me.

“I kept asking myself, ‘Is that correct grammar?’ I liked the line, and everybody I played it for—like Glenn Frey and Don Henley—were saying, ‘That’s the best line in the song,’ but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t right. But I slowly came around [laughs].

“You have to understand that songwriters can’t punctuate anything they write. I work in such a narrow medium that I tend to second-guess things like that. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen that line in a few other songs since I came up with it. There was a Poison song and there’s a new country song out there too, so I guess it was okay after all.”

His mention of Frey and Henley is interesting to note as Seger had also completed a very rare collaboration with his Eagle friends at that time, scoring them a hit with “Heartache Tonight.” In a word, everything Seger touched in those days was turning to gold, if not platinum.

“Writing with other people really doesn’t really work for me, no,” he answered to questions about that song and collaborations in general. “Basically what I did for ‘Heartache Tonight’ is I just gave them the chorus: ‘there’s gonna be a heartache tonight, a heartache tonight, I know’.

“Then I walked away from it, because Henley is so good at lyrics, what am I gonna do,” he says, laughing. “I did go back later and helped with one little section with him and Glenn, the ‘you can beat around the bushes, you can get down to the bone’ section.

“The three of us sat down and hammered that section out in six or eight hours, but I’m just not good at that, where you sit together and throw around ideas. They both have very strong personalities and so do I, but we had fun with that one.”

Another interesting Seger involvement with a classic song released during that period had to do with him giving some good advice to another friend, this one from New Jersey, named Bruce Springsteen. At the time, both superstars were mixing their albums at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. Seger was putting the finishing touches on Against the Wind and Springsteen was working on his double-album opus, The River.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he recalled. “To try and save money Bruce would work late at night to get the studio at a cheaper rate, and so he’d be coming in the studio and I’d be leaving for the day.

“We were both staying at the Sunset Marquee in L.A., and the poor guy was so white and so thin back then, this was before he did all the weightlifting. And we’d pass each other saying, ‘Hi, going to work?’ ‘Yeah, going to work. Going to bed?’ ‘Yeah, going to bed.’ ‘Okay, hope the lawn mowers don’t wake you up’ [laughs].”

The point of contention had to do with the song, “Hungry Heart,” which became one of Bruce’s biggest hits. According to Seger, Springsteen seemed to be going through some platinum paranoia of his own. “I think Bruce was frightened that ‘Hungry Heart’ was too commercial. And at that time in his career, he had a tendency to give away all his hits—he gave ‘Because the Night’ to Patti Smith and ‘Fire’ to the Pointer Sisters and so on and so forth.

“So Bruce and his manager Jon Landau would be coming in and I’d be heading out, and one day they invited me to Bruce’s room because he wanted to play me this song called ‘Hungry Heart’ and get my opinion. I could tell that he was thinking it was too commercial and he was worried about people questioning his integrity or whatever.

“It sounded fine to me,” he told me. “I mean it’s obviously a really, really strong song. I just told him, ‘Nobody’s gonna accuse you of selling out, Bruce’ [laughs]. Jeez, now when he plays that song onstage the whole arena sings it for him.”

Avoiding the Trappings of Stardom

She stood there bright as the sun on that California coast
He was a midwestern boy on his own
She looked at him with those soft eyes, so innocent and blue
He knew right then he was too far from home

Despite this period of heady times and mass success, and despite lyrical hints to the contrary, Seger says he managed to not fall into the trappings of stardom. “I don’t think I ever got caught up in a hedonistic lifestyle. I had a real quiet home life in those days, from maybe ’75 to 1980. It was really quite calm and people might even call it boring [laughs].

“I was in a really solid ten-year relationship at the time I was making Night Moves, Stranger in Town and Against the Wind. I remember Bruce Springsteen telling me in 1980 that he admired me for having such a solid relationship because he was having trouble holding one together. Unfortunately, that relationship went down a few years later in ’83.

“I just try to live my life with an open mind and try not to dwell on who I am, because if I do I’m afraid that I’ll become a caricature of who I am and I don’t want that ever to happen. I just really try and take life as it comes. I have a lot of normal people in my life and try and stay as grounded as I can.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“I try not to think about the drawing power I have or whatever you want to call it, in terms of still being able to sell out arenas. I just try to live my life with an open mind and try not to dwell on who I am, because if I do I’m afraid that I’ll become a caricature of who I am and I don’t want that ever to happen.

“I just take life day-to-day and try to balance life and career. I probably work too hard on my records, but all maturity is learning a balance in life. I know there are a lot of people who think that I’m not aware enough of what I can do, but I think if you dwell on the fact that you can do this or do that, it can be harmful.

“I just really try and take life as it comes. I have a lot of normal people in my life and try and stay as grounded as I can,” before adding with another laugh, “and those people around me keep me very grounded.”

Nine Tonight

With three massively popular albums under his belt, a trilogy of albums that sold more than 15 million albums in America alone, Seger then released his second live album, Nine Tonight, in 1981.

But the power and ferocity of the previous concert recording, Live Bullet, was nowhere to be found. The Silver Bullet Band had been somewhat neutered on Nine Tonight. Seger agreed with my assessment saying, “I think it is really done well and people really do like it, but if I had to do it over I would have never put that album out.

“The thinking at the time was to put together the songs from the previous three albums, which were so successful—Night Moves, Stranger in Town and Against the Wind—and to kind of wrap up that period in a sense,” he explained. “We were getting some hints from the record company around that time to maybe put out a greatest hits album because of that trilogy of albums where we had like nine or ten straight hit singles. But we decided to just do it with a live album instead.

“Looking back, I think it was a mistake, and I wasted five or six months listening to tapes from nine or ten concerts and then mixing them all. But I do like some of the performances on there, like ‘The Fire Down Below’ and ‘Tryin’ To Live My Life Without You’ [which became a #5 hit single], but on the whole I kind of wish I hadn’t done it because as a live album it really pales next to Live Bullet.”

While he may think of Nine Tonight as having been a mistake in retrospect, the double-album did sell more than four million copies. Oddly enough, when it comes to performing now, because of his commercial success, he no longer has the blank canvas he had in the early days when he could play whatever he wanted.

Can’t it be frustrating to be trapped by your hits? “Yeah, a little bit,” the road veteran admits. “The thing is I know what the audience wants, they want the hits, and there’s not as much challenge to it as there was in the early days, I gotta be honest. I would love to recapture those Live Bullet days,” he says before chuckling about that thing called age, “but I don’t know if I’m young enough to pull that off anymore.”

Little Victories

Stood alone on a mountain top,starin’ out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west, it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin’ and my soul began to rise
And pretty soon my heart was singin’

Roll, roll me away, I’m gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin, gotta keep ridin’, keep searchin’ till I find what’s right
And as the sunset faded I spoke to the faintest first starlight
And I said next time, Next time we’ll get it right

With the end of one of the strongest three-album runs in rock music history, Seger returned in 1982 with The Distance, which returned to Seger’s home in the upper reaches of the charts, hitting #5. One of the hardest rocking albums of his career and boasting such standards as “Roll Me Away,” and chart hits “Shame On the Moon” and “Even Now,” it remains one of the strongest efforts of his 50+ year career and also one of his personal favorites.

Following the rather tame acoustic sounds of his previous album, Seger was ready to rock this time around. “After Against the Wind, I consciously wanted to make a real hard record. The Distance was a definite collaboration between [producer] Jimmy Iovine and myself. There’s a lot of stuff that I really like on that album.

“I especially like Side Two,” he proclaims, still speaking in vinyl terms. “I really love ‘Roll Me Away,’ ‘Comin’ Home’ and ‘Little Victories,’ boy, do I love that song. I don’t put ‘House Behind a House’ up there with those three songs, because it’s a little strange, but it’s fun-strange [laughs]. I’m a little sad that I put ‘Little Victories’ at the end of the album because I’m not sure that everyone really heard it, and it’s really a song that I’m really, really proud of.”

https://youtu.be/aYFaaX8YZvw

Something else happened with The Distance, Seger was no longer solely relying on the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section nor his Silver Bullet Band in the studio, as he had on the previous four albums. He was now wanting to bring in specific musicians any time he wanted. It was a change that led to the departure of longtime Silver Bullet Band guitarist Drew Abbott, although the nucleus of the group remained and Seger kept the band name alive as well.

“I started working with other musicians during that time, but I kept the Silver Bullet Band name because it was something that was very important to those guys who were still in that band, like Chris Campbell who has been with me since 1969 and Alto who has been with me since 1971. That made it important enough for me to keep the name.

“Nowadays the Silver Bullet Band is Chris, Alto, Craig Frost and myself. Craig has been the keyboard player in the band since 1980, so the nucleus is the four of us. It’s really important to those guys and that makes it important to me, because they deserve to be happy.”

With ‘Roll Me Away,’ Seger hit home with one of his best road songs, a tale of riding your Harley in search of peace of mind, something that he likes to do even when he’s off tour. Call it white line therapy. “The whole road thing to me is really romantic,” the lifelong biker says. “I like to drive across the country at least once a year. I just find it very therapeutic to just get away. It clears my head and I think that’s really important for my writing to be able to clear everything out.

https://youtu.be/HsDQpTEglbg

“I don’t write when I’m on the road though. The only two songs that I can think of that I wrote on the road are ‘Turn the Page’ and ‘Night Moves,’ but those were basically cases of getting an outline of verses over three-hour periods. Those songs weren’t totally finished until I had a week or two off the road to really knuckle down on them.

“I’m not like Don Henley who writes down everything in journals and things that he might later use, like little phrases that come to him. I should probably do that actually because if I’m talking to him and he says something, I’ll be like, ‘Can I use that?’ [laughs].”

Like A Rock

Stood there boldly
Sweatin’ in the sun
Felt like a million
Felt like number one

The height of summer
I’d never felt that strong
Like a rock

I was eighteen
Didn’t have a care
Working for peanuts
Not a dime to spare

But I was lean and
Solid everywhere
Like a rock

My hands were steady
My eyes were clear and bright
My walk had purpose
My steps were quick and light

And I held firmly
To what I felt was right
Like a rock

After The Distance Tour in 1983, it was time for a bit of a break, according to Seger: “After we first hit big in ’76, with both Live Bullet and Night Moves, it was really a full-force gale until 1983. We were thinking to ourselves throughout that time, ‘How far can we take this, people aren’t gonna like us anymore because we’re getting older.’

“We felt that we had to get it in while we could, so we worked like crazy people for eight straight years. The other guys in the band started having kids in ’85, and since then, it’s been more like ‘can we rest for a minute?’”

It would be three years before Seger and his Silver Bullet Band returned with their next album, Like A Rock, in 1986, which contained the classic title track and some lost gems like “The Ring” and the hit “American Storm,” while becoming his eighth consecutive platinum album.

One of the oddest new stories to come out during this period was when the L.A. Times ran a story about a Chicago radio station, WLUP-FM, that had spliced together Seger’s new single “American Storm” and his previous hit single “Even Now” from The Distance album, mocking them as being “the same song” and that the new song was “ridiculously derivative” of the previous one.

Of course this is the kind of thing that happens when an artist has so much success, there are those who will try to tear you down. When I asked Bob if he had seen the story and what he thought about being accused of stealing from yourself. “Yeah, I didn’t get that at all. It was the same tempo but that was all. When I listened back to it, I guess you could say that it was also like ‘Hollywood Nights’ because there’s a certain tempo for rock & roll.

“I might gravitate towards that tempo, but I certainly didn’t try to rewrite ‘Even Now’ or anything. The thing is you can’t help but repeat yourself a little bit. There’s only so many chords and so many tempos, but you just try to say things a little better.”

As for his thoughts on the Like A Rock album, his final album of the ‘80s, he’s obviously proud of the title track and the lengthy narrative story found on “The Ring,” but he was not so happy with some of the other material. “I like parts of the Like A Rock album. But I didn’t really end up liking the synthesizer songs. I hate ‘The Aftermath’ and I thought ‘Sometimes’ was pretty average looking back on it. That shouldn’t have been on the album in retrospect.

‘Tightrope’ was kinda fun, but I don’t think I captured it the way I wanted to. There’s an incredible live version of ‘Tightrope’ that you should hear because it’s really cool and much better than the version on the album. You just don’t hear the things that later bother you at the time or you’re listening to other people’s opinions. That’s something that I’m working on. I’m really trying to get more creative control away from my manager and less outside influence.”

But one song that stands out for Seger on the album details the 1980 Mariel Boatlift when more than 125,000 Cuban refugees fled Havana and arrived in Florida during a six-month period. “I love the song ‘Miami.’ I really love that one, but I don’t think anyone’s really heard that song.”

Seger’s uplifting take on the politically charged event was to see the opportunity of the American Dream through the eyes of the immigrants themselves. The song was even featured in an episode of the hit television series, Miami Vice, which ran from 1984-89.

Another occurrence that brought Seger some grief by rock purists in the early ‘90s was when he allowed “Like A Rock” to be used as a campaign song for Chevrolet. In those days, many in the music industry thought lending songs for use in commercials was akin to selling out. Today, it’s standard to hear classic rock songs promoting cars, beverages, and anything you can think of.

Ironically, Seger had refused other previous offers, including one from the Coors beer company, who wanted to tie their Coors Light product to his band’s name. “Yeah, we got a very lucrative offer from Coors Light with their whole Silver Bullet campaign,” he explained, “but I just didn’t want to push beer. If I ever do any kind of thing like that it will be because I believe in the product. I haven’t done anything yet. I think I was kind of against that kind of thing years ago, but with how things have changed so much with music and corporate America, I think I’m a little more flexible.

“We have been approached and we’ve been toying with the idea of helping out the auto industry here in Detroit. I just don’t want to push things that are going to shorten your life and things like beer and soft drinks are certainly gonna do that. I say, as I sit here smoking [laughs].”

Shortly after our first interview, Seger did agree to allow “Like A Rock” to be used by Chevy as a way to help his hometown’s biggest employer. The campaign was such a massive success that it continued on for another 13 years until 2004.

During our second interview three years later, I broached the subject again, and Seger explained his earlier decision: “They showed us some test marketing research they had done with using my song, and the results were off the charts. And since I always wanted to do something for the people in my community I agreed. It was a pretty simple decision once they showed me how much they thought it could help the workers in Detroit.”

Finally A Number One Song

Despite a staggering fifteen Top 40 hit singles and five straight Top Ten albums, including one chart-topper, Seger had never scored a Number One hit single. That is, until 1987, and it all happened in a very unlikely fashion.

The song, “Shakedown,” was for the Eddie Murphy action-comedy sequel Beverly Hills Cop II. Seger’s buddy Glenn Frey had a #2 hit with “The Heat is On” in the original Beverly Hills Cop film, but when he fell ill, Seger was approached.

“‘Shakedown’ is my only Number One song, but it is kind of an oddity in my career, it was a fluke. My friend, Irving Azoff, who manages the Eagles, came to me with the song for the second Beverly Hills Cop movie. Glenn had done ‘The Heat is On’ for the first film and he was offered ‘Shakedown’ but he was sick at the time and they were down to like ten days before they needed the song finished.

“So Irving asked me if I could try and do it. He sent me the track and told me to write words for it, because it was all ‘blah blah blah, shakedown, breakdown.’ That’s all there was. So I wrote the lyrics in about three days and I sang it one night, and I had Timothy B. Schmidt of the Eagles come in and sing it with me. And I walked away.

“Then Keith Forsey, who is a really good producer and had done Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell album, and Harold Faltermeyer, who wrote the music to ‘Shakedown,’ then took the song and, lordy-be, it went to Number One.”

Having his songs placed in movies is something that Seger has done quite often over the years, mainly because he has so much unreleased material that his fans have been dying to hear, but the often-promised box set of rare songs has yet to appear. “I write too much actually, that’s what Henley says,” he laughs. “He’ll usually write about 14 songs and use 12 on his albums, and I’ll write 38, record 21, and use 12. That’s my modus operandi [laughs], and some of those spare songs I’ll give to movies and things like that.”

“There’s [a song] from Stranger in Town, called ‘Stranger in Town’ which is very strange, it’s like metal-cowboy. It’s literally a cowboy song done kind of heavy metal. And there’s one from Against the Wind called ‘Can’t Hit the Corners No More’ about a baseball player that’s rather poignant. I’ve got some really strange stuff sitting around that might be kind of fun for people to hear after all these years.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

One of his biggest hits, “Understanding,” was one such song, being used in the 1984 film Teachers. Another beautiful gem, “Living Inside My Heart,” was used in the 1986 rom-com About Last Night.

As for the box set of rarities that he has talked about for 25 years, he puts a little salt in the wound when he talks about some of the songs that fans are clamoring to hear. “The record company talks about it all the time, but it would depend on what they would want to put out. What I’ve got is a lot of outtakes of stuff that I thought were really cool, but things that my manager, Punch, thought were a little too dangerous to put on albums. And some of those are really interesting.

“There’s one from my album Seven, called ‘Gets Ya Pumpin’’ that is just a ferocious rocker. There’s one from Stranger in Town, called ‘Stranger in Town’ which is very strange, it’s like metal-cowboy [laughs]. It’s literally a cowboy song done kind of heavy metal. And there’s one from Against the Wind called ‘Can’t Hit the Corners No More’ about a baseball player that’s rather poignant.

I’ve got some really strange stuff sitting around that might be kind of fun for people to hear after all these years. Maybe if they approached it in that fashion, it might be kind of cool.”

In 2009, Seger did release a brief ten-song CD called Early Seger Vol. 1 that did include “Gets Ya Pumpin’” and four other unreleased songs from the mid-‘80s, as well as five songs from his pre-Beautiful Loser days that had never been released during the CD era. The little known release was possibly a trial balloon to judge fan interest, so hopefully with his new-found retirement he will finally throw open the vaults and release this treasure trove of hidden gems.

Momma Never Told Me A Lie

Riding the wave of superstardom with another massively successful tour in 1987, a Top Five album and a Number One song, Seger’s career was firing on all cylinders. But his personal life was in a bit of upheaval, and he would put his career on hold for the longest period ever to take care of his mother. He was also picking up the pieces of his divorce from a brief marriage that he simply calls “a mistake.”

“We finished the Like A Rock Tour around May of ’87 after 105 dates. I got married to a girl [Annette Sinclair] that went bad after about a year. I moved to Los Angeles and then had to move all my stuff back [laughs].

“I thought it would be really good for my writing to live in L.A. and be constantly surrounded by the entertainment community but I found it to be the exact opposite. It was more like 24 hours a day of entertainment, but it took me about two years to figure that out.

“Meanwhile my mother got very ill and was ill for a few years. She was in the hospital at one point for 13 months and during that 13-month period I literally saw her every day in the hospital. We’re a small family, it’s just my older brother, my mother, and myself. My brother lives in North Carolina with three kids, so he couldn’t really do much of anything during that time.

“It was tough to keep going sometimes with all the ups and downs, but my mom hammered into me early on: ‘If you’re a pessimist when the good things happen to you, you’ll be that much happier because you won’t be disappointed when they don’t.’ That was a real life lesson and one I always took to heart. Work hard at whatever you do, try to be good to people, and don’t expect anything from anyone.”

(Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

“He would relieve me about once a month or every three weeks or maybe a long weekend, so I moved back to Michigan and shared an apartment with my mother’s 85-year-old sister and I kind of needed to watch out for her as well because she was getting a little forgetful.

“It was a horrible time. She had a respiratory ailment and she wasn’t even able to speak after a while, but I would go in there twice a day, every day, and talk to her. Then my aunt would go in there and talk to her for a few hours every day. It was so sad. She was so upset because she just wanted to live. She was on a ventilator where they breathe you, because 50 years ago she had TB.

“Basically, there was no time to do anything but look after her sister and go to the hospital and be with mom. She seemed to be getting better at one point, so I went in to record some Tom Waits’ stuff for what would become The Fire Inside album, and two of them ended up on the album [“Blind Love” and “New Coat of Paint”].

“But then a week later she died. She actually got out of the hospital for one day, while I was in L.A., then she lapsed into a coma right after I recorded the Waits’ stuff. So I jetted home, and now she was in the hospital in a coma. So it was one of those things where you just never feel like it’s safe to leave. You want her to keep fighting and stuff, and she put up a really good fight too. It was a really tough time I have to say.”

Seger pauses and then continues with his own little salute to his mother, smiling about the woman who raised two boys on her own after being abandoned by her husband and receiving no financial help. “My mom prepped me for my career, especially those first ten years. I mean it’s hard to think back to a time when I headlined a show in Detroit at Pontiac Stadium and there were 70,000 people there. A couple nights later I was playing a club in Chicago for a couple hundred.

“It was tough to keep going sometimes with all the ups and downs, but my mom hammered into me early on: ‘If you’re a pessimist when the good things happen to you, you’ll be that much happier because you won’t be disappointed when they don’t.’ That was a real life lesson and one I always took to heart. Work hard at whatever you do, try to be good to people, and don’t expect anything from anyone.”

The Fire Inside

Like wind on the plains, sand through the glass
Waves rolling in with the tide
Dreams die hard and we watch them erode
But we cannot be denied
The fire inside

After nearly five years out of public view, Seger returned with the 1991’s The Fire Inside, which extended his platinum streak to seven consecutive albums. “My mother died in February of ’89 after that long illness,” Seger says in regards to the lengthy break between releases. “I think I got my legs back and got everything settled and squared away in August or September of ’89. That’s when I was finally able to sit down and start writing again. Some things just happen in life that you just can’t avoid having to take care of, ya know.”

Seger’s enthusiasm for the album was palpable when we first met in the late summer of ’91. “I really am pleased with this album, I really am. My least favorite song on it is ‘She Can’t Do Anything Wrong.’ I like the energy and the band really enjoyed playing it and it’s a fun thing, but I’m not particularly proud of it. That’s one that my manager really heard, so including that song was a little bit of a compromise there. But other than that one, I think I like everything on this album. And that’s more than I can say about any of my albums since Night Moves.”

Aside from being one of our greatest songwriters, one of Seger’s most underrated qualities is taking the songs of others and turning them into his own. He has done it throughout his career with such classics as “Nutbush City Limits,” “Come to Poppa,” “Old Time Rock and Roll” (although he rewrote most of the verses on that one), and his huge chart hit rendition of Rodney Crowell’s “Shame on the Moon,” and it continued with The Fire Inside when he recorded a few from one of his favorite writers, Tom Waits.

“I love ‘New Coat of Paint.’ I love the song first of all, it’s just a great one from Tom Waits, but I what I really love about it in particular is that it was recorded, totally and utterly, live. There’s not one overdub. It’s Take Five of five takes. That’s exactly how everybody played it.

“[Former Little Feat pianist] Billy Payne is just phenomenal on that cut. I’m a big piano fan as you can tell. I’m a piano player myself, but I know how good I am, so I let guys like Billy and Roy Bittan play for me [laughs].I play a little piano on the album. I’m playing on ‘The Real Love’ and ‘The Long Way Home,’ but these guys are so much fun to listen to. And, to me, with ‘New Coat of Paint,’ the song is good, I love Billy’s piano playing and I loved the idea of the standup bass.”

When talking about other writers, Seger humbly points to the other Waits’ song he covered for the album, “Blind Love.” “I don’t think I’m quite as poetic and graceful as Don Henley or Tom Waits. I think they have an ability that I just don’t possess. When you hear a line from Waits like: ‘the only way to find you is when I close my eyes and find you with my blind love.’ To me, that just speaks volume. And also ‘if you get far enough away, you’ll find your way back home.’ Those are just wonderful lines that I wouldn’t think of.

With Henley, there’s so many amazing lines in his stuff. I wouldn’t even know where to start with him. They just think poetically. I think Paul Simon thinks poetically. I think I’m more of a nuts-and-bolts kind of writer. I come up with some good phrases and stuff but not on a consistent level like they do.”

https://youtu.be/gJF9ObutdLA

All in all, Seger recorded nearly two dozen songs for the album, switching between hit producer and fellow Michigan resident Don Was, Berry Beckett from the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, as well as those that Seger produced alone or with his manager Punch Andrews. “All in all, I recorded 21 songs for this album and we parried it down to 12. Of the 21, Don had five, Beckett got four, and the other three were basically produced by me. I think it’s a nice balance of stuff and there’s a lot of not typical Seger material.”

One such non-typical Seger song is “Sightseeing,” which he was hoping to be a single, but realizes it would be a tough sell to radio. “I really like ‘Sightseeing’ because it’s a very odd structure in that the title is in the bridge, and I really like the lyrics in that one. I think there’s some pretty cool lines in there.

“I’d love for the next single to be ‘Sightseeing,’ but I doubt it will be. I’ve already heard from various radio programmers who tell me that they can’t play it because it doesn’t fit into any format. I would love to put that as a single just because it’s so unique, but I doubt that will happen.”

https://youtu.be/XNmRQ4cwF9U

As for the album’s centerpiece, the relentless driving title track, Seger says he really struggled with the powerful lyrics of the six-minute epic.

“Lyrically, ‘The Fire Inside’ doesn’t have anything to do with anything I’ve done previously. It’s me talking about relationships again, which is one of my favorite subjects because I think that’s one thing that’s universal and close to a lot of people’s hearts.

“It’s about that thing where you’re trying to maintain your passion and trying to accept the fact that you have passions and trying to be mature enough to not give in to a lot of temptations. So there’s always that balancing going on which delves into the issue of maturity. Where you’re trying to keep the passion alive while stepping away from temptation, and that goes for romantic passion and holding on to a passion for life.

“I worked a long time on that song. Henley really likes that song too. He’s one of the few people I actually listen to when it comes to playing my new songs for people. If he really, really loathes something I’m writing, I won’t do it. And I think he’s the only human being in the world that I would listen to at that point. I’m not afraid to make mistakes, but if Henley says ‘that’s really low-rent,’ then I’ll get rid of it.”

“With that song, I thought the second verse about the club scenes was a killer, and the last verse worked, but I started to realize that the original first verse of that song was not nearly as strong as the others,” says the perfectionist. “So I wracked my brain for a long time on that song. It’s like you’ll work and work and work, and then three weeks later, the answer will just pop into your head.

“It’s funny, I’ve learned to sometimes let my subconscious do the work. I mean you can beat your head against the wall and just come up with nothing. I’ve found that that’s a good way to do it. You just have to be patient. You have to learn to put it aside and work on something else when you hit a brick wall. That’s what happened with that song. I had to keep walking away and coming back to it.”

Marriage & Fatherhood

There was rhythm
And there was order
There was a balance
There was a flow

There was patience
Indulgence
There was a power
I could not know

And I felt it all made sense
The innocence
The permanence

Things had changed dramatically for Bob Seger when we met for the second time, three years after our first interview. In those couple of years, he had married for the third time and was already adjusting to his new life as a dad in his late forties. “It’s really been a shocker for me,” he says with his trademark laugh. “I’m the late bloomer in the band. Alto [Reed] had his kids during the last tour in ’87, Chris [Campbell] had one after that tour, and Craig [Frost] had one in the oven during that tour.

“When my kid came along, it was like, ‘wow,’ what an eye-opener. At first, you’re a little resentful because you’re thinking, ‘Hey, I can’t do all my work,’ but then you quickly realize that this is better than your work. This is my ultimate reward for doing all that work all those years. It’s definitely been a period of adjustment, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Seger married Juanita “Nita” Dorricott and his first child Cole was born November 3, 1992 [“Cole is 22 months old now and was born on the day Bill Clinton was elected, so he’s a Bill Clinton baby”]. At the time, his wife was pregnant with their second child and he joked, “My wife’s family is notorious for having twins, and we’re a little nervous because she’s very big for only three months, so she’s been saying, ‘I think this might be twins’ [laughs]. We get the ultrasound in about six weeks, so we’ll know then.

“I think we’re gonna stop at two kids, if my wife gets a girl this time,” he said, with a laugh. “We have a boy now and if this one isn’t a girl, then we’ll have to see.” Their daughter, Samantha, was born in the spring of ’95.

With all the changes in his family life, work on Seger’s 1995 album, It’s A Mystery, took longer than expected. “I have to leave town to record and because I have a young son now, I’d leave for a week and then come home for a week, so that made it twice as long. But if you want to spend as much time with your child as I do, you make allowances with work.

“I spend three hours in the morning with him and two hours at night, and then all day on the weekends. I just want to be there, and I’m almost grandfather age because I started so late.”

It’s A Mystery

I can sit here, in the back half of my life
And wonder when the other shoe will fall
Or I can stand up, point myself home
And see if I’ve learned anything at all
Anything at all

Mediocrity is easy, the good things take time
The great need commitment, right down the line

As we sat down at the time of his first Greatest Hits album in 1994, Seger was eager to get back to finish his next studio release. “The new album is virtually done. Next month, on November 12, I’m going in the studio in Nashville with my engineer David Cole, who has been with me since 1983. We’re gonna do five weeks before Christmas, take two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s, and then go back in for another two weeks and, hopefully, the album will be done by then.

“The album is written, it’s just a matter of touch-up stuff. I’ve gotta re-record a few, re-sing a few and change a few lyrics and remix a few. Putting together this Greatest Hits album was a great thing because I was really losing my objectivity. Getting away from the new album for a bit was the greatest thing in the world because I got my objectivity back.

I’d like to see this new album out in March [1995], but Punch doesn’t like to release albums before or during summer when everybody goes on vacation and he thinks you lose sales because of that. He might hold it off until the fall, which will drive me crazy because I can’t stand to sit on an album for six months because I’ll start wanting to change it. Gonna have to put it in a safe somewhere to keep it away from me,” he says jokingly. Indeed, It’s a Mystery arrived in October of ‘95.

“Recording is a long process for me. And with this new album, I am the sole producer, without my manager Punch. I’ve decided to really take the bull by the horns this time, so when everybody hates this album, it’ll be all my fault.

“I’m going for a little rawer approach this time out. Is that the right decision? I don’t know, but it’s my decision and I’ll take all the blame or credit this time around.”

Filled with some excellent and thoughtful rockers like the first single “Lock and Load,” the anti-tabloid brilliance of “Revisionism Street,” the gorgeous ballad “I Wonder,” and the raucous Tom Waits’ cover “16 Shells From A 30-6” was tailor-made for Seger fans, although it failed to go platinum, stalling at gold.

While It’s A Mystery would be the first Bob Seger album in 20 years not to sell a million copies, its release so close to the phenomenal sales of his Greatest Hits package—at 10 million and still counting—definitely played a role in the lower sales.

The year following the album’s release, Seger and his Silver Bullet Band hit the road for the first time in nine long years, having not toured behind The Fire Inside as the band members began raising families. The sold-out tour was one of Seger’s best, mixing songs from all stages of his career, and when it was over, Seger walked away for ten long years to raise his kids.

Seger Returns

I feel the cold wind blowin’ all over me
I see the dark clouds startin’ to form
The trees are bare; the grass is brown
Another early winter Michigan storm

Everything I do is just a little wrong
Every day for me is the same
Everyone I know is gettin’ in my face
And I only got myself to blame

It’s hard to imagine that it was just a coincidence that his own father had abandoned Seger and his brother when the future star was only ten years old. And he did make clear when he finally returned to the spotlight in 2006 at the age of 61, his lengthy sabbatical was all about raising his own children and breaking the selfish cycle started by his dad. “I just wanted to be with my kids and raise them,” he would say.

And when he did return, Seger did so with a vengeance. Face the Promise was an instant smash, climbing to #4 on the charts and returning him to the platinum status where he belonged. From the powerful rockers “Wreck This Heart” and the title track to the lovely hit single “Wait For Me,” it was as if he had never been away.

Ride On, Bob, Ride On

You were here
Now you’re gone
And we all keep moving on
Like the wind
And the sea
That’s the way it has to be
When I think about you I always smile
Then I go back for a while

You were young
You were bold
And you loved your rockin’ soul
You were strong
You were sharp
But you had the deepest heart
You showed the whole world what we knew:
There was no one quite like you

Since his return in 2006, Seger has released two more studio albums. 2014’s Ride On, which hit #3 on the album charts and 2017’s I Knew You When, which featured his heartfelt tribute to his late “baby brother” Glenn Frey of the Eagles. Simply entitled “Glenn Song,” Seger released the song for free before the album’s release and it became an online sensation.

When it comes to assessing his own work, Seger says, “I like a lot of bits from a lot my albums and that’s kind of the way it goes for me. It’s kind of hit-and-miss. It’s different frames of mind. But I can listen to most of them and really, really like them all the way through, which makes me feel pretty good.

However, still the stickler, he adds: “There’s always one or two songs on every one of my albums that always bother me years later. I don’t see things at the time when I’m making them and then years later I’ll get bothered by a few things.”

Fortunately his fans haven’t been bothered for more than 50 years by anything he’s done. Over the past two years, Seger has been once again playing to sold-out crowds throughout America and Canada on his farewell tour, which wrapped up with his final show last night in Philadelphia. It is truly the end of an era.

In looking back on his career, I think Bob saying this to me was a perfect summation of Bob Seger Rock Star and Bob Seger The Man: “There are certainly a lot of things that I wish I’d have done different here and there, but I did what I did and I think I managed to keep my sanity and a certain level of humanity along the way.” Yes you did. You truly did.

Seger On Songwriting

And to sum up this ridiculously long tribute, I’m going to share my lengthy conversations I had with Bob over the years that will take you behind the curtain of his unique and magical songwriting brilliance. Enjoy.

You’re one of rock’s most respected songwriters. What songwriting techniques do you employ?
BS: There really isn’t any set way I write songs. They come all different kinds of ways. I would say that 60 percent of the time, I’ll sit down at a keyboard or pick up a guitar and play for a while, or sometimes I’ll even work out a drum pattern on a drum machine.

When I’m pure writing, usually I’m just wailing into a tape recorder. I’ve got a half-inch, eight-track that runs about 45 minutes and I’ll wail into for a full tape, then rest for a minute, then I’ll wail into another tape.

I’ll just sing stuff off the top of my head and then walk away and have a cup of coffee. After 15 minutes or so, I’ll go back and listen to those two or three things that I did, and if I don’t hear a germ or a flare of an idea, I’ll just keep plugging away. Then, maybe two hours later, I’ll go back to the first tape and see if there’s anything there. It might just be a phrase or a fragment or a set of chords with horrible mutterings over it [laughs]. That’s basically how I write. I just bull-ahead and do it.

Lyrically, what I’ll do a lot of the time is, I’ll try to come up with the refrain or the title section and then back up and write the story through the verses. A lot of the time, the mood of the music that I’m playing—whether it’s high-energy, medium tempo or dead slow—will determine the direction. If it comes together with a lyric line or a chorus line, then I’ll kind of know where I’m going with it.

There have been times though where I’ve written a bunch of verses before I even know what the title is. That’s what happened with “Like A Rock.” I wrote the first three verses of that song before I even knew where I was going. Then, one day, I just fell into the “like a rock” thing, and I thought it worked.

It comes all different ways; there’s no set method I use. Mostly, it’s just kind of like work, but it’s cool work because it’s so exciting. Creating something out of nothing is really an amazing feeling.

Do you ever give up on a song if you feel that it’s going nowhere?
BS: Not really. I try to be a “finisher.” I probably finish way too many songs, because I’ve found that when I don’t finish them, that’s when I lock up. I keep getting all these “starts” piled up, and then I get paranoid and I can’t even start a new song. So I’ll finish songs even though I know they’re barely above-average.

Have you ever taken lines or verses from some of those “below-average” songs and incorporated them into better songs?
BS: Oh yeah, absolutely. You can come up with what my friend Don Henley calls a “rhyme with dignity.” You want to hang on to those phrases. Don does that by writing them in books. I’ll go see him, and he’ll have books and scraps of papers piled up on a table, and he uses those as a resource for ideas.

I don’t do that. If I can remember something in my head for five or six days, then I’ll know that there’s something there. More often than not, it’s usually “close, but no cigar.” Otherwise, we’d all write hits every single time [laughs].

What usually happens is that I’ll walk away from a batch of songs, and usually the one that keeps creeping back into my head after I walk away is the song I’ll pursue.

Do you write continually, or do you set time aside for composing?
BS: I go on a writing jag. I write in streaks. I really found that the best way to be creative is you need large chunks of time and you just have to block out the time to do it. My friends and loved ones have to understand that about me. I can’t write hit-and-miss, I really have to have a lot of concentration.

I’ll do three or four weeks where I’ll try to come up with four or five songs and then I’ll give it a rest. It is hard writing the lyrics, and it’s my experience that only two out of five songs I write are going to make the cut. But you try just as hard with every single one, and you fall in love with all of them, but, ultimately, three out of five songs will disappoint me for a variety of reasons.

Do you bounce songs off other people when you’re not sure of things?
BS: I used to bounce my songs off Glenn [Frey] and Don [Henley] a lot, but now I’m 49 years old, so I’m a little more content to lay my reputation on the line and follow my own instincts. With this new album I’m working on [It’s a Mystery], I’m going to wait until the whole thing’s done, and I’ll probably play it for Glenn and Don, and if they hate anything, I might do something about it. That’s usually how we predicate everything that we play for each other: ‘Do you hate anything?’ [laughs].

The thing about playing rough things to people before you go in the studio is that sometimes those songs just don’t translate to a mix. It’s like when you bring the vocal up, you hear something you didn’t hear when it was lower in the mix. You fall in love with the band track and then when you bring the vocals up, they might not have the same energy or whatever, and you end up ditching the song.

What do you feel are your strengths as a songwriter—melody or lyrics?
BS: I think my lyrics are stronger than my melodies. I wish I was as strong a melodist as Paul Simon; I think he’s remarkable. I’m not a bad melody guy, but I’m not as good as others.

I’m also not as good lyrically as people like Leonard Cohen, who I think is fantastic, and Tom Waits or Don Henley. I wish I had their glibness and offhandedness. There’s also a lot of great cats out there like Tom Petty and Jackson Browne. I think I’m just in-between somewhere.

Some of my melodies are good, and some of them aren’t so good. But I think I’ve been blessed with a voice that can put across certain things when I get into trouble.

You definitely have one of the most identifiable voices in rock history. Have you ever had any problems with it?
BS: No, I’ve never really had any problems with it. As a matter of fact, I did this thing about three years ago where they put this camera down your throat and look at your vocal chords, which are only like six centimeters long. They look like two little railroad tracks.

Knowing my history and after listening to a few of my records, the doctors were very surprised to discover that I’ve still got the vocal chords of an 18-year-old [laughs]. I think I was just very gifted in that I have been able to sing real hard and not damage them.

But you’ve also got to understand that I’ve always taken really good care of my voice, too. I don’t party at all on the road. The vocalist in a band can never do that. You can’t stay out. You’ve got to get a lot of rest and drink a lot of water.

Earlier we talked about your collaboration with Frey and Henley on their hit, “Heartache Tonight.” But that seems to be a rare exception, are collaborations something you just don’t like to engage in?
BS: If I felt that I needed to pursue that avenue I would, but I’ve never really felt that need. Although, recently, I have been writing a little bit with my keyboard player Craig Frost and a guitar player named Tim Mitchell. What they do is write these big powerhouse rock grooves and they send them to me.

We all get together and put chords to those grooves and come up with a song. We’ve done about ten things together for this album [It’s A Mystery]. The first five didn’t go anywhere, but we’ve done five for this next record, and probably one or two will make the album. [Ultimately three of these collaborations made it on It’s a Mystery—the first single “Lock and Load,” “Revisionism Street” and the second single “Hands in the Air.”]

What would you say are the most important elements to sustaining such a long career as a songwriter?
BS: Effort is important, and consistency is important as well, because if you don’t write, you start thinking that you’ll never write again. I guess it’s like being an actor, where if you stop acting, you start thinking that you’ll never work again.

Since you write on both guitar and piano, would it be fair to say that you write all your ballads on piano and the rockers on guitar?
BS: Not all the time, because sometimes I will write a rock song based around a piano. I’ve done it three times in my career I think. I did it with “Brave Strangers,” “The Fire Inside” and “The Fire Down Below,” believe it or not.

It’s pretty rare for me to do that because I just don’t play piano well enough to play rock piano. I play well enough to do ballads. But, to your point, yeah, more often than not the ballads will come from the piano, and more of a rock thing will come from the guitar.

https://youtu.be/_GE-YvDfNKQ

You mentioned “The Fire Down Below” and I have to ask you about that song because it is incredibly similar to Frankie Miller’s “Ain’t Got No Money,” which you recorded and put on Stranger in Town. Am I crazy?
BS: No, you’re not crazy [laughs]. At the time I was writing ‘Fire Down Below,’ I was certainly listening to Frankie’s records. But I think I paid him back by recording ‘Ain’t Got No Money’ on the next album [laughs].

In fact, Frankie sent me a live tape of him doing both songs together at one of his shows in Scotland, and I gotta admit that they sound an awful lot alike [laughs]. Then again, you can certainly listen to Glenn Frey doing ‘Smuggler’s Blues,’ and if that isn’t ‘Fire Down Below’ in a different tempo [laughs].

We all get affected by one another at various times, but I have to say that I completely missed that whole ‘Fire Down Below’ and ‘Ain’t Got No Money’ thing until a year later when I heard that tape of him doing both songs together. That’s when I decided to do Frankie’s ‘Ain’t Got No Money’ on Stranger in Town, because I realized how much I really loved that song.

You say that you feel your strength is as a lyricist. How do you compose them? Do you ever write them out and put the music to them later?
BS: No, I’ve never written the lyrics and tried to build the music around that. I talked to Bernie Taupin once and how he and Elton John do it is that Bernie will write complete lyrics and send them to Elton and Elton will write the music to his lyrics. I have never done that, not once in my career.

It’s usually a feel or a verse or a chorus, and the lyrics will come after I’ve decided that a certain pattern or groove or rhythm is cool. Then I’ll start singing gibberish over that and just find a lyrical idea that fits the ideas that I started out with.

Other times I’ll just sit down and say, “I wanna write a song called this.” That’s how “Beautiful Loser” happened. I just loved the title, which I got from a book of poetry from Leonard Cohen called Beautiful Losers, plural. I just thought it was a really cool title. Actually, I wrote three or four songs called “Beautiful Loser” until I came up with the one that worked. But that’s pretty rare though.

Using “Beautiful Loser” as an example, many people thought you were singing about yourself in that song. Are your songs autobiographical? They seem so intensely personal…
BS: No, I write about things I see—observations of what’s happening around me. Early on in my career, I found that if I tried to write something very personal, it seemed to me that it became overwrought and melodramatic. So I try to transpose those feelings on a situation and make it a more universal thing.

That was the case with “Beautiful Loser.” It was not an autobiographical song. I was trying to write about a state of mind that I had seen or read about other people being in.

I remember that when I wrote “The Famous Final Scene,” all my friends asked me if I was breaking up with my girlfriend. It just seemed like a rich and dramatic topic, and I just tried to imagine what it would be like when a relationship is really over and how terrible that must feel. I find that when I use my imagination, I don’t get as melodramatic.

And that seems like the perfect song to end this celebration with, and to give a final thank you to a man who has given us all so much for so long. Ride off into that sunset, Bob, and enjoy your well-deserved golden years, and maybe, just maybe, consider writing that autobiography.

“Writing a book is a cool idea that I’ve thought about, but not just yet,” he told me in 1991. “I mean it took me three years to finish writing ‘The Fire Inside,’ and that’s just one song! If I tried writing a book, it’d take me 20 years. The cool thing about it is that you don’t have to rhyme a book [laughs].”

Thanks for always being there, Bob…