FTV: Bob Seger
Michigan has been the home of numerous rock stars. Near the top, if not on the top, of that list would have to be Bob Seger. Detroit born, Ann Arbor raised, Seger went from the barrooms to arenas before he retired from touring in 2019 (at the conclusion of his Travelin’ Man Tour), but his was no overnight success story. When he sat down with Classic Rock Magazine’s Gary Graff in 2013 (prior to hitting the road on his Rock and Roll Never Forgets tour), he filled in some of the missing pieces of the ups and downs of his decades long career.
Born at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit on May 6, 1945, Robert Clark Seger joined his older brother and parents Charlotte and Stewart. The family moved to Ann Arbor when he was five years old and it was here young Bob’s public school and musical education would take place. His father, a medical technician for Ford Motor Company, was the first to make a big deal about five year old Bob singing in the back seat of their car. Stewart may have planted the seed but he abandoned the family and bolted for California when Seger was ten. What remained of the Seger family’s comfortable middle-class life took a drastic downturn when his father left and they struggled financially.
Growing up in the 1950s, Bob’s early interest in music was spurred by the likes of Little Richard, The Del Vikings, and (of course) Elvis. His first band was a trio he formed in 1961. The Decibels were still in high school when they recorded an acetate demo of a song called The Lonely One at Del Shannon’s studio. The song was Seger’s first original composition and the first of his tunes to be played on the radio (but only once on an Ann Arbor radio station). When The Decibels had run their course, he joined a four-piece band called the Town Criers. With Seger on lead vocals, the Criers covered radio favorites like Louie Louie. James Brown’s Live at the Apollo was a major influence at the time it was released in 1963 and just before The Beatles came to America in 1964. Bob, like everyone else on these shores, sat up and took notice of this new development in the musical landscape.
Seger’s musical friends learned all they needed from pop and rock radio in the 1960’s. One of these musical friends was future Eagles member Glenn Frey and Bob remembers them thinking, “You’re nobody if you can’t get on the radio.” When he left the Town Criers to join Doug Brown & the Omens, Bob found himself taking the lead vocals on more of the R&B tinged songs. The Omens also marked Seger’s first appearance on an officially released recording, the 1965 single TGIF backed with First Girl. Seger’s one misstep at the time was his participation in The Omen’s parody of Barry Sadler’s Ballad of the Green Berets. The Omens’ retitled it The Ballad of the Yellow Beret and the lyrics mocked draft evaders. It got some local airplay until the threat of a lawsuit by Sadler’s label saw the song pulled off record store shelves. I am pretty sure Bob was fine with people forgetting about this episode from early in his career when he himself took more of an anti-war stance.
While he was still with The Omens, Seger met Edward ‘Punch’ Andrews who at the time was in a partnership that ran four clubs between Clawson and Rochester Hills. The Hideout Clubs employed local bands and also had a small-scale record label. Bob began writing for and producing some of the acts Punch managed. A song he wrote for The Underdogs called East Side Story didn’t go very far so Bob decided to record it himself. Former members of The Omens and the Town Criers were employed to do the sessions and the single (now attributed to The Last Heard) sold 50,000 copies, mostly around Detroit. The band released a couple of more forgettable disks but 1967’s Heavy Music sold more copies than East Side Story. Heavy Music looked like it would break out nationwide but the label it was on, Cameo-Parkway Records, suddenly went bust. It stalled just out of the Hot 100 at No. 103.
Punch and Seger began the search for a new label. Motown offered them more money than Capitol Records, but they still signed with Capitol feeling it was more in line with his type of music. The label changed the band’s name to The Bob Seger System and their first single, an anti-war song 2+2=? (180 degrees away from the Omens’ Yellow Beret track). 2+2=? became a number 1 hit in a few markets like Detroit, Buffalo, New York, and Orlando, Florida. Bob would finally get his first national hit with the second single released, Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man (it reached No. 17 on the charts and the album of the same name would come in at No. 62 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart). Ramblin’ would also mark Glenn Frey’s first studio work playing guitar and singing back-up vocals on the track.
There was something there that got everyone’s attention. Grand Funk Railroad drummer Don Brewer (who would go on to drum with Seger’s Silver Bullet Band) said, “I’ll never forget hearing Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man for the first time.” GFR were just about to break out of Flint, Michigan when Seger’s song was all over the radio: “I was saying, ‘Man, listen to this. Listen to that B3 organ,’ because we were totally R&B guys. ‘Listen to that – the whole song is [Hammond] B3! That is so cool!’” Seger added, “We’ve had a few records that were popular around town and you’d hear them on the radio a lot, but yeah, that was a little different. That was a hit.”
Ramblin’ would be his only hit record for the next eight years. Seger told Graff, “I wasn’t the greatest songwriter back then. Bob Dylan and Van Morrison were important influences to me but I was too focused on playing the guitar and singing. That craft was something that developed slowly.” The second Capitol album (Noah (1969)) stiffed. He considered quitting the business and going to college. A fan favorite track Lucifer did emerge from the 1970 album Mongrel, but even appearances at the fabled Goose Lake International Festival (1970) and opening for John Lennon and Yoko Ono (at a John Sinclair rally in Ann Arbor) in 1971, didn’t light the fuse for him.
Seger decided to try going solo and recorded an acoustic album (Brand New Morning) which he now describes as ‘mostly crap’. It marked the end of his Capitol contract. His former road manager Tom Weschler said, “People loved Bob that way [solo], but to me it was a mixed blessing. He was doing Simon and Garfunkel, without Garfunkel – and it worked. He was good, but it wasn’t as good as the full on [band] thing. Fortunately, he quickly rekindled his appetite for a band.”
The band he hooked up with was rather unconventional. Organist Skip Knape and drummer Dave Teegarden had a minor hit in 1970 with God, Love, and Rock & Roll. I saw them at NMU’s Hedgecock Fieldhouse performing as the STK trio. Seger opened by doing a solo acoustic set. Even though he had to sing the lyrics from a sheet of notebook paper (he said he had scribbled them on the way north on I-75), this was the first version I had heard of Lennon’s Imagine. Teegarden and Van Winkle (Knape’s stage name) played the second set and then Seger joined them playing a Gibson Les Paul for the third set. Their 1972 album Smokin’ O.P.s is a pretty good snapshot of what they were playing then, including the minor hit they had with If I Were a Carpenter. The album was out in 1972 but found a larger audience when Capitol re-released it in 2005.
It was during this phase that Seger penned his much beloved ‘next hit’ Turn the Page. Though the song describes them being ‘somewhere east of Omaha, the event chronicled in Turn the Page actually happened somewhere on the road in Wisconsin. Seger’s account of the band getting hassled for their long hair at a roadside diner struck a chord with his fans. He later said that the incident got Teegarden ‘a little feisty’ but the lyrics didn’t tell exactly the whole story.
Bob told Graff, “It was us and two hulking motorcycle guys who travelled with us and they used to set up the equipment. We were on our way from Madison, Wisconsin or some place and stopped to have something to eat. The big guys were sleeping and the skinny little rock guys went into this roadside place by ourselves. Comments were made about our hair (Is that a woman or a man?). Next to guitarist Monk Bruce (who had now joined the band), Teegarden was the smallest, and here he was mouthing off to these dudes. We had to drag him out of there [Seger laughs] and it is a good thing they didn’t follow us out there. Little did they know what was waiting for them in the truck. Those guys were huge.”
By 1973, Seger had put together the line up called The Silver Bullet Band. The personnel changed as did the name (My Band and The Borneo Band were working titles) with several of the original members later going on to work with Eric Clapton. By the time Seven came out on the Warner Bros. imprint, Seger had amassed enough songs for the Beautiful Loser album. That LP marked his return to Capitol Records and they hit the road to gain fans the old fashioned way. “In that period, even though we were playing, like, 250 nights a year,” he told Graff, “I could tell we had something because the audiences wanted me back. And we killed every night. So I knew I had something.” Paul Stanley from KISS recalls having Seger and the SBB open for them in 1975: “They were just a great, great rock and roll band, 110 percent. They used to get encores – the opening act getting encores. And we let them because they were that good. They deserved it.” Dan Hicks signed them to open for his Hot Licks band but ended up putting his band on before the Silver Bullet Band: “After hearing their soundcheck, if we would have tried to follow them, we would have died.”
Working at the Huron Mountain Club in the early 1970s, one of my co-workers in the club kitchen was from Blissfield, Michigan. She kept singing parts of the same song over and over, so I finally asked her the title. “Beautiful Loser by Bob Seger – it is a great album.” I told her about seeing Seger with Teegarden and Van Winkle earlier in the decade and she didn’t quite believe me. She claimed that Beautiful Loser was his first album and he was a brand new, up and coming artist. I had to break the news that she was wrong on both accounts. I told her, “When you get back to civilization (the club was twenty miles from the nearest telephone and public electricity), find Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man – Bob has been around longer than you think.”
She didn’t return to the HMC the next summer and I never ran into her on campus, so I can’t say whether or not she rediscovered Seger’s history. If she did, she would have found out the Beautiful Loser album was actually his eight (which makes sense as it followed his previous LP Seven). Still, she clued me into what he was up to after the eight year lull between hit records. It may have only peaked at No. 131 on the charts, but Loser was the start of his climb to the top. The songs took on a life of their own when they were unleashed to adoring audiences across the country. Record sales followed as they toured non-stop and began getting more radio play.
Many artists will fill their record company contractual obligations by releasing either a greatest hits disc or a live album. Though he was working on a fresh contract with Capitol Records and didn’t need a contract filler, Seger combined the two ideas and released a live double album that contained his own hit list from the past decade. Hot on the heels of Beautiful Loser and before 1976’s Night Moves, Seger and The Silver Bullet Band recorded Live Bullet at Detroit’s Cobo Hall in September of 1975. Radio took to the live tracks and their cover of Ike and Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits even found a spot on the record charts. Bassist Chris Campbell explained how they managed to put on such dynamic shows: “We played a lot – a lot! We did so many shows you could not be tight. Practice makes perfect – and we were kind of beyond practice in a way.” After Night Moves, Seger polished off the 1970s with two more mega-selling LPs (Stranger in Town (1978) and Against the Wind (1980)). By the time a second double-live-greatest hits album was released (1981’s Nine Tonight), one couldn’t escape Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band on the radio, TV, or in movies.
The Silver Bullet band had a few changes in their ranks during this period. Founding drummer Charlie Allen Martin was struck from behind while walking to get gas on a highway service road. Paralyzed from the waist down he had to step away from the band. His powerhouse drumming on the live Who Do You Love section of Live Bullet show why he was an integral part of the SBB. He was succeeded by Dave Teegarden who had previously played with Seger in the Smokin’ O.P.s phase prior to the formation of the SBB. Teegarden appeared on the albums Nine Tonight, Stranger in Town, and The Fire Inside. He currently runs Teegarden Studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was replaced in the SBB by Grand Funk Railroad drummer Don Brewer in 1983. Brewer has been in and out of the lineup, notably touring with Seger in 2006-2007, 2011, and on the 2014-2015 Ride Out tour.
Bob Seger’s family life and hobbies were up front when he took a ten year sabbatical from touring. He spent time with his wife and two young children. In 2001 and 2002, he won the Port Huron to Mackinac Island Boat Race aboard his 52-foot sailboat Lightning. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm declared March 15, 2004 to be Bob Seger Day in honor of his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bob and the Silver Bullet Band were further honored in 2005 when they entered the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone Magazine put him at 181 on its 2023 list of The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time though I would say in terms of his live shows, he would place higher if the list was dedicated to Rock & Roll Performers.
Seger celebrated his fifty years in music with his final outing, the 2018-19 Travelin’ Man tour. The final show was held in Philadelphia in November of 2019. After retiring from the road, he made a surprise live appearance in 2023 to honor country music legend Patty Loveless when she was inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
When Seger moved to Los Angeles, some felt he had abandoned his Michigan roots, but he spent enough time back in his home state to dispel any notion that he had gone Hollywood. Writing Shakedown for the film Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) put his name on the top of the music charts again. Ads for Chevy Trucks featuring Like a Rock were in vogue for a long time. All in all, a sixty year career that saw him tour the world and sell 75 million records is nothing to sneeze at. The numbers put him near the top, if not at the top, of the list of ‘best selling artists of all time’. Come May 6, we can all wish Bob Seger a very happy 79th birthday. We will feature Seger extensively on www.woas-fm.org next week.
Top Piece Video: A younger Bob singing with the passion that made him a concert draw favorite!