The Untold Truth Of Bob Seger

Bob Seger has been playing his guitar for over 50 years, but there's more to him than his hits. From his athletic background to his retirement, there is a lot of

untold

truth

about this classic rocker. Most people contain multitudes. And that's certainly true of Bob Seger. In addition to being a talented musician, he is also a lifelong athlete and competitor. When he was in high school in Michigan, he really wanted to play football, specifically the glorious position of quarterback. But he couldn't make it on the gridiron, prompting him to turn to athletics. His years of walking as fast as he could inspired one of his most beloved songs.

As he told The Mercury News in 2019: "I always wanted to write a song about being a runner. I don't think anyone understood that, but that's where the title 'Against the Wind' came from." "I was a distance runner, and I think that's where, in high school, and I think that's where I got my tenacity." Seger races against the wind not only on land but also in the water. In 2001, his sailboat Lightning won the Port Huron-to-Mackinac race in Michigan. And it turns out that he is a pretty hands-on owner. Mike Thompson, a member of the Lightning crew, told a nautical publication, "Everyone took turns steering the boat, and he was in the rotation like everyone else." When Seger was still a teenager in high school in the early '60s, he got into music as a guitarist and vocalist in several Detroit-area bands.

His first real group was a trio called Decibels, in which he played alongside Eddie Andrews, who would later manage Seger's career. After moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Seger joined a band called Town Criers, then switched teams again to play keyboard with Doug Brown and the Omens. After a slightly humorous name change to the Beach Bums, the group released a single called "The Ballad of the Yellow Beret," a parody of Sergeant Barry Sadler's ultra-patriotic 1966 "The Ballad of the Green Berets." Seger's version mocked draft dodgers of the Vietnam War era, and might have been at least a local hit had Sadler not threatened to sue, forcing the record to be pulled from stores.

Later in 1966, Seger went solo and had some Michigan hits with "East Side Story" and "Heavy Music", only for his Cameo Records label to close. After a brief stay at university, he returned to music in 1969 and redoubled his efforts to succeed. Although Seger reached the peak of his fame in the '70s, he scored his first hit in early 1969. "Ramblin 'Gamblin' Man", officially credited to the Bob Seger System, reached number 17 on the pop chart. Billboard. But that didn't quite solidify Seger's widespread success or national stature. He continued to release singles and albums into the early '70s to very little attention.

He was essentially a one-hit wonder for a while, as "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" was his only top 40 hit until "Night Moves" landed in the top five in 1976. From that point on, Seger It was a hit machine. the country and the world, as he had already been in some parts of the Midwest for years. While a relatively obscure act to most Americans in the early '70s, he was a superstar in his home state of Michigan. In the same week in 1976 that he played to a small crowd of people at a random bar in Chicago, he also took the stage in front of 76,000 screaming fans at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. "Bob Seger has paid more dues than all artists on the current Billboard Top 40 combined." Perhaps the reason Seger's songs have resonated with so many people for so long is their authenticity.

Tunes like "Night Moves" feel so emotionally real because they are, as the singer-songwriter drew on real-life events to create his compositions. "Writing is so mysterious. I do it in different ways." During an interview on In the Studio with Redbeard, Seger revealed that he actually got to work on his "night moves" with a "dark-haired Italian girl" who he dated when he was 19. According to the book Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, that woman was René Andretti, Seger's first real girlfriend when he was a teenager. But the romance, though monumental, ultimately proved ill-fated. The singer told the Detroit Free Press in 1994: "Her boyfriend was in the service and when he came back, she married him.

My first heartbreak." Fortunately, Seger was able to overcome that disappointment. He's been married to his third wife, Juanita Dorricott, since 1993. And the rest of the world got "Night Moves" from the whole experience, so it ended well for everyone. The Eagles were one of the most popular bands of the '70s. Their country-influenced sound was synonymous with the decade. They were also something of a supergroup, as they were filled with individually successful performers and songwriters such as Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Glenn Frey. Despite that confidence in the rock 'n' roll brain, the band was completely stumped when working on an offbeat, hard-rocking song for their 1979 album, The Long Run.

According to Eagles guitarist Don Felder, when the band realized that Frey's voice was underrepresented on the album, Frey, Henley, and his collaborator J.D. Souther forged a nugget of a song. It was a dynamic number, fueled by applause. However, there was a problem. They didn't come up with a chorus. And that's when Frey decided to seek outside help in the form of Bob Seger. Frey called him up and sang what he and the other Eagles had come up with, as far as where the chorus should go. Then, out of nowhere, Seger pulled out the melody for that chorus and, subsequently, the song's title.

The result was "Heartache Tonight." Seger was credited as a co-writer and the song became the Eagles' fifth and final number one hit. "I actually wrote the 'Heartache Tonight' part, and Glenn wrote all the verses, and then Don and J.D. Souther finished the song." Seger has often presented himself as the voice of the common man: blue-collar, working-class individuals who, like Seger, come from humble Midwestern backgrounds. That's one of the main reasons he allowed his song "Like a Rock" to be used for years in commercials for American-made Chevrolet trucks. It's also an attitude that led him to make a relatively strange request to his record label.

Eight-track tape gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was superior to vinyl records in at least one respect. Music was portable on compact tapes, and automakers responded by equipping cars and trucks with eight-track players. However, the more optimized cassette eventually overtook the eight-track as the preferred portable music format. By 1982, record labels had all but eliminated it. But Seger thought that did a disservice to the public. He told People magazine in 1983: "There are thousands of enthusiasts who still have old eight-tracks on their pickup trucks or RVs. Times are tough. Many of them don't have the money to purchase a new system." So, at Seger's urging, Capitol Records released his 1982 album The Distance on eight tracks.

While Seger continued to sell out arenas and stadiums into the '90s and most of his biggest songs can still be heard on any classic rock radio station today, the hit singles period of his career began to peter out in the late 1990s. the '80s. However, their last top ten hit turned out to be their biggest. In 1987, he hit No. 1 for the first and only time with "Shakedown," his wonderful R&B-filled contribution to the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack. A commercial triumph for the veteran rocker, "Shakedown" also earned Seger a nomination for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards.

But, interestingly, the song was not originally his. The producers of Beverly Hills Cop II had hired Glenn Frey, who had had a big hit with "The Heat is On" from the first Beverly Hills Cop, to record a song for the sequel. According to The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, Frey disliked the verse lyrics written by songwriters Keith Forsey and Harold Faltermeyer. Additionally, he contracted laryngitis just before he stopped singing. After Frey retired, MCA Records president Irving Azoff called Seger and asked him to write new lyrics and record the song. Perhaps the most recognizable song in Bob Seger's catalog is "Old Time Rock and Roll," thanks to its iconic opening piano riff, Seger's howling vocal delivery, and a dazzling sax solo.

It reached the top 30 of the Billboard Hot 100 when it was originally released as a single in 1979. It later became a song for the ages when it was used in that famous scene from 1983's Risky Business in which a young Tom Cruise dances. in his underwear. But it turns out that "Old Time Rock and Roll" was almost an afterthought, recorded late in the production of the Stranger in Town album. It was brought to Seger by Alabama composer George Jackson. Seger liked the chorus but not the verses, so he wrote them himself. However, he didn't think the song would ever be a single, much less a hit, so he didn't bother labeling himself as a songwriter.

That means he has missed out on

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riches in royalties. As he told a radio interviewer in 2006: "That was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life." In 1994, the same year Seger released his Greatest Hits album, he also appeared in a music video for "Night Moves", nearly 20 years after the song's original release. The video evokes the melancholic nostalgia of the song. It's filmed in dreamlike soft focus and set in a drive-in movie theater sometime in the distant, romantic past. The young people flirt and hang out, including a central couple played by Melrose Place's Daphne Zuniga and Matt LeBlanc just before Friends debuted and made him a household name.

Believe it or not, Seger actually did some acting training. As LeBlanc revealed on an episode of Top Gear, Seger called the actor into his trailer and told him what he was like when he was young and would go to the drive-in and try to pick up girls. Then the rocker took out a bottle of tequila. "Next thing I know, Bob Seger and I drink a whole bottle of tequila, and then there's a knock on the door, 'Ready for you on set!' So I'm drunk during the whole video." Even though both Seger and LeBlanc were in various states of intoxication during the filming of the video, everything seemed to work out well in the end.

LeBlanc has had a long and stable acting career, while Seger's Greatest Hits was certified diamond after selling more than 10 million copies in the United States. After Seger's career slowed in the '90s, he quietly retired from the music business in order to focus on family life. She told CBS Sunday Morning in 2007: "I had kids at 47, and very late in life, and I had been doing it for 30 years straight, writing songs, making a record, touring and starting the process again. Then I had kids and, you know, it might be a good time to slow down and watch them grow up; you'll never get another chance to see it." After his 1995 album It's a Mystery, he didn't release another album until 2006's Face the Promise.

He toured to promote it in 2007, his first concert series since 1996. Of course, Seger isn't getting any younger, and everyone Those years of living on the road have taken their toll on him. In 2017, the year he turned 72, he broke a disk just before embarking on a concert tour. His doctor told him that if his symptoms worsened, he would have to cancel the tour and undergo surgery. Well, Seger ended up waking up one morning in September 2017 with his left leg "dragging." A few days later, his management announced that the remaining 18 dates of his tour would be postponed indefinitely.

These health issues led to his retirement once again, as he announced that his "Travelin' Man Tour" in 2018 and 2019 would be the last time he toured. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, there will be more grunge videos about your favorite things coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and press the bell so you don't miss a single one.