The Seger File -- Introduction

At night, he stayed up late listening to a faraway radio station. On a transistor radio and an earplug, he heard James Brown, Garnett Mimms, Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and others.

He liked James Brown more than the Beatles. His favorite album was James Brown Live at the Apollo, Volume 1.

He was a good student in high school and could run a 5:05 mile -- until he discovered rock and roll.

He began staying out all night with his friends, cars circled in a farmer's field, listening to music on the car radios.

He formed a band. The applause at the Junior Prom changed his life.

In 11th grade he was playing bars three nights a week.

The first song he wrote was titled, 'The Lonely One.'

In 2006 he played for nearly a million fans across the country.

Dan Honaker, Pep Perine, Bob Seger play the Mt. Holly Ski Lodge north of Pontiac, Michigan.

By 1968, he had five Top Ten singles in the Detroit market. He was unheard of outside Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and a few other Midwest markets -- but in Detroit, his records outsold the Beatles.

He was on the verge of breaking the national charts in 1967 when the record company promoting his single went bankrupt.

The first major label to offer him a contract was Motown.

He broke the Top Forty with a single in 1968, then survived seven years without a successful record.

His work ethic became a local legend. He played 260 dates in 1975.

In the early '70s, he and his band drove 25 hours to Florida, played three straight nights, and then drove 25 hours back, because they couldn't afford motel rooms. He considered himself more a driver than a singer at the time.

His mother taught him never to go into debt.

In June 1976, he played in front 50 people in a Chicago bar. Three days later, he played in front of 76,000 devoted fans in the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit.

Bob Seger at the Primo Showbar, Ann Arbor, Michigan, December 1973

Photo by Scott Sparling

He wrote the first anti-war rock song of the Vietnam era.

He wrote about Lucy Blue, Chicago Green, Already Eddie and other characters long before Springsteen created Crazy Janey and her mission man.

His songs, he thinks, reflect a certain morality... 'what happens when you do it wrong and when you do it right.'

The characters in many of his songs don't find the satisfaction or fulfillment that they thought their dreams would hold. They end up 'stuck in heaven,' listening to the sound of something far away -- a bird on the wing, the sound of thunder. They think back on the promise of younger years, surprised at the passage of time. Only occasionally do they find renewal. More often, they try to make some moment last; they watch it slipping past. The light fades from the screen. They wake up alone. Next time, perhaps, they'll get it right.

Somehow, at the same time, his music manages to be incredibly life-affirming, celebratory and uplifting.

He was born lonely down by the riverside.

He went cruising on his gray snake till his dying day.

He even sang the parts the instruments were playing.

He knows the devil is red, but his money is green.

His '60 Cadillac went cruising through Nebraska, whining.

He woke one night to the sound of thunder.

He wishes he didn't know now what he didn't know then.

They used to call him reckless, they used to call him fast.

After twenty years, he saw himself again.

He was greatly influenced by early advice from Freddy 'Boom Boom' Cannon, who said, 'Do your best, 'cause it's only gonna last two or three years.'

He's a perfectionist who spends months in the studio fixing problems no one else can hear. He's a Taurus and 'you can't move him with a crane.' Or, he lets people walk all over him.

He's had one Number 1 single and one Number 1 album.

He admires Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell.

He believes his rock and roll savagery was tempered for many years by the need to produce mainstream records.

He has sold nearly 50 million albums.

One of his most heartfelt songs became the basis of one of the most successful ad campaigns in recent history.

He 'exudes the brawny vocal friendliness of an American Everyman, but with a deep and special connection to soul music.'

He 'has all the requisites of greatness: the voice, the songwriting, the performance onstage, the vision and the ambition.'

He recorded ten consecutive million-selling albums between 1975 and 1995.

In live performances, he displays 'an embracing friendliness that transcends the normal barriers between rock performer and audience.'

He played in front of 923,829 fans in 1996, making him the fourth most popular touring act of the year.

His kids, he says, 'are the best thing that ever happened to me.'

His father left when he was ten.

In 'Golden Boy,' he sings, 'I'll be there for you.'

He still lives in Michigan.

Hall-elujah! Always in our hearts, now Seger's in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Doncha ever feel like going insane? It's official. Seger's in. It's for the 250 gigs a year across the midwest. It's for ten straight (soon to be eleven straight) platinum and multiplatinum albums, 19 Top-40 singles, nearly a million ticket sales during the '96 tour and nearly 50 million albums sold worldwide. It's for seven years without a hit but without a hint of giving up. But it's also for that one song that got you through the worst night of your life, or the concert where you just couldn't stop smiling, or the one lyric you are never going to forget. It's for the person you met at the Seger concert, it's for the famous Seger smile and the lonesome highway east of Omaha. It's for the pure raucous joy of it because when Seger is playing the answer to do you do you wanna rock is yes. It's for the music. And, yeah, it's about time.

Also by the author of the Segerfile