Why is it so hard to find old Bob Seger albums?
I mean, anything from before Night Moves?
It‘s a long story, and an interesting one if you lurk about the edges of music like I do.
10 thoughts on “Against The Wind”
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Saw him at Met Center, I think 1983. Great show.
Fascinating! The one thing the author does not consider is “what does Bob Seger want?” It is all about the fans for the author. But could it be that Seger is very happy with his life, what he did, and that he does not want to be sellout like Springsteen and is very happy driving a Corvette and not a Ferrari? Living in MI and not in LA? That he does not want his kids to become snowflakes and be on a “kids of rich and famous” reality show? What is so wrong with that? Is it possible Seger simply wants to avoid the fame. fortune and trappings of “easy cash”?
It took forever for Seger to get on iTunes, but when he arrived it was in force with his Ultimate Hits: Rock and Roll Never Forgets album, which I immediately downloaded (I believe it was right at Thanksgiving, 2011).
Anyway, my wife and I were on a road trip sometime after that and my phone was plugged into the stereo and “Beautiful Loser” (or maybe “Main Street”) shuffled up. At the end of the song my wife said, “Wow – I never realized what a good songwriter he is.” That is to say, she “knew” Bob Seger but he’d always just been kind of background music for her until then.
Ah, yes – a little bit from what I wrote back in ’11 when Ultimate came out:
I liked Seger well enough when I was growing up but I wasn’t necessarily a huge fan. Perhaps it was easy to take him for granted because he was so ubiquitous. It seemed as if he always had a song on the charts and playing in the background of most of my memories from my teens and into my 30s. They were songs of wheels and women, of loving and leaving, and of doing whatever it takes to have a good time that became an American bushido of masculinity for an era. The style was gritty but not too deep and it was a match made in Marketing when Chevy hitched it’s truck line to the Detroit-born and bred Seger’s “Like a Rock” hit, almost turning the song into a parody of itself. It did sell a lot of quarter- and half-ton trucks, though, and Seger sold a million tons of records as Americans found a certain resonance, real or hoped-for, in the words and images.
Yeah, I could picture myself taking a look down that westbound road and making a choice to get up with the sun and be gone with the wind all the way to Katmandu (but not to Fire Lake); of being rock hard and hard-rocking, and thinking that while I wasn’t good-looking I wasn’t shy and wasn’t afraid to look a girl in they eye, even if they all wanted to change me
Somehow it seems like yesterday, but it was long ago.
NW, love your (next to) last paragraph!
Same!
That’s a fascinating piece. Thanks for sharing it, Mitch.
For me, Seger lives in the same space that Tom Petty does — always a welcome presence, but not necessarily the first artist on my list. They’ve both left a lot of quality music in their wake and their triumph lies in their versatility and devotion to their craft. To a lesser extent, I’d put Johnny Rivers in the same category.
Mr. D – good comparison. I was surprised when I saw how many Petty songs I had in my iTunes library. He’s probably in the top 3 of my collection in those terms, though I wouldn’t say I was a super-fan (thought I clearly like him).
Loren, Mitch – Thanks!
Oddly enough, I’ve been digging through a lot of Johnny Rivers lately .
Oddly enough, I’ve been digging through a lot of Johnny Rivers lately .
A pro, in the best sense of the term.