Let’s raise a birthday toast to Bob Seger, who turns 80 today. He might be the only great American rock star who likes everybody in his songs. He’s not judging anyone in “Fire Down Below.” He hopes his crooked friend in “Still The Same” keeps getting away with it. He’s impressed by the scam artist who stole his credit card in “Sunspot Baby” and he hopes she sure had a real good time. The first rock star on a live album asking the fans up front not to hurt each other. It’s not just his mighty Detroit growl that makes Bob Seger one of the greats — it’s the noble warmth in his spirit, and that’s what keeps lifting his songs higher and higher over the years.
Seger retired in 2019, walking away on his own terms. He takes pride in avoiding the modern world, boasting that he doesn’t even use e-mail. But it’s not hard to imagine him in his 80s, because he did his growing up in private. He spent his 20s as a journeyman, the quintessential Midwest bar-band grinder, playing hundreds of one-nighters every year. By the time he finally got famous, he was already in his 30s. He was the first major rock star who’d never sounded young.
He always leaned into his world-weary voice — he came on like a grizzled old biker sage in “Night Moves,” looking back on old times, even though he was just 31. He specialized in rugged ballads about the passing of time, like “Mainstreet,” “Travelin’ Man,” “Turn the Page,” or “The Famous Final Scene.” The guy was only 33 when he sang “Old Time Rock & Roll.” (For perspective, that’s the age Charli XCX, Selena Gomez, and Charlie Puth are turning this year. Imagine them doing a song where they boast about refusing to listen to any music from this century.)
So it’s no surprise that Bob Seger has made it to 80 with all his grace and dignity. “I messed with hair dye in the Nineties, and it felt so phony,” he told Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene in 2017. “You know that joke about Kenny Rogers? They had a look-alike contest and he came in third.”
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Everything people love about Bob Seger is right there in “Rock & Roll Never Forgets.” This song isn’t just an invitation — it’s a detailed step-by-step explainer about how to go to a rock show. “Go down to the concert or a local bar,” Bob advises. “Check the local newspaper, chances are you won’t have to go too far.” Talk about service-y. As a kid, I heard him singing to rookie fans like me, but he’s really an adult singing to his fellow adults — the “sweet 16s turned 31.” He assures them that they belong here, that music isn’t just for the young or the cool or the glamorous. Bob’s out here telling 30-somethings—unimaginable in Seventies rock terms—that you have a place on the dance floor, even if you feel old and awkward, even if you have to get up in the morning. And if you’re out of practice, so what? Come back, baby, rock & roll never forgets.
Bob’s on a whole new level of populism here — he does everything but recommend a parking spot. As the personal trainers like to say, the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door, but Coach Bob is rooting for you to get out there into the mix, where “all of Chuck’s children are out there playing his licks.” The open-hearted generosity of this song is the essence of Segerdom. It’s the final song he sang on the last night of his farewell tour, and if this is the message he wanted to leave us with, he chose well.
Seger grew up poor in Michigan — after his dad abandoned the family, he and his brother shared a bunk bed with their hard-working mom. Despite his blue collar image, he didn’t cut it on the Detroit assembly line. “I had worked at General Motors after high school for half a day,” he recalled in 1982. “It took me three days to get the job, but after a big lunch I went home.”
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He had his own sound from the start, in gritty Sixties singles like “East Side Story” and “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.” But he really found his voice in the 1968 single “2+2=?,” protesting the Vietnam War and the draft, all Midwest working-class rage. He mourns an old friend killed in the war — a buddy from his high-school band, the Decibels. “Just an average friendly guy,” Seger snarls, over an intense bass pulse. “He had himself a girlfriend/And you made them say goodbye.”
If you play “2+2=?” side by side with “Seven Nation Army,” you might notice that Jack White picked up a few brilliant ideas here — he’s a hardcore Seger fanatic. In 2020, his Third Man Records gave “2+2=?” a vinyl 7-inch reissue.
But the song that made him a star was full of grown-up lightning and thunder. Like a lot of people, I remember exactly where and when I heard “Night Moves” for the first time. Just a little kid in the burbs, my neighbor’s kitchen on a Friday night. We were playing cards with his bad-ass big sister and her scary tough-as-nails friend, Cool Older Girls from high school, so I was feeling quite adult. The radio was cranking out the Seventies rock hits (that was also the night I heard “Dream On” for the first time) but “Night Moves” was something different, something heavy. It built to the moment where he’s waiting on the thunder, waking up in the night, humming a song from 1962. The girls recited—not sang — along with this part. “Strange how the night moves,” Seger sang. “With autumn closing in.”
None of us were even out of high school, but we could feel the chill in that moment, and I knew I was hearing some serious grown-up stuff that wasn’t watered down for any of us. This was how adult pain was gonna feel. Get used to it, kiddo. The song still puts a chill in my bones, yet it’s crazy how that memory is still so visceral for me, all these years later — just a childhood card game, a song on the radio. Autumn, man. Bob Seger wasn’t lying about that. It just closes the hell on in.
All four of his most-streamed songs are about remembering the past, three of them serious (“Night Moves,” “Still the Same,” “Against the Wind”) but one of them fun. “Old Time Rock & Roll” raises a few questions, like: Who are all these people trying to take Bob Seger to a disco? Don’t they even know this man? He’d rather hear some blues or funky old soul (but not funky Dixieland, that’s the Doobie Brothers). In theory, it should be a grumpy old man’s rant, but it sounds like a party. A few years ago I karaoked with a stranger who sang “Old Time Rock & Roll,” but only the first line over and over — “Just take those old records off the shelf!” — for the entire song. I salute you, guy.
The closest he comes to making enemies is “Turn the Page” — he gets hassled by the locals at the truck stop, with their “same old cliches” about his long hair. But he does go out of his way to avoid calling them any names — his main complaint is that they don’t have fresher insults. “Still the Same” toasts a con-man friend; I always hear it as the same ne’er-do-well pal Gerry Rafferty sings about in “Baker Street,” a simultaneous hit from the summer of ’78. Seger admires his hustle (“the trick, you said, was never play the game too long”), without wanting to be there when the heat finally comes down.
Over the years, Seger kept loyally putting his Silver Bullet Band on the marquee. There’s that classic photo on the back of Night Moves, where every dude looks like he’s in a different group. My fave is the fashion plate with the big New Romantic hair and the white silk ascot — picture that guy getting past the bouncer down on Main Street. (“Excuse me sir, this is the pool hall for the hustlers and the losers. Wang Chung Cosplay Night is next door.”) But they’re all welcome here.
Seger’s never done a Milkshake Duck — never made it embarrassing to be a fan. In his later years, he started writing songs about climate change. “I’m sure this will alienate some fans,” he said. “But I’m 69. What the heck can they do to me now?” He trashed Marco Rubio in the press and shook President Obama’s hand at the Kennedy Center in 2016, telling Rolling Stone, “I got to meet my favorite President of my lifetime.” He sang about women without turning into a jerk, not the most common skill for male stars of his generation. You can hear it in a song like “Rosalie,” his fan tribute to a real-life local DJ, with the hook, “She knows music/I know music too, you see.” (Thin Lizzy turned it into a massive U.K. hit.)
As a hometown hero, he’s come to symbolize Michigan. In 2009. Bruce Springsteen had a famous gaffe onstage in Detroit where he kept saying “Hello, Ohio!” until Steve Van Zandt had to whisper in the Boss’ ear. “Every frontman’s nightmare,” Springsteen joked. So how did he make it up to the crowd? A Seger song, of course — he played “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” and added, “We love you, Bobby!”
Ever the adventurous listener, Seger was into hip-hop earlier than other rock stars his age. “The best Black video I’ve ever seen was the one that Grandmaster Flash did for ‘The Message,’” he told Musician’s Timothy White in December 1982, just a few months after the song came out. “It was a tough, scary, brilliant piece of hip socio-political work.” But his music shows up in the weirdest places. One of my favorites is Wilco’s “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” with that out-of-nowhere Silver Bullet piano riff that bursts into the Euro synth-groove — as my illustrious Rolling Stone colleague and Seger scholar Jon Dolan called it, a Kraftwerk song that turns into a Bob Seger song.
“I must say that ‘Night Moves’ is my favorite song, overall,” Seger told Musician. “You have one of those tunes a career. Someone recently asked me why the Eagles broke up. I said, ‘Hotel California.’ They couldn’t out-write that, and I think they knew it.” Seger had a similar situation. “I milked ‘Night Moves’ a little bit after that with ‘Brave Strangers’ and ‘Against the Wind,’ but material of that nature became a problem for me. I kept trying to out-write ‘Night Moves,’ and finally said, ‘No more. I’m not gonna try to out-write it.’”
But in 1986, he threw everything into one last “Night Moves” sequel, “Like a Rock,” which became a TV truck ad. He stepped back to be a dad and only made occasional records after that. His 2017 farewell album I Knew You When has his tributes to the late Glenn Frey, Lou Reed, and Leonard Cohen. He’s got a perpetual best-seller with his 1994 Greatest Hits album — it’s currently on the Billboard chart at #138, one rung ahead of the Eagles.
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Yet weirdly, no classic-rock star has done less to capitalize on the demand for his music. Much of his catalog has been out of print for years; almost none of his early albums are streaming. No deluxe editions, no box sets, no documentary. He just seems to have no idea that people want to hear his albums. “Jack White is always asking me about that,” he told Rolling Stone. “He wants to remix them all, and said he’d do it for free. But I’m always on to the next thing – the next album, the next tour. Maybe when I retire I’ll get serious about it.” Seger’s been retired for a few years now, but he’s still sitting on the most underexploited catalog of any legacy rocker. Yet it’s only a matter of time before early gems like Mongrel or Back in ‘72 reach the audience they deserve to reach.
My favorite Seger moment comes from his 1976 Live Bullet, in his 9-minute medley of “Travelin’ Man”/“Beautiful Loser.” He’s barely into his 30s, but already looking back on a life full of risks that didn’t pay off and chances that didn’t come back around. There’s a hard-luck ache in his voice, but no regrets — he’s all soulful serenity as he sings, “Out to the road, out ‘neath the stars, feelin’ the breeze, passin’ the cars.” For me, this is my favorite Bob Seger story — the story he spent his whole career telling, which is why he kept singing this song right up to his final show. So here’s to 80 years of Bob Seger and his American journey. These songs are the musical memories that make him — and so many others — a wealthy soul.