Bob Seger brings that old time rock ’n’ roll — one more time
Back in 2011, when he was a young pup of 66, we asked Bob Seger if he had a timetable for how long he would stay out on the road.
“I’m gonna be 70 in 3½ years,” he said, “so it might be time to go away fairly soon, but like I said, I just take it time by time, and as long as I’m still enjoying it and I think I’m doing something worthwhile, I’ll continue to do it.”
That time seems to have come. The venerable Detroit rocker, at 74, is on the humorously titled Roll Me Away farewell tour, making what will likely be his last stop in Pittsburgh at PPG Paints Arena Thursday, although we’ve learned from The Who and many others to never say never.
Seger’s rock ’n’ roll years go all the way back to 1961, when he started fronting a band called The Decibels at 16, followed soon after by The Town Criers and The Last Heard before he got to the Bob Seger System. We don’t really know how long he has been playing Pittsburgh, and it’s not clear that he does either.
“We used to play these multiple shows in one night, in these little towns around Pittsburgh. We’d do a show at 8 and 11 and 1:30,” he said during a 2006 interview.
Formed in 1968, the Bob Seger System had its biggest success with the garagerock classic “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” a No. 17 hit that featured fellow Detroit rocker Glenn Frey on guitar and backup vocals. They played the Civic Arena on Dec. 29, 1968 opening for Iron Butterfly and Canned Heat on a KQV Christmas Show of the Stars bill that listed them as “Bob Seegar System.” They split in 1970, after which Seger took a stab at being a solo acoustic artist on “Brand New Morning.”
Things started to jell for him in 1974 when he released “Seven” — a little hint that it was his seventh album — featuring the musicians he would later call the Silver Bullet Band. They made a name for themselves as an opening act, first playing the Civic Arena on Sept. 28, 1974, with Wet Willie and headliner Bachman Turner Overdrive, which was riding high with “Takin’ Care of Business.”
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s next show here wasn’t quite Jimi Hendrix opening for The Monkees, but it was almost as odd. They turned up at the Arena on Sept. 4, 1976, as the opening act for Kiss on The Destroyer Tour.
“The agent called me and said, ‘Hey, we’re putting Bob Seger on some of these shows. Do you want them?” recalls Rich Engler, cofounder of DiCesare-Engler Productions. “I said, ‘You don’t have anything else?’”
“The word chemistry didn’t really exist back then,” Engler explained. “It was rock ’n’ roll with rock ’n’ roll. A generic term. No matter what you looked like or what you sounded like, you could play with the other person. Two rock bands: What’s the difference? It wasn’t until the ’80s when it became, ‘You can’t put James Taylor on a BTO show.’ ”
Bob Seger didn’t have any makeup or explosions. Just tough, gritty Motor City rock ’n’ roll that would certainly appeal to many Pittsburghers but maybe not the thrillseeking 15-year-olds there for Kiss. (Being one of them, I remember it well.)
Asked what it was like opening for Kiss, Seger told us in 2006, “You know what you do? You don’t stop playing. That’s what you do. You say, ‘The second we’re in the stinger, I’m gonna count the next song.’ ”
By this point, Seger had a solid set of songs that included “Katmandu,” “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” “Travelin’ Man” and “Beautiful Loser.” During those months, he was rolling out a new one called “Night Moves,” the title track of an album released a month after the Kiss show, on Oct. 22, 1976.
In the wake of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” breakout, the industry was rooting for the humble underdog from the Detroit scene.
“He’s just really down to earth,” Engler says, “and not the typical band that came out of Detroit: MC5, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, all those maniacs. [Not to mention Ted Nugent!] They were all insane, and here comes Bob Seger. He was like the good old boy.”
Rolling Stone opened its review of the album declaring, “If there is any grace in heaven, ‘Night Moves’ will give Bob Seger the national following which has long eluded him. It is simply one of the best albums of the year. As a vocalist, Seger recalls Rod Stewart; his raspy voice can both soar and attack. As a composer, he echoes Bruce Springsteen in his painful attempts to memorialize his past.”
There was grace in heaven because “Night Moves,” which also included the hits “Rock and Roll Never Forgets” and “Mainstreet,” would soon make Seger an FM radio staple and go on sell 6 million copies.
It didn’t happen overnight, though, so Seger and the Silver Bullet Band were still in the opening slot, for Foghat, in December 1976 at the Arena, where they suffered from not getting a soundcheck.
“Night Moves,” a wistful coming-of-age classic, debuted on the charts at No. 85 that same December and then peaked at No. 4 on March 12, 1977. Three days later, Seger did his first headlining gig in Pittsburgh at the Stanley Theater, prompting a pre-clickbait headline in The Pittsburgh Press the next day: “Fire Dept. Stops Seger Show.”
It had nothing to do with Seger. It was about the opening band, Rex, inviting fans in the back to rush the stage, and upon singer Rex Smith claiming he didn’t know the rules, promoter Danny Kresky sniped back, “He didn’t know the rules? You can take him out in the alley and teach him the rules.”
Contrary to the headline, Seger went on as planned for what would be his final theater show here. He was promoted to Arena headliner on May 13, 1978, a week after releasing 10th album “Stranger in Town,” on which the hits just seemed effortless: “Hollywood Nights,” “Still the Same,” “Old
Time Rock and Roll,” “We’ve Got Tonight” and a B-side, “Feel Like a Number.”
A sold-out two-night stand at the Arena in June 1980 supporting “Against the Wind,” which won him his first and only Grammy, brought a very different headline: “Arena crowd soothed by Bob Seger’s charm.”
Unlike the Boss and Petty and Mellencamp, Seger, who had a much earlier start, didn’t play road warrior through the ’80s and ’90s. He was talking retirement from the road when he did two nights here in September 1986 with “Like a Rock” and followed through by taking a decade off from touring.
When he reappeared here in February 1996, during the grunge era, the PG declared he was “sounding like a cheap imitation” of “Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll” — “and a tired one at that.”
Having read that review, he stopped touring for another decade. Or, maybe it was the reason he stated: to be with his kids during their formative years. He did admit that during the early ’00s, he was feeling a little over the hill.
But what about the Rolling Stones? If they could still do it …
“Yeah, but these are, you know, thin guys,” he told us before the Pittsburgh show in 2006. “They’ve been doing it pretty steadily. It’s when you do two tours in 20 years, it’s a whole different story. I mean, I always thought of Mick as kind of like an athlete, like Roger Daltrey. Those guys look like they could go forever. Or Dylan, someone real thin and wiry, no problem. Get around an average-size guy like me, it’s a little different.”
Fortunately, for Seger fans, he worked through that perception of himself and revived his career during the past two decades with three new albums and more shows here in 2011 and 2017.
Among those inspired by seeing him in the past decade is Clinton Clegg, another big guy, who fronts one of Pittsburgh’s most popular bands, The Commonheart.
“That man is a hit machine,” Clegg says. “Seeing him live changed the way I write set lists. I remember specifically the flow of the show, and it felt purposeful. I really enjoyed it, and now I hyper-focus on flow and energy, song to song, in our sets.
“I just always loved his songwriting,” Clegg adds, “not to mention his longevity has been absolutely bonkers.”
On Thursday, Seger will be at PPG Paints 45 years after that BTO/Wet Willie show, with two of the Silver Bullet guys he was playing with back then: bassist Chris Campbell and saxophonist Alto Reed.
He isn’t really talking much about why he’s rolling away. But he did tell Rolling Stone in 2018, “I thought I’d be done by 30. My original plan was to do it for five years between the age of 25 and 30 and then buy a motorcycle and drive across Europe and then get a real job. It didn’t work out that way.”
It worked out better for everyone — except maybe the people tired of hearing “Old Time Rock and Roll” at weddings and bar mitvahs.
Scott Mervis: smervis@post-gazette.com.