Bob Seger was thirty and practically a geriatric (thirty is sixty in rock years!) when 1976’s Night Moves finally took him nationwide, big time. It came as a surprise. Seger seemed destined to spend his career as a journeyman—a big fish (although hardly as hip a fish as The Stooges, the MC5 and Alice Cooper) in the Detroit area, just another band everywhere else. He was a second-tier rocker who put on high-energy rock shows and had written some great songs including the 1968 classic “2 +2 = ?”and 1975’s “Beautiful Loser,” none of which—with the exception of 1968’s “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man”—broke into the American Top Forty.
He began his recording career with the Bob Seger System before going solo and then forming the crack Detroit unit Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, but fame eluded him until Night Moves (with its title track, which may well be the greatest and most poignant song ever written about growing old and looking back) went to No. four on the charts. It says everything you need to know about Seger’s genius that “Night Moves” sounds like the work of a much older man—thirty is a bit early to be singing about autumn closing in. But Seger pulled it off with ease, perhaps because all that touring left him wise beyond his years.
Night Moves broke Seger, but he made his first inroad towards national attention with the previous year’s two-fer Live Bullet with The Silver Bullet Band. Recorded at Detroit’s Cobo Hall before a vocal and partisan crowd, Live Bullet is a galvanizing non-stop hard rock party and call to arms. Live Bullet demonstrates that Seger was a no-frills roots rocker with a voice that was all road grit who put on an electrifying live show, heavy on irresistible, high-octane, old-school scorchers that should have made him a star but didn’t. And the covers (of songs by Tina Turner, Van Morrison, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry) are barnstormers as well. When the announcer at album’s open shouts, “You are here because you want the real thing!” he isn’t fooling.
Seger projects almost as well as John Fogarty—he may have been in Cobo Hall, but I’ll bet you the kids could hear him giving it his all in North Dakota’s Iron Range. And Seger and band seemed to have a constitutional aversion to going the ballad/love song route or even going the speed limit; aside from “Turn the Page” and “Jody Girl,” the adrenaline never flags. Simple, loud and fast: it’s the oldest formula there is, but there’s a reason Seger would go on to sing about loving that old time rock and roll—he loved that old time rock and roll. It’s an awful song, granted, and a real blot on his permanent record, but a true reflection of his Chuck Berry-loving self.
Me, I think Christgau’s right about Black Oak’s incompetence, but wrong about everything else. I find Black Oak Arkansas tremendously interesting, exciting even, thanks in large part to the uncanny vocal acrobatics of the perpetually shirtless James “Jim Dandy” Mangrum. I find it hard to describe Mangrum’s voice except by comparing it to the pitching of Dock Ellis on that immortal June night in 1970 when he threw a no-hitter while on acid. Ellis’ pitches may have been all over the place—he walked eight batters, and probably narrowly missed hitting and killing a few more—but nobody could touch them, because Ellis was possessed.
It’s in solitude that a musician often finds the freedom and flexibility to create just what it is they want to develop. However, there is surely something to be said about the chemistry between two people, two artists. When two musicians sit before one another and unite for the good of performing or recording one song, the tension can be palpable. Such a situation can reach Olympic level heights when the musical duel is between two experts in their field.
Ah, but then her Gaganess sat down for an interview with Vanity Fair, and said an astounding and wonderful thing. Namely, “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”
First year in the dorms at Shippensburg College Aerosmith were inescapable, what with my floor’s resident dope dealers Sheesh and Shrooms cranking the Toxic Twins around the clock, and I’ll never forget the day in the dining hall I warned ‘em Aerosmith would rot their brains, and if they really wanted to improve their minds they’d switch to Frank Zappa! Who at the time, if I recall correctly, was producing such IQ-raising fare as “Crew Slut” and “Wet T-Shirt Nite”!
