For reasons never entirely explained, Bob Seger suffered a bit of a breakdown shortly after Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, so he decided to bring Tom Neme, a guitarist/pianist, into the Bob Seger System to help lighten the load and share the burden…
Recorded the year after Live Bullet, Bob Seger's quintessential live album, Live: Boston 1977 finds the Michigan native delivering a live set while he and his Silver Bullet Band were at the height of their power…
Live Bullet introduced Bob Seger to a wide audience, revealing a rocker of unbridled passion and a songwriter of considerable talent. Prior to its release, Seger had been toiling away, releasing seven albums and touring constantly ever since his debut scraped the national consciousness in 1968…
Michigan's Bob Seger is an American treasure, but he doesn't get the full respect or attention of, say, Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp because he wasn't as visible. His late-'70s prime was pre-MTV, New Jersey-born Springsteen had the fawning support of the New York-based media, and Mellencamp embraced high-profile political causes like Farm Aid and married model Elaine Irwin…
Longtime Bob Seger fans are united by one desire: to have his earliest recordings reissued. Usually, this means his earliest singles for Cameo and Hideout, but the sentiment also pertains to his first seven records that have remained out of print for years, with some – like the superb Back in '72 – never seeing a CD reissue. All this means that the 2009 appearance of Early Seger, Vol. 1 caused great excitement, especially since Seger chose Hideout as the imprint for this self-released compilation of highlights and outtakes…
Beautiful Loser winds up sounding more like Back in '72 than its immediate predecessor, Seven, largely because Bob Seger threaded reflective ballads and mid-tempo laments back into his hard-driving rock. He doesn't shy away from it, either, opening with the lovely title track. And why shouldn't he? These ballads were as much a part of his success as his storming rockers, since his sentimental streak seemed all the more genuine when contrasted with the rockers…
Bob Seger's Mongrel may have been a terrific album, but nobody heard it, just like its predecessor. So Capitol was ready to drop him and wanted a contract-fulfilling album as soon as possible. Seger delivered the low-key, introspective Brand New Morning to get out of the deal. Later he claimed that the album was a collection of demos released somewhat against his will, but listening to the record it's hard to believe that these intimate yet fully realized songs were bare-bone work versions…
Night Moves was in the pipeline when Live Bullet hit, and wound up eclipsing the double live set anyway, so Stranger in Town is really the record where Bob Seger started grasping the changes that happened when he became a star. It happened when he was old enough to have already formed his character…