Bob Seger



Robert Clark Seger was born on May 6th, 1945, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father, who had been a big band leader, quit the music business to work in a local factory and eventually abandoned the family completely, leaving for California in search of success that he never achieved. (He died in a fire in 1968). The family, left in near poverty, moved to a one-room apartment. By 1961, Seger was leading a three-piece band called The Decibels. He subsequently joined Doug Brown And The Omens as an organist, but was installed as their vocalist and songwriter when such talents surfaced. The group made its recording debut as The Beach Bums, with "The Ballad Of The Yellow Beret", but this tongue in cheek version of the Barry Sadler hit, "The Ballad Of The Green Beret", was quickly withdrawn in the face of a threatened lawsuit.

The band then became known as Bob Seger And The Last Heard, and as such, released several powerful singles, notably "East Side Story" (1966) and "Heavy Music" (1967), which became regional hits. By 1968, he had five Top Ten singles in the Detroit market, but was unheard of outside Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and a few other Midwest markets. In the Motor City, his records outsold the Beatles. Seger was on the verge of breaking on to the national charts in 1967 when his music label, Cameo, went bankrupt, putting a halt to his rising success. Seger managed to get a new recording contract with Capitol Records in 1968 and the singer's new group, The Bob Seger System, enjoyed a Billboard #17 hit that year with "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man". Numerous excellent hard-rock releases followed, including the impressive "Mongrel" album, but the artist was unable to repeat his early success and disbanded the group in 1971.

Having spent a period studying for a college degree, Seger returned to music with his own label, Palladium, and three unsuccessful albums followed. He garnered considerable acclaim for his 1974 single, "Get Out Of Denver", which has since become a much-covered classic. Seger only achieved deserved commercial success upon returning to Capitol when "Beautiful Loser" reached #131 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart and produced a local Detroit hit "Katmandu". Now fronting The Silver Bullet Band - Drew Abbott (guitar), Robyn Robbins (keyboards), Alto Reed (saxophone), Chris Campbell (bass) and Charlie Allen Martin (drums) - Seger reinforced his in-concert popularity with the exciting LP "Live Bullet", which was in turn followed by "Night Moves", his first Platinum disc. The title track reached #4 on the Hot 100 in 1977, a feat that "Still The Same" repeated the following year. A string of hit records followed, including "Hollywood Nights" (#12 in 1978), "We've Got Tonight" (#13 in 1978), "Old Time Rock & Roll" (#25 in 1979), "Fire Lake" (#6 in 1980), "Against The Wind" (#5 in 1980), "You'll Accompany Me" (#14 in 1980), "Tryin' To Live My Life Without You" (#5 in 1981) and "Shame On The Moon (#2 in 1982).

In 1983 Seger returned to the road with an altered Silver Bullet Band that included ex-Grand Funk Railroad drummer Don Brewer, and continued to pound out the hit records with "Even Now" (#12 in 1983), "Roll Me Away" (#27 in 1983), "Understanding" (#17 in 1984), "American Storm" (#13 in 1986), and "Like A Rock" (#12 in 1986). His 1987 hit "Shakedown" reached #1 after it was included on the soundtrack to the film Beverly Hills Cop II.

After taking an extended break, Seger released his first studio album in five years in 1991. Co-produced by Don Was, it became a Top 10 hit in America, clearly showing his massive following had remained in place. A highly successful greatest hits collection issued in 1994 also demonstrated just what a huge following he still had. "It's A Mystery" came after a long gap, presumably buoyed by his recent success and he followed that with a box-office record-breaking tour of America in 1996. Ticketmaster claimed that the concert in his home-town sold 100,000 tickets in 57 minutes.

In June of 2000, Seger was charged with drunk driving and refusal to take a breathalyser test after crashing his BMW in Ontario, Canada. No one else was in the vehicle when it hit a tree. Seger pleaded guilty to the charge of refusing to give a breath sample and the charge of driving while impaired was dropped. As the years rolled on, the hit records tailed off, although hardly a day went by that we didn't hear Bob singing a snippet of his 1983 hit, "Like a Rock" in Chevy truck commercials. March 16th, 2004 saw Bob Seger inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

September, 2006 brought a much anticipated new album, his first in more than ten years, "Face the Promise". In support of this latest effort, Seger was scheduled to tour for the remaining months of the year and into 2007. Not much was heard from him until 2009 brought the partly retrospective "Early Seger Vol. 1" and it took him until January, 2011 to announce his next project, "Bob Seger: Ultimate Hits", which was issued on November 21st of that year. Bob Seger And The Silver Bullet Band went back out on the road that Fall for a North American Tour which extended into 2013.

In mid-August, 2014, Seger announced an October release date for his first album of new material in eight years, titled "Ride Out". "I feel really good about this record," Bob said in a statement. "It sums up a lot of feelings I have about a variety of subjects." Seger and his Silver Bullet Band kicked off another round of sixteen tour dates in mid-November at the Dow Event Center in Saginaw, Michigan that was slated to run into March, 2015. On December 15th, Seger and company appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman where they performed a cut from the new album, a Country flavored tune called "All Of The Roads". Seger also told Letterman about the origin of the name the Silver Bullet Band. "We were all arguing about what our band name should be, and I was kind of letting the band pick it themselves, and they just kept arguing and arguing," Seger said. "Finally, our manager sent us our paychecks with 'Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band' on it. He got tired of waiting for us so he made it up himself."

In November, 2015, Seger delighted fans by announcing plans to tour behind a new album called "I Knew You When" in 2016. The LP was to include unreleased songs that have been updated. On December 22nd, 2016, Seger performed "Heartache Tonight" in honor of The Eagles at The Kennedy Center. On January 18th, 2017 he gave away the single "Glenn Song" on his website as a tribute marking the one year anniversary of the death of his close friend, Glenn Frey. Tour plans were interrupted after the rocker suffered a ruptured disc in his back which ultimately spread to his legs, but Bob and his band were scheduled to resume their Runaway Train Tour on November 24th, 2018 in Kansas City. A special treat for die hard Seger fans was in store when "Heavy Music: The Complete Cameo Recordings 1966-1967", was set for release on September 7th. A few days later, the 73-year-old Seger announced that his current tour, which was scheduled to run into the Spring of 2019, would be his last.

Bob was back in the spotlight again in late July, 2019 when Quentin Tarantino's movie, Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood hit theatres. The soundtrack to the film was filled with music by classic rock 'n' rollers, and Seger is represented by his first national hit, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man". In mid-October, Capitol Records/UMe announced that to mark the 40th anniversary of Seger's chart-topping album "Against The Wind", a remastered vinyl reissue would be released on November 22.

January 10th, 2020 brought another first for the Detroit rocker when he launched his official YouTube channel. A press release said, "The Bob Seger Official Artist Channel will also premiere rare and classic Seger music videos restored for the first time in HD, and feature custom playlists of Seger's catalog in HD quality audio, fan-generated videos, as well as rare and unreleased content." Sad news came on December 30th of that year when Alto Reed, (born Tommy Cartmell) the longtime saxophonist for Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, died after a long battle with colon cancer. He was 72. Bob Seger paid tribute to his former band mate, noting that his iconic performance on "Turn the Page" helped lift the group to another level. "In our band, Alto was the Rock star."

On Halloween morning, 2021, Seger escaped unharmed after a fire broke out in a chimney flue in the family room of his Orchard Lake, Michigan home.