BOB SEGER: THE CREEM INTERVIEW

“Y’know that new song by Bob Seger, ‘Like A Rock?,’” asked the 50-yearold accountant, mother of three grown children herself. “That’s me.”

The person in the street can relate to Robert Clark Seger’s radio anthems, because the 41-year-old Ann Arbor native is one of them, a regular guy. He’s come a long way from his days playing fraternity hops and mixers on the University of Michigan campus, through his status as a regional hero to a national treasure. Even overlooking the fact Seger and CREEM share a common birthplace, the man deserves our respect for having done it his way. This one-time ramblin’, gamblin’ man has more than paid his dues and earned the right to his heartland rock, even if he begins to sound more and more like all the rest of the working class poets, a Springsteencougarbrownepetty clone. Just remember who came first.

“I don’t mind the comparison,” insists Seger in the dining room of his modest, rented, Spanish-style Bel Aire home. “We all listen to each other. I think we all sound like each other at times. You just can’t avoid it, y’know? We’re all within six years of one another in age and we’ve all grown up on the same stuff. I’ve heard Tom Petty sing ‘Cry To Me’ by Solomon Burke and that’s one of my all-time favorite records. And I’ve heard Bruce do the Fogerty stuff, and I just love CCR. I know Springsteen was very much affected by Van Morrison, and so was I.”

In fact, Seger’s own official debut, a single he co-wrote with then-andcurrent manager Punch Andrews, “East Side Story,” sounded an awful lot like Them’s “Gloria.”

“I was trying to write something for this band called the Underdogs,” recalls Bob, whose white beard makes him appear older than he is. “I did not write that for me to do. I might have been a little derivative at that point just because I didn’t think it would be my song. I do remember losing some sleep over the fact that it sounded an awful lot like ‘Gloria,’ though, if you put them side by side, they’re not really all that alike. There are a lot more chords in ‘East Side Story’ than there are in ‘Gloria.’”

Ironically, 20 years later, some critics pointed out that “American Storm,” the anti-drug rouser which kicks off Seger’s latest album, Like A Rock, an uncanny resemblance to his own “Even Now,” from The Distance, his last LP.

“I don’t get that at all,” he says. “They may have a similar tempo. I write songs and play guitar only so well. If anything, ‘American Storm’ sounds more like ‘Hollywood Nights.’ And it doesn’t sound like that at all. It’s played at the same speed, but the bridges and choruses are entirely different.”

The three years between The Distance, Seger’s last LP, and Like A Rock, have not been easy. An 11-year relationship with longtime girlfriend Jan Dinsdale was ended, as was a two-year affair that followed. Songs like “Tightrope,” “The Aftermath,” “Sometimes” and “Somewhere Tonight” address those losses with clear eyes, but a wounded heart.

“The record’s not as autobiographical as some people think, but it does reflect certain things,” says Seger.

“I’d like to believe it’s a bit more of an up record than The Distance, but most people don’t agree.

“The songs are based on things that are close to me, though not necessarily about me. (Don) Henley,

(Glenn) Frey and I have talked a lot over the years about songwriting, and we’ve all agreed that if you try to write something completely personal, it’s usually too melodramatic, goofy or way over the edge.

When I wrote ‘Famous Final Scene’ for the Stranger In Town album, everybody thought I broke up with Jan, but the song had nothing to do with me Likewise, a lot of people think I wrote ‘Beautiful Loser’ about myself. I got the idea for that song from a book of Leonard Cohen poetry by the same name. The song was about underachievers in general. I very rarely write about myself that much. I draw on my own experiences like anyone else, but I’m not what you’d call— what’s the word?—auteuristic. I’m not like my songs at all. I’m a lot more up person than what I write.”

So, that’s how 50-year-old mothers and 16-year-old teens can both relate to Seger’s American songs. Hadn’t the turning point in his career years ago with Night Moves, when he took a from the film American Graffiti and began writing about his own life in songs like the title track, “Main Street” and “Rock And Roll Never Forgets,” the latter with its immortal line, “Sweet little 16’s turned 31”?

“I think it’s even simpler than that,” he says. “I started writing ballads. I always wrote slower songs, it’s just that Punch couldn’t hear ’em and the band couldn’t play ’em. But it seems to be what people want from me. That’s what they like best and I think it’s what I do best.”

Actually, it’s not only Bob Seger’s beard that’s ;so’s his audience. “I’m 40 years old,” he says matter-of-factly.

“It’s a matter of growing up. From the time I was 20 ntil l was 30, I didn’t sell a whole lot of records, but I was doing a lot of rock ’n’ roll. That’s the way I felt at the time. Maybe during the period when I was 30 to 40, I was getting more mature, writing about older themes. I’m sure ‘Like A Rock’ doesn’t mean much to someone who’s 20, but i gotta write what I know about.”

Bob’s father, Stewart, a one-time bandleader and Ford Motor Company medic, left the family when his youngest son was merely 10 years old, a trauma Seger is still fighting to come to terms with. Was his successful career a way of proving himself to his absent dad?

“I think it was more a way of proving myself to my mother,” says Seger, who helped support her by playing in bands from the time he was 15. “It’s interesting that my mother married a musician and he ended up leaving home. Perhaps I was trying to take his place, fill that gap. My father was a failed musician, so I became a successful one. My mother married a musician, so I became one. It’s all parental appeasement, y’know. The fact that I was a lonely kid and didn’t get a great deal of attention may have had a lot to do with the way I turned out.”

“She’s gone from me/For someone new/I guess that’s what she’s done/

The people they sigh as I walk by/And say, there goes the lonely one."

Bob is serenading me on guitar with what he claims is the first song he ever wrote, a little ditty called “The Lonely One,” which he recorded as a 16-year-old in the basement of one Max Crook, the man who played the immortal keyboard signature—Seger says it was “the first synthesizer riff ever”—on fellow Michigan native Del Shannon’s national hit, “Runaway.”

“I was a sophomore in high school,” Bob lets loose with a hearty guffaw. “The band consisted of a guitar player named Pete Stainer, a black drummer named R. B. Hunter and me. That was the Decibels. We were the first band in Ann Arbor that wasn’t a surf instrumental group, a blues or bar band.”

After knocking around with local outfits for a few years, Seger’s career was launched by the regional hit,

"East Side Story.” Through the ’60s and first half of the ’70s, he carved out a niche in his native Midwest without breaking through the rest of the country. The frustration of those times was tempered by the pure joy of being able to make money doing something he loved.

“Actually, the first 10 years might have been even more fun than these last 10 years—because it was more wide open back then,” Seger reminisces. "It’s certainly nice to hear yourself on the radio and be set for life and all that, but I’d say there are more things I miss about those first 10 years. You could do whatever you wanted to do. It was less confining. We’re sort of a prisoner of our hits now. We can go out on the road and three-fourths of the show is taken up by the hits. At the same time, it’s gratifying that people really like us.

We go on the road mainly for the fans, because we don’t make money on tour anymore.”

In fact, Seger and his Silver Bullet Band are set to commence what Bob calls “for all intents and purposes, probably the last big tour,” this summer. From his world-weary tone, you get the feeling Seger, like John Wayne at the end of John Ford’s The Searchers, could just as easily walk away from it all.

“That’s true, but I have a responsibility to my band and my manager,” says the loyal, steadfast and true star. “The band doesn’t quite make as much money as I do, so I’m thinking one more for them, so they’re set, y’know? But I never say never. I could split now, but I’m, more or less, the cash register. So we’ll do another big one and, after that, I’m basically not promising anything. I’m more or less doing this for the fans and the band, because they make most of their money when we’re on tour.”

After all these years, Seger still makes his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, while his long-time manager, Punch, maintains his Birmingham, Michigan headquarters— coincidentally, the home of CREEM. I wondered why Seger continued to live in Detroit, long after the city’s golden age as a musical melting pot in the ’60s and ’70s had passed.

“It’s my home,” he says simply.

“All my friends are there. My mother lives there. My manager lives 10 miles from me, and he’s probably my best buddy. I don’t need a lot of people to

to bounce off of. Not any more. I’ve been doing this so long. When I’m in California, I get community. It’s nice to be able to sit down with someone, like Don Henley, because it’s very seldom he likes anything, so, if he likes something I’ve done, it makes me feel really good.”

As for the music scene in his hometown, Seger isn’t too optimistic. ‘‘There’s nobody I wanna go see in a club. I do like Norma Jean Bell; she’s got a cool, little band in the jazz-blues-rock vein. I’ll go see anybody if they’re good at what they do. But I don’t think there are any straightahead rock ’n’ roll bands in Detroit that are any good right now.”

Having lived in California for a little over a year while working on Like A Rock, Seger is anxious to get back. While here, he shot two videos for the first two singles from the new album, “American Storm” and “Like A Rock.” He’s even beginning to get used to the demands of the genre, one he’s carefully sidestepped until now.

“The new video, for ‘Like A Rock,’ is cool,” he says of the shoot he just completed in the Mojave Desert the night before. “It’s done in black and white with a blue tint. There’s no lip synch. It’s like a little movie, but I wouldn’t call what I do acting. It’s more like reacting to the art direction of the set around you. You’re just sort of there, like a prop. I stand and make facial gestures. It was still frightening to me, but it was a nice way to ease into it. For this album, I’m putting my trust in the directors, but, hopefully, by the next one, I’ll have

a better grip on how I want to utilize video as a tool. At this point, I’m still an infant. Hopefully, after awhile, you get better at it.”

“American Storm,” the initial single from the album, which sailed into the Top Ten, sounded at first like just another new-patriotic flagwaver with its “Born To Run” power chord intro and patented Seger plaint. Not until he started giving interviews and explaining the song’s meaning did others realize it was a fierce denunciation of the evils of drugs.

“People who do drugs probably recognized it right away,” says Bob. “That song isn’t from my experience, but from observing the experiences of those around me. I’m no saint, but I’ve never had a serious drug problem. I thought it was a bad thing three years ago, but it’s gotten worse. It’s a world problem now.

Personally, I was never really affected by drugs. I was the kind of guy who, in high school, would buy a six-pack out of peer pressure, drink half a can and pour the rest out. Cocaine is just bad stuff. I’ve seen too many people act like idiots on it.”

Unlike the grandiose political statements made by his peers, Bob Seger has written songs that chronicle the effect of major issues on the individual, all the way back to his 1965 anti-Vietnam protest

“2 + 2 = ?”

“It’s like when Woody Allen sneezed away cocaine in Annie Hall,” says Seger. “That’s my statement. I can’t tell people how to live, but I can tell them what I’ve observed at age 41, and that’s a lot. But that’s all it is, really...one person’s opinion. I’m not preaching.”

The working class hero cops to having voted for Reagan in the last election even though he claims he’s sorry about some of the things the President’s done, especially in the area of ecology.

“I voted for him only because I thought Mondale wasn’t a good enough leader,” he explains. “I always vote and you’ve got to take the one you’ve voted for. I didn’t think much of Carter, either, so I voted for John Anderson in 1980.”

While the first side of the new album deals with social issues such as Cuban boat people in “Miami” and marrying too early in “The Ring,” the second part of Like A Rock is given over to Seger’s very personal feelings about his own relationships. He denies that his hectic lifestyle had anything to do with the break-up of his 11-year romance.

"I'm top old for your magazine. I speak hat read people to and Newsweek."

“It could have happened to anybody,” he insists. “The same thing happened to my brother, George. He was married the same amount of time and it just died. Those things happen. Maybe if I had a more normal life, it would have lasted longer. I don’t know. Those are the kinds of things that there are just no answers for. When something goes bad, it goes bad. People change. That’s all there is to it. When I first met Jan, she was 20 years old. When we broke up, she was 31. I think I was a little more set in my ways because I was seven years older and I knew exactly where I was going and what I wanted to do. Her values seemed to change over those 11 years. It just didn’t work anymore. It hadn’t worked for the last three years, and we tried very hard to make it work. But, it just wasn’t meant to be—and I think we’re much better off apart.”

Does his career make it difficult to meet someone new, I ask, just as a lithe blonde in a bathing suit heads for the outdoor pool.

“The only way you can tell if you’re going to get along with someone is to really, really listen to them, which is difficult to do,” he points out. “People get attracted to one another initially, then they fight to keep that going, without looking any deeper than that.

But you have to be tuned in to whomever you’re with. It’s like Glenn Frey says, your career is a harsh mistress. I’ve tended to put myself on the back burner for a lot of my life, along with my feelings, desires and goals, to take care of the people I love, because that, in essence, is what you are. I’ve done that for a long time, so maybe after this tour, I’ll reassess all that. Probably the biggest thing I’ve missed is having my own family. I want to have children someday, but I want to have the time to give them, to be there for them.”

And how about playing for audiences made up of kids young enough to be the son and/or daughter he’s never had?

“I don’t know how much interaction I’ll actually have with them on the road,” he muses. “Except from the stage. I just don’t speak to those people. I hate to say this, but I probably don’t speak to the people that read CREEM. I’m too old for your magazine. I speak to the people that read Time and Newsweek. I’m an older guy and I write about what I see, which is mostly people my age.”

There was a writer CREEM almost assigned this piece to who was prepared to excoriate the magazine’s next-door neighbor as something akin to a boring, old fart. “Oh, yeah,” sniffs Seger, his good guy facade suddenly revealing a crack. "I wouldn’t agree with that. I think we’re making some good stuff. I’m proud of what we do. I’m so fired up right now, I’d love to make another record immediately without having to go on tour. I learned so much during the last three years making this record, I feel like, oh boy, now I know how it’s done.”

As for working with other, young bands when his own playing days are through, Seger has thought about it, but his schedule is tight.

“I’ve always been a big fan of Frankie Miller,” he says. ”l’ve always wanted to get involved with him. As has Henley and Frey. But we never seem to have enough time. I just don’t want to work that hard. I work so much on this band, it’s all I’ve got to give.”