- Born in 1945 in Detroit.
- Seger’s music career began in 1961, as he developed a following in the Detroit music scene. His first band was The Decibels – they recorded one song that was played one time on local radio. He then joined The Town Criers, followed by Doug Brown & The Omens. By 1966, he formed his own band, called Bob Seger and the Last Heard. This band had several singles that were popular in Detroit, but he still did not get national exposure. When the band switched labels to Capitol Records, Capitol changed the name of the band to The Bob Seger System in 1968. This version of the band managed to get its first national hit – Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man, which peaked at #17. However, Seger could not follow up with anything successful.
- From 1970 to 1974, Seger continue to bounce between bands. In 1974, he formed The Silver Bullet Band. The first two albums were moderately successful. In 1976, they released the album Live Bullet, which contained the song Turn The Page. This finally got Seger the national attention he had been working so hard to achieve, getting airplay on album-oriented rock stations everywhere.
- His commercial breakthrough happened later that year, with the release of Night Moves. This album has sold over 6 million copies, and its success led to increased sales of his older records – Live Bullet also has sold over 6 million records, and is in the top 10 all time live albums.
- With the Silver Bullet Band, Seger released 7 studio albums and 2 live albums. Several were big successes, including Against The Wind, and Like A Rock. As a solo artist, he released 5 studio albums from 1970 to 1975, another album in 2006 and finally, an album in 2014. These later albums charted well – Face The Promise reached #4 on the album charts, and Ride Out peaked at #3.
- Chevrolet used Like A Rock for their advertising slogan for Chevy Trucks from 1991 to 2004, one of the longest-running advertising campaigns in history.
- Seger continues to be active – his farewell tour is in 2022. His music is easy to identify as his, largely because of his unique raspy singing voice. His music has been characterized as “heartland rock” – I’d agree with that. Here’s a montage video of my favorite Bob Seger song, Turn The Page.
good stuff but never much into him. He fiddled with his glasses too much trying to read stuff when we finally went to see him about 3 to 5 years ago. Still had good pipes but kind of hurt the experience. One of Julie’s favorites.