Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band- Nine Tonight

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s Nine Tonight really does feel like a close encounter of seeing the tireless veteran Detroit singer/songwriter and his band when they were one of America’s top live acts. When Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band compiled the live double album of concert performances found on Nine Tonight in 1981, there was no bigger American name dominating both the album and hit charts, as well as at the box office. But they never had it handed to them. Bob Seger earned it every step of the way, and as you will hear in my classic rock interviews, there were a whole lotta steps.

Before the internet and online concert ticket sales, you had to really want to go see your favorites on tour. You had to plan it and, often, getting decent tickets required some personal sacrifice. It was just after sunrise on a cool late winter Saturday morning in Memphis in 1980, and about a thousand people had camped out overnight at the main ticket outlet to be among the first to buy Bob Seger concert tickets for his upcoming stop on the Silver Bullet Band’s Against the Wind   tour. The album had debuted at #1 , and in anticipation of this turnout for tickets, my Memphis radio station ROCK 103 was serving free hot breakfast to the first 103 people in line.

As I gazed out over the long line of humanity as it snaked around the building across the crowded parking lot, boom boxes blaring out Seger songs to serenade the bleary-eyed throng, my mind drifted back  8 years earlier to my first time seeing Bob perform. It was another  Saturday, about mid-afternoon in Summer 1972  in a cornfield in Northwest Ohio where Seger was about fifth down the bill of mostly regional Detroit acts. As it turned  out, he was on sabbatical from rock’n’roll, accompanying himself with just an acoustic guitar. Many years later Bob would explain to me in this classic rock interview that it was his journeyman period for songwriting  because, unlike with a band, when you perform solo there’s no place to hide. Every phrase, every chord, every note is laid bare. Apparently Bob Seger learned his lessons well. That Memphis concert sold out in advance, as did practically every stop on the 1980 tour, documented on the remastered and expanded Nine Tonight . Against the Wind   turned out to be one of seven Top 10 multi-platinum albums in a row  for Bob. And by the way, Seger didn’t forsake rock’n’roll  very long : he ended his acoustic set that afternoon “back in ‘72” by calling out his friends David Teegarden  and Skip “Vanwinkle” Knape for a rousing rendition of “ God, Love, and Rock’n’Roll “ !– Redbeard