Bob Seger – ‘Main Street’
- Writer: Bob Seger
- Producers: Bob Seger and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section
- Recorded: Early 1976 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama
- Players:
Bob Seger — vocals
Pete Carr — guitar
Jimmy Johnson — guitar
Dave Beckett — keyboards
David Hood — bass
Roger Hawkins — drums
Alto Reed — saxophone - Album: Night Moves (Capitol, 1976)
- Also on:
Nine Tonight (Capitol, 1991)
Greatest Hits (Capitol, 1994) - A fan favorite from the Night Moves album, Seger says “Main Street” was “written about, probably, my first girlfriend, as was ‘Night Moves.’ It’s completely… she didn’t dance in a bar or anything like that. Probably she had the influence on it, but I made up the scenario.”
- Much of the song does draw from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Seger was raised. “I did used to walk on Ann Street, which was just off Main Street in Ann Arbor, and there would be kind of a smokey atmosphere in there, and it was usually a black blues club and there was a guy who used to play there called Washboard Willie, and I loved his band. And I would try to stand outside and listen to the band as long as they could before they shooed me away.”
- As a single, “Main Street” hit Number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
- Following the groundwork laid by the Live Bullet album earlier in the year, Night Moves was Seger’s breakthrough album, hitting Number Eight on the Billboard Top 200 and selling more than five million copies.
FAST FORWARD
- Seger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
His most recent album, 2006’s Face The Promise, was his first in 11 years. He spends most of his time these days at home in suburban Detroit with his wife, Nita, and their children Cole and Samantha.