I've always been a big Bob Seger fan. I guess I tuned into him sometime in the 1970s, after in 1973 he formed Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. The '70s, "my time" (that's when I graduated from high school and college, and then set off into the world), was rife with disco music. Okay, yes I know, some people really liked disco. I wasn't one of them. I still clung to the rock-n-roll music of the late 1960s and, for me, Seger was a refreshing lone, poignant voice in the new age of spinning mirrored ceiling balls and twirling dancers and white suits with floppy collars. I saw Bob in concert in 1980, in Memphis, and remember it being a dazzling night marred only by a guy throwing up in the seat in front of me. Mr. Seger, at that time, was 35 and in fine form.
Fast forward 25 or so years, and I found myself again at a Seger concert, this time in Madison Square Garden. I'd been invited by a friend and, quite honestly, I was nervous about it. I find it hand-wringing to watch aging rock stars perform (Mick Jagger, bless his heart, has a real cryptkeeper thing going, and I won't even talk about Keith Richards). Once, a young relative said to me when referring to Jerry Garcia, "I want to see these old guys in concert before they die." Unlike her I do not, for many reasons but most importantly because I really don't want to be the old broad with a purse in an audience full of drugged-out boozed-up possibly puking kids.
Nonetheless, off I went to the Garden.
At first I did in fact hand-wring. I sat quietly, purse on lap, waiting for the concert to start. I didn't look around much, mainly focused on the stage. Soon Seger appeared. I guess he was in his late 50s/early 60s then and actually looked pretty good for a guy "that old." Then he started to sing. While he couldn't really hit those head-voice high notes he's known for, he was great. More than great, he was fantastic. What a performer! Main Street, Turn The Page, Katmandu. About 30 minutes in, I finally looked around and realized the audience wasn't made up of kids, it was made up of people my age, those in their late 40s who remembered what I did, how Seger carried us through the '70s and dreadful disco; Seger, who was the voice we heard on the radio, the guy with the long hair and beard who wrote and sang about lost love and Betty Lou. That night in the Garden, he took us back to a time when we played albums on stereos and had to go looking for friends instead of tracking them on a GPS. Within 45 minutes I'd pulled my hair back into a ponytail, stripped off my jacket, and was sitting on the back of my seat, screaming and clapping and feeling 19 again, as were all the thousands of people around me. The music transported us. Suddenly we had no mortgages to pay, no lawns to mow, no creaking knees, no heartache. He made me -- and everyone in that massive concert arena -- feel young and wild and free. It was ... a moment. One that will stay with me until I'm in the ground.
Today I saw online that Bob is back on tour. He's 69. I probably won't catch this concert run -- although he's appearing in Albany, so who knows -- but I have to say in the vernacular of the 1970s, good for him, man. There is something truly remarkable about baby boomers, and baby boomer rockers, that they just don't step away from center stage. An exceptional era of humans. I sometimes wonder: are we baby boomers the first generation to understand getting old has nothing whatsoever to do with chronological years?
So you go, Bob. Rock and Roll, indeed, never forgets.
Bob Seger, Katmandu
