Where Have All The Bob Seger Albums Gone?
There was no such thing as Classic Rock in 1976 — the phrase, and the radio format it inspired, wouldn't come into common usage until the mid-1980s. But there was already some notion of a rock and roll canon, a list of key albums that FM listeners needed to have in their collection. At the start of 1976, Bob Seger had zero albums on that list. Twelve months later, he had two: Live Bullet, the double LP documenting some blistering hometown sets at Detroit's Cobo Hall, and Night Moves, his first platinum album, whose title single would peak at No. 4 as 1977 began.
His next record, 1978's Stranger in Town, would go platinum within a month. I bought all three at once that year, because they were the ones Columbia House offered. But I knew there were others. As a budding, thirteen-year-old music obsessive, every record in the canon triggered a cascading need for several more. Some might be content with Elton John's Greatest Hits, but I wanted the entirety of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and then some way to prioritize the rest of his back catalog. Destroyer was not enough KISS; At Budokan was not the sum total of Cheap Trick.
But there were always more records than money to buy them with, even if you stocked your initial collection with thirteen titles for the mere penny Columbia House demanded. So every few weeks, when I'd scrounged together $10, I'd flip through the stacks in my local record store, starting at A (Aerosmith's Toys in the Attic was the must have, then the self-titled debut, which had "Dream On," but was Get Your Wings worth the $4.95?) and ending at Y (so many Neil Young albums besides Harvest), trying to decide which one or two LPs were the next to be added to my shelves.
I spent a lot of time lingering in the S bin, studying Seger's back catalog as well as that of another rock and roll true believer: Bruce Springsteen. Both were all over the radio with songs that sounded a lot simpler than they really were, and tackled similar subjects — humble roots, wanting to escape, fearing your chance had passed — in similar ways, transforming the R&B singers who'd inspired them into something a little less groovy, a lot more driving and therefore more immediately digestible for white suburban kids.
Bruce only had four LPs then, whereas Bob seemed to have a new old one every time I returned to the S rack: Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, Mongrel, Back in '72, Smokin' O.P.'s, Seven, Beautiful Loser. They weren't all there every time (though I didn't know it then, two others, Noah and Brand New Morning, had already fallen out of print), so it was hard to tell whether one going missing meant it was a good one I should have grabbed when I had the chance, or simply wasn't worth restocking because so few people wanted it.
It had taken Seger a decade of false starts to secure his place in the canon, and the very size of his back catalog, and and .
