by Steve Miller
David Teegarden (Teegarden & Van Winkle, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, drummer, vocalist): Bob Seger was doing this solo thing, that Brand New Morning stuff, when Skip and I started playing in his band. He was discouraged before we joined. He dumped the System and was doing that folk thing. Later Bob mentioned to me he had considered going back to college. Later on, when things got good, he told me, “I’m glad I didn’t do that.” Yes, that would have been a bad idea. When I first met him we had Teegarden & Van Winkle. We had recorded “God, Love and Rock and Roll” with Westbound, and we had a hit. Instead of us opening for everyone, we were headlining. Bob came backstage after one show ranting and raving about how he loved our deal, and we traded numbers and all became friends. He came over to our house and jammed. I have hours of tape of us jamming, with him playing guitar. He was pretty good on guitar, but he wasn’t as serious about his playing because he was into writing and singing. But we hung out, and one day he went to Skip on the side and said, “My band the System is breaking up. Would you guys mind forming up?” We said, “No.” But later on we played with him as a backing band sometimes.
Charlie Martin (Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, drummer): Before I came along they were doing the albums in Oklahoma through Leon Russell’s studio. They did Back in ’72 there. But Eric Clapton was coming out of this heroin thing and had Derek and the Dominos rolling, and so through Leon, he started falling into this Tulsa thing, since some of the Dominos were Okies. When Eric wanted to do 461 Ocean Boulevard, Leon recommended the same group that he had recommended to Bob. So they all went with Eric, and Bob had no band to record with. He went through this six-month period where he had to slap a band together.
Tom Weschler (photographer, Bob Seger road manager): No, it wasn’t like Eric came in and stole the band. That’s not what happened. They were all ready to part.
Wayne Kramer (MC5, Gang War, solo, guitarist, vocalist): I called Bob when the MC5 was over and said, “Bob, let’s start a new band. I play lead, you’re the front man; this is a good idea.” He said, “Yeah, Wayne, that is a good idea, but here’s what’ll happen: you’ll be in a band with me, and at a certain point you’re going to want to go out on your own, and that’ll be too hard to me.” It was pretty much a nice way of saying I’m not going to hire your ass. So all he hires is people who don’t really matter if they’re on the gig or off.
David Teegarden: Skip Knape and I had been playing with Bob, and we played on Smokin’ O.P.’s. Skip sang one song on there, I sang one, and when we cut the tracks, Bob called me and said, “Your track sounds good. You mind if I sing it?” I said, “Hell, you’re the singer. We’re just filling in.” So Bob sang all the tunes. The original idea was the album was going to be credited Bob Seger with Teegarden & Van Winkle. When the LP came out, I got a call from Skip and he said, “Hey, our names are not on there.” So I called Punch Andrews and I said, “Hey Punch, is this a Bob Seger album?” He said, “Yes.” I thought about it for a second and I said, “Well, you paid the bill.” He said, “Yup,” and I said, “Okay, I guess it’s a Bob Seger album.” Skip didn’t like it, but Bob and I stayed friends. But that was the end of Teegarden & Van Winkle playing with Bob. For the next album he wanted me to play and I had commitments. I’ll take credit for the Muscle Shoals deal, because in my talks with Bob, he was due to go in and record some of these songs we were doing in ’72. I said, “Here’s the number for Muscle Shoals. It’s good.” He talked Punch into funding it.
Drew Abbott (Third Power, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, guitarist): When I was in Third Power, we played one of Punch Andrews’s clubs. He was really upset that we were playing so loud, and we just said, “Well, if it’s that bad, don’t pay us.” He said, “No, no, keep the money.” No one turned down money. Punch was so taken aback by that, we became friends. I knew Seger as well, and I was looking for some work—this was after he did Back in ’72. I stopped by Bob’s house and he said, “I’m playing tonight in Ypsilanti. Come on down and check it out.” He had this great group he was calling the Borneo Band. After the show we went out to his Winnebago and he said, “How’d you like to play guitar with us?” I said yes right off, and that eventually became the Silver Bullet Band. We left three days later and did 260 one-nighters a year starting with that tour. We did a tour opening for Bachman Turner Overdrive, then did a Kiss tour. At first it was billed as Bob Seger. Pretty soon we added Charlie Martin on drums and changed some things around. We got Chris Campbell on bass. Alto, who is really Tom Cartmell, never toured with us until we got big. He had this regular job, and he didn’t put in the hard road time with us.
Shaun Murphy (Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Stoney & Meatloaf, vocalist): I was looking for work and I called up Punch, you know: “What’s going on back in Detroit?” I was living in LA; it was ’73. And he said, “It just so happens one of our singers left. Do you want to sing background for Bob?” I said I’d never done that before, but it can’t be that hard, so I got in my little ’71 Honda and we drove back to Michigan. It was a horrible trip. I packed my daughter and a box of Cheerios and it was pouring rain getting out of LA. And my car could barely move—you know, thirty-five miles per hour on the freeway. This gig is looming, and I get to St. Louis and I’m in tears, and I’m at this gas station, my car is broken. This guy comes out of the gas station and he says, “You okay?” and I said, “I’ve got to go to this gig, and my car is messed up. I paid a bunch of money to fix it.” So he looks at the car, and he says, “They rebuilt the carburetor wrong. It’s upside down. Why don’t you go to my house and my wife will cook you dinner and I’ll rebuild your carburetor?” I’m thinking that he’s either going to kill me or he’s really going to do it. So I went to his house, his wife fixed me dinner, he rebuilt my carburetor, and I drove seventy-five miles an hour and I got to Detroit, and of course Punch was livid. He wouldn’t believe me at all. The touring was mostly national stuff—Florida, Georgia, back to Detroit. We must have toured all of Florida that year. It was a call-and-response kind of thing. They kept getting dates booked in Florida, and they’d try and fill it in, but it didn’t always work, so we ended up going to Florida a lot in a nine-passenger station wagon. I was driving because I figured, “If I’m driving the car, then I don’t have to be squished in the rest of the people.”
Charlie Martin: After losing his band and putting together that touring unit, Bob steps back from the road and licked his wounds. So I jumped in. Chris Campbell, who was playing bass, brought me into the band. Chris gave me a stack of things to play: learn this and that. Drew, Chris, Bob, and I met at Bob’s place on White Lake so I could audition.
K. J. Knight (Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, drummer): I auditioned for Seger when he was putting together the Silver Bullet Band. I didn’t even own a set of drums when I got the audition, and I had to buy this crappy kit. I still thought I’d just go in and, because I knew Seger and Punch, get through it. I barely knew the songs. We played through some songs without Bob, and then when he showed up, it was obvious that it was terrible. I didn’t get the job, of course.
Tom Weschler: K. J. flammed a lot. He didn’t prepare. You’d think that because Bob’s such a nice guy: “Oh, this is great. Seger wants me in his band, so I’m in the band.” You don’t think he’s going to fucking audition you? This guy’s a serious musician, born to it. Anybody that wasn’t prepared got taken to the woodshed.
Charlie Martin: We got done with my audition and Bob said, “I’m sold.” There are certain phrases you hear in your life, and that was one for me. When Bob said, “I’m sold,” I went, “Wow.” From then on we had a couple more in-depth rehearsals, focusing on specific things, then we started doing jam sessions, and Bob just wanted to hear me play as many pockets and grooves as I could.
Tom Weschler: Charlie’s other attribute is he can sing almost as good as Bob. I wasn’t there for the audition, but the next day Bob told me he had a drummer. He’s like, “I got the drummer, and he’s a motherfucker, man!”
Charlie Martin: One of the first things we did when the Silver Bullet Band was coming together was get Bob to drop the guitar, get out there, and work the audience. The band had the music end covered, and the only reason Bob was playing piano or guitar occasionally is because prior to that Bob had short-lived bands that kept changing members, and Bob found himself sometimes without these parts.
Drew Abbott: First thing we recorded with Charlie, Bob, and I together was the Seven album in the basement of a bowling alley, which is where Pampa Studios was. The core band only played on three songs on that album.
Charlie Martin: Then we just hit the road. Of all the guys in the band I was the one—probably because I was the youngest and all of this was really important—I was the one who kept calendars and every paycheck and all things about who was on the bill. We would open for Spooky Tooth one night with Montrose as the middle act, then open for Thin Lizzy, then Blue Oyster Cult.
Tom Weschler: We were really getting the touring thing together. Up until then we had rented U-Hauls we got from Gene’s Hardware on 12 Mile and Farmington. It was a big box in the back on a cab. Then we had a station wagon that Punch got us in 1970. Pretty soon we got our own truck because we were explaining to Punch like, “Look if you pay $150 a week for a U-Haul why not just pay $250 a month for a truck?” His sister’s husband was a Ford dealer, so we got a good deal on a wagon and a truck and it worked out great. Then I hired a great roadie; we called him Dansir. I hired a few more too. I never had to fire ’em because I picked ’em good. If anybody shoulda gone, though, it would have been Dansir. He stole the truck one day and drove to Alabama and beat the shit outta some guy who took off with his wife.
David McCullough, aka Dansir (Crew, Bob Seger): Actually, I took the truck to go to Alabama to pick up my wife, who had run off with this guy. I got there and told him if he didn’t lay off of my old lady, I would be dancing on his head. I didn’t actually have to do that.
Tom Weschler: He came back and goes, “Well, I fixed that motherfucker.” I said, “If you tell Eddie—which is Punch’s name—you’ll get fired.” He goes, “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I didn’t mean to be gone that long.” I said, “It’s a good thing we didn’t have a gig or I would have fired your ass myself.” So anyways, this guy took off with his wife. He had to do it.
Drew Abbott: We’d tour, then come back and record. I didn’t take this recording thing well, because he wouldn’t use us for the whole thing.
Charlie Martin: It was that unique combo of us, minus Alto, that made the Silver Bullet Band. Drew, Chris, and myself defined that sound. Bob had cut eight LPs before Live Bullet, and none of them had made a dent in the national market. When people think of what is the definitive Seger LP, it’s always Live Bullet. So we were often pretty bitter. Bob had cut the whole Beautiful Loser LP in Muscle Shoals. He loved to use session guys because they’ll do whatever he asks and he loved that studio. Bob had more control with them too. We weren’t that easily controlled. Which made us so good live.
Drew Abbott: At the same time, I was getting paid. We were the highest paid I knew; we did quite well and we also got a piece of the albums we were on. They were very generous to us. Then getting a stake in the live show was a big deal; it really inspired you. If Bob was having a bad night, that was too bad. He just had to get out of the way.
Tom Weschler: For a while Seger was the sole proprietor as it were. The Silver Bullet Band started in ’74, the fall. Even though he had a touring band, it was always Bob Seger with, you know, whatever band, and there were different guys. Seger decided he wanted to step up and get a permanent band. So Alto, and Chris, and Bob are the nucleus of the Silver Bullet Band.
Shaun Murphy: Between ’76 and ’78 he didn’t have background singers. Charlie Martin, Chris, Drew Abbott, and Alto were the band.
Drew Abbott: Our first rehearsal with the Silver Bullet Band, where we were going to tour like that, we all knew it was going to go somewhere. The first gig we did as Silver Bullet was opening for Black Oak Arkansas in Gary, Indiana, and we tore the place apart. Standing ovation, encore, and it never stopped, and that just hadn’t happened in the Borneo band. Silver Bullet was really serious. We opened for Blue Oyster Cult in Eugene, Oregon, and Robin Robbins, who had replaced Rick on keyboards, got in a fistfight backstage coming off after the set because someone didn’t like the organ sound he had. He just started swinging on the stage guy and the crowd was going nuts, and our roadies pulled the two guys apart and we went out and did the encore.
Charlie Martin: By the time we recorded that live album, there was pressure on Bob to come with an LP. He had to do one every ten months or so, and by the time he was close to submitting his next studio LP, he wasn’t ready. You have Frampton Comes Alive! and Kiss Alive! selling huge and they got it in their minds that a live album would be great and it would keep the record company at bay. But because we were so, I like to say spontaneous, but Bob and Punch might use the word erratic, Bob and especially Punch were concerned that we couldn’t deliver the goods live. We tried this experiment where we recorded the live set in the studio, and then they were going to put in canned applause, so it would be us pretending to play live. But it was dead in the water because we really needed that interplay. Finally Punch backed down and we cut Live Bullet at Cobo in fall of ’75.
Bob Seger (Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Bob Seger and the Last Heard, solo, vocalist): I didn’t want to release a live album because I thought it was getting to be a camp thing. The performances were above average nights, but not the peak of what the band can do. Technically, it’s far from perfect. But the next studio album wasn’t finished and I decided we had to get something out.
Drew Abbott: Before we went on, Bob said, “Look, we’ve been doing this for a year here, and we know what we’re doing.” He said play to the audience—maybe the recording will be released and maybe it won’t, but don’t play it safe. Capitol didn’t want a live album because it thought the market was saturated with live albums, like Frampton Comes Alive!, and Punch went around them and put it out anyway.
Tom Weschler: Someone said the live album isn’t really live. I’m like, “Are you nuts? Of course it’s live.” “Oh right,” all sarcastic. I said, “Listen fellas, I was there. I was even in the truck.” They were amazed, just like I was. We were like, “How in the hell are they getting this so tight?” They didn’t do that in a studio.
Drew Abbott: It was a live album. I don’t personally know of any studio touch-up. I played one studio note on the second live album. I touched up one note, I will confess. They dragged me and said play this one note over. But not Live Bullet.
Charlie Martin: Money-wise, when I started playing with Bob we were all, including Bob, making $150 a week. Then that gradually went to $200, $225, up and up. I was with the band four years, and by the time I left I was making $1,500 a week. Out of that we didn’t have to pay for hotel rooms or cars, but we had to pay for our own food. If we decided to eat lobster or Whoppers, we had to pay.
Drew Abbott: All of a sudden we were making pretty good money. It happened to all of us to a degree; it wasn’t the fame or the music—it was the money. People came out of the woodwork who wouldn’t talk to us before—well, it was about money. Bob was making a lot of money with those writer’s royalties, and he started hanging in different socioeconomic circles, with singer-songwriters. So even though we were a band, it had changed. It was a band, and he was part of the band. But he went with people he could speak the same language with, who were successful. He was hanging with who he wanted to befriend. Also, becoming too friendly with your musicians wasn’t going to work. He had to be able to direct them and tell them what to do.
Shaun Murphy: I left and rejoined Bob in ’78. By then we were flying to gigs, commercial. We did some European dates, which were very few and far between for Bob. He doesn’t like to go overseas. He says, “I don’t like the hamburgers over there.”
Dan Carlisle (WABX, WRIF, DJ): In inte
rviews Bob was very personable. But if you set him up, like, “Here he is, Bob Seger!” he would not really talk. The last time I interviewed him—it was going to tape, a longer piece—and I told the production guy that when we get into the room, just start the tape, don’t say anything. So I came in, and we’re setting up mics and getting ready and making small talk, and Bob didn’t even realize he was being interviewed. And it worked.
Bob Seger: I’ve always considered myself an antistar. I don’t move well in a crowd, at cocktail parties, and such. I’m sure the Mick Jaggers, the extroverted rock stars do very well in that scene. But I’m an introverted person, basically. It’s very tough for me to do it. And I try to stay out of it as much as I can. It has nothing to do with developing a mystique or anything like that. That’s not the way I am. I just don’t deal very well with people I don’t know.
Charlie Martin: The year after the Live Bullet recording, we did a show at Pontiac Silverdome that was promoted by Steve Glantz with a guarantee of $100,000 plus 25 percent over breaking point. The day of the show, at about four in the morning, we went to sound check on this huge PA. There was this feedback loop that, no matter what, they could not get rid of.
Tom Weschler: The whole Silverdome roof is kept up by zero-pressure fans making the wind noise, so that’s what the electrical hum was, was the fans. They were made in Japan, and they had a different kind of current. Instead of rigging the current for here, well, they had to redo that electrical stuff.