Bob Seger Hints He’s Ready To ‘Turn The Page’

DETROIT, MI — Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Bob Seger is playing it coy, but suspense is building that the legendary Detroit rocker may be ready to “Turn the Page” after a final but yet-to-be announced tour. Seger, who turned 72 on May 6 and whose more than 50-year career has produced a string of multi-platinum albums, posted a video on social media that hints at a final set of arena concerts.

Clips of Seger singing “Turn the Page,” along with lyrics from the anthem of loneliness on the road, appeared Tuesday on his Facebook and Twitter pages. “On the road again” flashes by on screen, followed by “Up on the stage.” And then finally, “one last time.”

“Rock n Roll Never Forgets,” the post says, repurposing the title track of Seger’s double-disc album that contains 26 remastered tracks from his career, then teases: “Stay tuned.” (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

With his rugged, swelling voice, Seger was a well-kept Detroit secret for many years — a kid from Ann Arbor, the son of a 1940s big band leader and Ford plant worker who wrote his first song and formed his first band, the Decibels, when he was 15. He finally broke through in 1976 with “Night Moves,” an album that put him in league with The Eagles and Bruce Springsteen, according to his biography on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame website.

“... Bob Seger isn't some minor figure who got lucky once or twice,” his childhood friend Dave Marsh wrote for Rolling Stone in 1978. “He had all the requisites of greatness: the voice, the songwriting, the performance onstage, the vision and the ambition.”

In the mid-60s and since, Seger reigned in Detroit, Marsh wrote: “He was a rocker whose records made sense; elsewhere he might have remained unknown, but to us he was a particular source of the magic in which one couldn't help but believe. For ten years, he told stories a lot like ours, played the music that helped define what we meant by high energy. The Stooges and the MC5 got the attention and the ink and the big-time record deals, but when the dust cleared for even an instant, there would be Bob Seger, standing tall as ever, still pounding out that ‘Heavy Music.’ We understood. To us, he was always a star.”

And he still is.

Seger and his Silver Bullet Band have two upcoming performances in Michigan. The first, on Sept. 9 at DTE Energy Music Theatre in Clarkston, sold out during the pre-sale period before tickets could be released to the general public.

He announced a second show at the Palace at Auburn Hills on Sept. 23. Pre-sale tickets for that show become available at 10 a.m. Tuesday, June 6. General ticket sales begin at 10 a.m. on June 9. For more information, go here.

Photo by Adam Freese – Mitchell, SD via Wikimedia Commons