SONG OF THE DAY
“Night Moves” by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band (single, Capitol Records, 1976). Written by Bob Seger.
FROM WIKIPEDIA
– Released as a single, it charted in late 1976 and eventually reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart. In doing so, it almost singlehandedly changed Seger from being a popular regional favorite into a national star.
– Seger and the Silver Bullet Band went to Toronto for three days to record a few tracks with The Guess Who’s producer Jack Richardson, whose Nimbus 9 Productions company was hot at the time. The band quickly recorded two Seger originals, one of which was “Long Long Gone”, and a cover of the Motown hit “My World Is Empty Without You”, but before Seger left on the third day, he composed a fourth song to record. Seger said that the song was influenced by Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland”. As the only members of the Silver Bullet Band still in Toronto were the bassist and drummer (plus Seger on acoustic guitar and piano), Richardson recruited local session musicians to play electric guitar and organ.
– Richardson said that “the whole arrangement came together in the studio.” After the tracks were mixed by Richardson and engineer Brian Christian, Richardson said that he received a call from Seger’s manager/producer Punch Andrews expressing dissatisfaction with the tracks, and Andrews said that Capitol Records had been equally disappointed. A few months later, when Richardson was talking to a Capitol A&R executive, he asked about the Seger sessions and was told that “both tracks” were potential B-sides. It turned out that Seger and Punch Andrews had never given “Night Moves” to Capitol, so Richardson did and, after hearing it, Capitol made it the title track of Seger’s next album, as well as the first single.
– Seger remembers the sessions somewhat differently. He claims that it was his decision to use musicians other than his normal band, and that he saw the song as potentially the one that would define his career. However, that appears to be inconsistent with the fact that the song was not submitted to Capitol by Seger and Punch Andrews.
– Music writer Samuel Delliance of The New York Post wrote in 1977, “‘Night Moves’ is supposed to take place in Michigan in the early 1960s, but it is timeless and placeless. You can be across the street from Kissena Park in Queens in the early evening with no one in sight and the song will suddenly flood your mind just as it did Seger’s.” In his 1979 volume Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, famed rock critic Greil Marcus selected the single “Night Moves” for inclusion on same, writing simply: “The mystic chords of memory.”
– “Night Moves” was named by Rolling Stone as Best Single of the Year for 1977. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named it one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, Seger’s only such selection.
– In the mid-1990s, nearly twenty years after the original song was released, an accompanying video was produced. Set in a drive-in movie theater in the early 1960s, it interspersed footage of Seeger performing in a present day version of the drive-in (seeming now abandoned) with various vignettes featuring characters described in the song.