"Like a Rock" is the thirteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Seger, released in 1986. The title track is best known for being featured in Chevrolet truck commercials throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. "Fortunate Son" is a live cover of the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, recorded March 31, 1983 at Cobo Hall in Detroit. It was originally available only as the B-side of the "American Storm" single, and was added as a bonus track to the CD release of the album. The vinyl version ends with "Somewhere Tonight". The song "Miami" is featured in an episode of the TV series Miami Vice. This is the first studio album credited to "Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band" that doesn't feature the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section replacing the Silver Bullet Band on any tracks.
Despite having sold upward of three million US copies, it has never been certified above Platinum status.
The album was originally going to be named American Storm after the first track and was going to be released in December 1985, but it was delayed and the name was changed.
"Turn the Page" is a song originally released by Bob Seger in 1973 on his Back in '72 album. Released as a single but never charting, Seger's live version of the song on the 1976 Live Bullet album became a mainstay of album-oriented rock radio stations, and still gets significant airplay on classic rock stations.
"Turn the Page" is about the emotional and social ups and downs of a rock musician's life on the road. Seger wrote it in 1972 while touring with Teegarden & Van Winkle. Drummer David Teegarden (of Teegarden & Van Winkle and later the Silver Bullet Band) recalls:
We had been playing somewhere in the Midwest, or the northern reaches, on our way to North or South Dakota. [Guitarist] Mike Bruce was with us. We'd been traveling all night from the Detroit area to make this gig, driving in this blinding snowstorm. It was probably 3 in the morning. Mike decided it was time to get gas. He was slowing down to exit the interstate and spied a truck stop. We all had very long hair back then – it was the hippie era – but Skip, Mike and Bob had all stuffed their hair up in their hats. You had to be careful out on the road like that, because you'd get ostracized. When I walked in, there was this gauntlet of truckers making comments – "Is that a girl or man?" I was seething; those guys were laughing their asses off, a big funny joke. That next night, after we played our gig – I think it was Mitchell, S.D. – Seger says, "Hey, I've been working on this song for a bit, I've got this new line for it. He played it on acoustic guitar, and there was that line: "Oh, the same old cliches / 'Is that a woman or a man?' " It was "Turn the Page."
Tom Weschler, then road manager for Seger, remembers the same incident:
"Turn the Page," Bob's great road song, came along in '72, while we were driving home from a gig. I think we were in Dubuque, Iowa, in winter and stopped at a restaurant. We stood out when we entered a store or a gas station or a restaurant en masse. At this restaurant it was particularly bright inside, so there weren't any dark corners to hide in. All these local guys were looking at us like, "What are these guys? Is that a woman or a man?" – just like in the song. ... That was one incident, but there were so many others on the road that led Seger to write that song.
While on tour in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on November 16, 2006, promoting his 16th studio album Face the Promise, Seger said he wrote the song in a hotel room in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Both Seger's studio and live versions of "Turn the Page" feature a Mellotron and a saxophone part played by founding Silver Bullet member Alto Reed. Tom Weschler allegedly helped inspire Reed to create the opening melody. During recording, Weschler told Reed: "Alto, think about it like this: You're in New York City, on the Bowery. It's 3 a.m. You're under a streetlamp. There's a light mist coming down. You're all by yourself. Show me what that sounds like." With that, Reed played the opening melody to "Turn the Page".
"Night Moves" is the ninth studio album by American rock singer-songwriter Bob Seger, and his first studio album to credit the Silver Bullet Band. The album was released on October 22, 1976 by Capitol Records. Although the front cover only credits backing by the Silver Bullet Band, four of the nine songs on the album feature backing by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.
The album was well received by critics and gave Bob Seger nationwide success. Three singles were released from the album, with two of them making the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album became Seger's second to become certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and was his first to be certified platinum by the same association. It later achieved a certification of sextuple platinum.
"Roll Me Away" is a song written by American rock artist Bob Seger on the album The Distance by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. The song peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
According to Seger the song was inspired by a motorcycle trip he took to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He stated:
I wanted to do that for a long time. It was fascinating being out. The first night it was 42 degrees in northern Minnesota; the second it was 106 in South Dakota and all I had on was my shorts, and my feet were up on the handlebars to keep them from boiling on the engine. It was just silence and feeling nature.
Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh described it as an "anthemic" song and considers it Seger's best single. Marsh interprets the song as being about "leaving a shattered home for a life that has to be better, though it never quite is." Marsh elaborates that the narrator of the song has lost his love and so goes off on a cold and lonely journey while he "lets his frustrations and confusion congeal into one sad cry that dissolves his fate into what has happened to the whole crazy mess of a world in which he lives. He sings that he plans to straighten things out for as long as he is searching but at the end he admits that only next time will they be able to get it right. Marsh feels that Roy Bittan's "elegaic" piano chords drive home the point that the time for wild rockers to settle down. Los Angeles Times critic Richard Cromelin says that in the song Seger uses the continental divide as a metaphor for "confront[ing] questions of right and wrong," allowing him to "shake off his spiritual malaise."
The song is featured on the Armageddon soundtrack. In addition, the song is played in its entirety in the final scene and closing credits of the 1985 film Mask starring Cher and Eric Stoltz. It was also the closing song from the 1984 film Reckless, as Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah drove off on Aidan's motorcycle. It was also used as Seger's opening song on his Face the Promise tour in 2006-2007, his first tour in a decade.