Tag: Silver Bullet Band

Pop’s Pool Hall…did every small town have one? I was there in a small town in Tennessee as a 12-year-old when I first heard this song in that pool hall. The song had been out for a few years but this is when I really paid attention to it. It made me feel like I was looking back on my town at 12 years old. The guitar (Pete Carr) stands out in this song and any song that can make a 12-year-old look back works rather well.

What surprised me about this one is the Canadian love for this Seger song. Personally, I thought it did better in America than it did…but Canada really loved it. This song peaked at #1 in Canada and #24 in the Billboard 100 in 1977. The song was on his Night Moves album released in 1976. This was his breakthrough album and it peaked at #8 in the Billboard Album Charts and #12 in Canada. 

The actual street Seger sings about in this song is Ann Street, which was off of Main Street in Ann Arbor. Seger has said he wrote this song about his high school years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The song explores the promise of youth, and what Seger calls his “awakening” after being a quiet, awkward kid for most of his youth.

This is another song that Seger recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Alabama. While most of Seger’s work was done with his Silver Bullet Band, he did make a few trips to Alabama to record at Muscle Shoals, taking advantage of the talented musicians and lack of distractions.

Bob Seger: “It was a club. I can’t remember the name of the club, but the band that played there all the time was called Washboard Willie. They were a Delta and Chicago blues band. Girls would dance in the window. They were a black band, and they were very good. That’s where I would go but I was too young to get in. It wasn’t in a great part of town but college students loved to go there.”

From Songfacts

The nostalgic tone of this song led many critics to compare Seger to Bruce Spingsteen, sometimes unfavorably. The NME wrote, “Leaning heavily on anyone so personally stylized as Springsteen has got to qualify as an error of judgment.”

Seger acknowledges Springsteen as an influence at that time, but insists he wasn’t going after Bruce’s sound or image. There weren’t many rock musicians writing introspective hit songs about life in working-class America at the time, and with Springsteen in a legal dispute with his manager that kept him from recording, Seger had 1977 to himself.

The studio was owned by four of the guys who played on the track: David Hood (bass), Jimmy Johnson (rhythm guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums) and Barry Beckett (keyboards). The lead guitarist on the session was Pete Carr.

This was the second single from the Night Moves album, following the title track. Both songs are very nostalgic and a departure from high-energy rockers that dominate his album Live Bullet, which was released in 1976 six months before Night Moves. By this time, Seger had been at it in earnest for over a decade and was just starting to break through to a national audience. Live Bullet was his first album to find a broad audience; many who bought it snatched up Night Moves when it came out, and weren’t disappointed. Both albums ended up selling over 5 million copies, making Seger a star.

Mainstreet

I remember standing on the corner at midnight
Trying to get my courage up
There was this long, lovely dancer in a little club downtown
Loved to watch her do her stuff
Through the long, lonely nights she filled my sleep
Her body softly swaying to that smoky beat
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street

In the pool halls, the hustlers and the losers
Used to watch ’em through the glass
Well I’d stand outside at closing time
Just to watch her walk on past
Unlike all the other ladies, she looked so young and sweet
As she made her way alone down that empty street
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street

Sometimes even now, when I’m feeling lonely and beat
I drift back in time and I find my feet
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street
Down on Main Street