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How the Hell Did I Forget About Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band?
My memory lapses usually don’t extend to music
On January 1st, I wrote a story about ten songs that turn 50 years old in 2025. I subtitled that piece “my God…I’m old,” not realizing at the time just how true that statement was. What besides an age-related mental decline can explain my inclusion of ELO’s “Evil Woman” (great as that song is) instead of Bob Seger’s “Beautiful Loser?” My shame is such that I’m putting the live version from his Detroit ’75 show here now:
This inexcusable oversight made me realize one that’s even worse: after four years writing about music on this site, I have written about Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band exactly zero times. None. Nada.
It’s true, of course, that I have never idolized Bob Seger in the same way I do Bruce Springsteen, the Gin Blossoms, and the Smiths, nor would he be in my slightly lesser pantheon of bands like the Beatles, the Stones, Judas Priest, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. But there was a stretch between 1976 and 1981 that…