Live Bullet

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band

Capitol, 1976

http://www.bobseger.com

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 11/21/2008

In the post-1970s era, the live album has become something of an afterthought.  For some acts it’s a little bonus for the fans (Wilco), or a one-off special event (any of the Unplugged albums); for others it’s a way to compete with the traders and bootleggers (Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam), or to take a victory lap after a sellout tour (Green Day).

Back in the 70s, though, a live album could be much more; it could in fact bust your career wide open.  Two examples spring immediately to mind there – Peter Frampton’s Framptom Comes Alive!, and this album.

Live Bullet was the first live album issued by Bob Seger and his touring group The Silver Bullet Band after seven years of slugging it out through the Midwest, playing bars and theatres and pretty much anywhere they could behind Seger’s eight mostly ignored studio albums to that point.  It had to have been a little frustrating when Bruce Springsteen suddenly began getting national press in 1974 playing the same sort of expansive, intelligent, big-hearted rock and roll Seger had spent several years and thousands of gigs perfecting.

But Seger’s has always been the ethos of the underdog, the guy who gives it his all and comes up short as many times as he triumphs.  There is both a humility and a fiery determination at the core of his music that’s tremendously appealing.  And so, there was nothing to do after Springsteen broke nationally but keep on playing and working and striving.my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

Live Bullet was recorded over two September nights in Seger’s hometown of Detroit and captures the Silver Bullet Band at the height of its considerable powers before a raucous crowd of true believers.  The production is, like many live albums of the era, a little raw as well as dense and heavy in the midrange, but that’s just about the only criticism one could level of this album.  The rippling energy that the band and the crowd draw from one another ensured this LP became both legendary and one of the best-selling live albums of the 70s.

One of the keys to Seger turning the corner commercially was the way he began with 1975’s Beautiful Loser to mix intensely reflective ballads in with his by-then trademark setlist of hard-driving rock and r&b/funk-based barn-burners.  You can see how it changes the dynamic right away as the thunderous opener “Nutbush City Limits” gives way to the gentler “Travelin’ Man,” “Beautiful Loser” and “Jody Girl” before diving back into the heavy funk with Seger’s finger-snapping take on Van Morrison’s “I’ve Been Working.”

The highlight of this album, and one of three or four tracks from this disc you can still hear on classic rock radio, is the smoldering “Turn The Page.”  One of the most dead-on-target songs ever written about the brutal isolation of life on the road, it’s given a whole new dimension by Seger’s impassioned reading and the band’s precision playing behind him.  “Well, you walk into a restaurant strung out from the road / And you feel the eyes upon you as you’re shakin’ off the cold / You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to explode… Here I go, up on the stage again… There I go, turn the page.”

From there the momentum accelerates as Seger and band storm through funked-up romps like “U.M.C.” and “Bo Diddley” and ferocious rockers like the immortal “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” and the positively giddy “Katmandu.”  By the time they get to a pair of piledriving encores -- the Chuck Berry-inspired “Get Out Of Denver” and the Chuck Berry cover “Let It Rock” -- you wonder that the crowd can stay on their feet.  These shows must have been amazing.

The one-two punch of Beautiful Loser and Live Bullet catapulted Bob Seger onto the national scene, a status he would consolidate with the Night Moves and Stranger In Town albums that followed.  That said, if you want to pinpoint the exact moment when Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band caught fire for good, it’s right here in these grooves.

Rating: A-

User Rating: A


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© 2008 Jason Warburg and The Daily Vault. All rights reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of Capitol, and is used for informational purposes only.