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    Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger
    Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger
    Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger
    Ebook238 pages1 hour

    Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger

    By Kid Rock, Gary Graff, John Mellencamp and Tom Weschler

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Tom Weschler spent more than ten years from the late 1960s through the 1970s in the Bob Seger camp, working as tour manager and photographer during Seger’s hard-gigging, heavy-traveling, reputation-making early days. Weschler’s behind-the-scenes photographs document the frustrations and triumphs of recording, performing, songwriting, and building the Seger empire before the breakthroughs of Live Bullet and Night Moves. Travelin’ Man collects Weschler’s early photos with additional images leading into the present. Weschler and award-winning music journalist Gary Graff annotate the images with Weschler’s recollections of the events and Graff provides additional background on Seger’s career in an introduction, timeline, and cast of characters section.

    Weschler’s photographs and stories pull back the curtain on seldom-seen aspects of Seger’s career, including time in the studio recording Mongrel, early struggles to get radio airplay, and small shows at schools and shopping malls. Weschler captures Seger’s personality on stage and at home and reveals the colorful personalities of those people he worked and performed with, including Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen, Glenn Frey, and KISS. He takes readers inside Seger headquarters in Birmingham, Michigan, and practice space in Rochester, Michigan, introducing them to renowned manager Punch Andrews and the various members of Seger’s bands. Weschler’s photos feature highlights like Seger’s show at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1976, his first gold record in 1977, the first meeting between Seger and Bruce Springsteen in 1978, and Seger’s induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

    Travelin’ Man also contains art from eight Seger album covers that Weschler designed, a foreword by John Mellencamp, an afterword by Kid Rock, and a comprehensive discography. Seger fans and readers interested in music and biography will enjoy the one of a kind story in Travelin’ Man.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateSep 13, 2010
    ISBN9780814337028
    Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger

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      Book preview

      Travelin' Man - Kid Rock

      TRAVELIN’ MAN

      Travelin’ Man

      ON THE ROAD and BEHIND THE SCENES with Bob Seger

      TOM WESCHLER | GARY GRAFF

      Foreword by John Mellencamp Afterword by Kid Rock

      First paperback edition 2010 (ISBN 978-0-8143-3501-7).

      © 2009 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

      formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

      14 13 12 11 10

      5 4 3 2 1

      The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

      Weschler, Tom, 1948-

      Travelin’ man: on the road and behind the scenes with Bob Seger/

      Tom Weschler [photographer], Gary Graff; with a foreword by

      John Mellencamp and an afterword by Kid Rock.

      p. cm.

      Includes index and discography.

      ISBN 978-0-8143-3459-1 (cloth: alk. paper)

      e-ISBN 978-0-8143-3702-8

      1. Seger, Bob. 2. Rock musicians—United States—Biography.

      3. Seger, Bob—Pictorial works. I. Graff, Gary. II. Title.

      ML420.S447W45 2009

      782.42166092—dc22

      [B]

      2009018201

      ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984

      Designed and typeset by Savitski Design

      Composed in Leitura, Leitura Sans, and Magneto

      All image scans courtesy of backstagegallery.com.

      To order photos from this book, visit www.travelinfool.net.

      Bob Seger album artwork reprinted with permission,

      courtesy of Hideout Records & Distributors, Inc.

      To our children, Ian and Dylan Weschler and Hannah Graff—who, like their old men, know that rock ‘n’ roll never forgets, but when you grow older it takes a while to remember everything.

      Contents

      Foreword by John Mellencamp

      Preface | Tales of Lucy Blue by Tom Weschler

      Introduction | Heavy Music by Gary Graff

      Time Line

      Cast of Characters

      On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger

      Afterword by Kid Rock

      Bob Seger Discography

      Acknowledgments

      Index

      Foreword

      JOHN MELLENCAMP

      In 1969, I’m sixteen years old. I’m riding around with four guys in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, and this drumbeat comes blaring out of the three-inch speaker. Then this voice sings, I wanna tell my tale, come on. I asked the guys in the car, Who the fuck is this guy? So I made the fella driving the car pull to the shoulder of the road where there was no static and waited for the song to end and the DJ to announce who was singing the song. It was the Bob Seger System. The song was Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man. I didn’t know it that night but that was the beginning of a long love affair with Bob Seger’s music—thoughtful and badass, all in one measure. As time went on, I learned to respect Bob for who he would grow up to be, playing by his rules and staying honest to who he is and where he comes from. If there really is such a thing as Midwest Rock, it started for me that night. And now, all these years later, I am proud to be a part of his brood.

      Pat Kamego and Tom Weschler, Meadow Brook Music Festival (Rochester Hills), July 1968.

      PREFACE

      Tales of Lucy Blue: Tom’s Story

      TOM WESCHLER

      When I was six years old, my parents gave me a camera—a Kodak Brownie—and those first snapshots began a lifelong journey in photography that also provided an opportunity to explore my other passions—and not only girls! It was music, too—rock ‘n’ roll in general, and, specifically, Bob Seger. Every time he played around the Detroit area, my friends and I would go to see him—always plenty of great music and lots of girls.

      When I was fifteen, I found a decent job at Patterson’s Car Wash in Rochester, Michigan, and was able to save enough money to buy a real 35 mm camera—a Nikkorex. Totally into rock ‘n’ roll and playing guitar to boot (though I was too stage-shy to perform on stage myself), I began photographing bands in Rochester. Because I was around, they began enlisting me to help them set up equipment and book gigs. I even booked bands for the Officers’ Club at the Selfridge Air Base in Mount Clemens, Michigan. One thing led to another, and, in early 1965, I wound up managing a band, We Who Are, opting to play telephone instead of bass.

      This would eventually lead me to Bob Seger’s manager, Ed Punch Andrews, one of the most ambitious, successful, formative—and formidable—players in Detroit’s fledgling rock scene. One night when some of my friends and I were skipping catechism and down at the pool hall, a DJ on WKNR-AM told all the Bob Seger fans that, if we wanted to hear his latest record, East Side Story, we had better call and vote for it or it would not be played again. My friends and I monopolized the two pay phones by table 1, disguising our voices for each call. We kept calling until the DJ said, Okay, okay, we’ll keep playing the record!

      Months later, I went to see Punch, who owned the Hideouts, local teen clubs where bands played on Friday and Saturday nights. I wanted to get We Who Are a gig there, and, knowing a little about Mr. Andrews, I gathered together as many girls as I could to go with me. We went on a Friday night and requested an audition for my group. Perhaps impressed by the girls, who told him they were there to support my band—and promised their friends would come—he said, No need to audition, just have your band here to open for the Mushrooms next Friday night. That was Glenn Frey’s band before he sang on Seger’s Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man in 1968 and then moved to California, where he formed the Eagles. Later that same night, I was dancing with one of the girls when Punch pulled me aside and asked, Is this band any good? I assured him they were, and he snapped, Yeah, well, they fuckin’ better be! and walked away. Whoaaaah! That was my first encounter with Mr. Andrews as a serious businessman.

      On gig night, our amp blew up during the sound check, and Glenn Frey, the first time I ever met him, asked me, What’s the matter, man? Oh, our amp blew up. Well, here, you can use my Bogen 100 watt, and he hooked it up for us. He was a good guy—and still is.

      After I graduated from Rochester High School, I found a job working at a music equipment store called Artist’s Music, driving the truck and delivering amps, guitars, and drums to the four stores they had in the metro Detroit area. I picked up a lot of experience with instruments and band equipment while taking them to gigs and setting them up. But I grew really jealous when I learned my friend Richard Kruezkamp, who we called Krinkle, was working as the road manager for the best band in town—Bob Seger & the Last Heard! I was thinking, Why didn’t they call me?! This guy doesn’t know anything about this stuff—though, of course, he did. But one day in December ‘68 Krinkle called me and told me that one of his roadies was sick and asked me if I could help him set up Seger’s stuff for a gig at the University of Detroit. Naturally, I said yes!

      For the next few months, I helped with Seger’s setups part-time while I was attending Oakland Community College (OCC). Then, in April of ‘69, Krinkle got sick and had to go to the hospital. Punch called me and said, Hey, you’re the road manager now. I replied, Oh, great! Yeah, the band likes you. I’m taking a chance, I know. You better be good at this shit. I said, How much am I gonna make? $150 a week. Great! How much are you paying the other guys? Punch answered, "I don’t care how much you pay ’em. It comes out of

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