Live Bullet
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
Capitol, 1976
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
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.
Live Bullet was recorded over two September nights in Seger’s hometown of
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 “
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.