O
f all the unnecessary wor-
ries I had going into my
freshman year at the Uni-
versity of Michigan (and there
were a lot), the one I now laugh
at most is that I wouldn’t like Ann
Arbor. Having grown up in a major
metropolitan area, I was hesitant
about going to school in a college
town.
As if it’s possible to not like Ann
Arbor.
This place means something dif-
ferent for all of us who’ve lived
here, certainly, but something I
especially love is how much his-
tory is embedded in the city — how
many people have walked these
streets, have discovered my favor-
ite hole-in-the-wall restaurants,
have pulled all-nighters in my fa-
vorite study spots before I arrived.
I love that idea — that I am becom-
ing one of so many people that have
been shaped by this place.
Something I love even more is
that the people who live in Ann
Arbor shape the town as much as
it shapes those who temporarily
stay. The energy in these streets is
somehow more malleable, more at-
tuned to the specific group that’s
here right now than to the count-
less faces that came before. Maybe
that’s just the nature of a college
town, but it’s still amazing to think
about what Ann Arbor used to be
like and what we could help it be-
come.
One of my favorite times to pic-
ture is the Ann Arbor of the late
60s. I’m an avid fan of what my
friends have jokingly termed “dad
music” — Creedence Clearwater
Revival, The Doors, The Beach
Boys, basically any music that re-
sulted from the Vietnam War —
and seeing photographs from The
Michigan Daily of the University
in those days sparked that interest
even more.
With this in mind, you can imag-
ine how excited I was to learn that
Bob Seger, singer of “Old Time
Rock & Roll” and numerous of my
other dad playlist staples, is from
Ann Arbor.
I immediately started listening
through his songs, on guard for
anything that might be about Ann
Arbor. After doing some research,
I was able to piece together a
Bob Seger’s Ann Arbor tour, so to
speak. It’s beautiful how this place
that’s shaped me so much has also
shaped some of the music I love.
The song “Mainstreet” was writ-
ten about a little old jazz club on
West Ann and North Main Streets,
where Seger used to listen to a per-
former known to everyone in town
as Washboard Willie. There’s a
certain wistfulness to the opening
guitar riff. You can almost picture
it echoing down the quiet streets,
the soft piano chords underneath
it as solid as the footsteps on the
pilgrimage home.
“Standin’ on the corner at mid-
night / Tryin’ to get my courage up
…”
That club is long gone now, and
the dreamy dancer Seger longs for
has long since disappeared into
the chords of life. Instead, there’s
a party store with faded awnings
and crackling window paint at that
intersection, a brick building cast-
ing a shadow over the juncture.
There’s a hotel across the street,
the kind where visiting parents or
alumni or businessmen might stay
when they come into town.
But somehow, the sort of hazy,
hopeful scene that the song sets
up doesn’t feel that far off. Sure,
it might not be happening in the
exact same place, but even now,
decades on, something of Seger’s
sentiment still rings true. Walking
these streets at night, the everyday
commotion not gone, but softened,
wondering about the lives of pass-
ersby — that Ann Arbor scene still
happens, still shapes us, still com-
pels us into that same wistful won-
dering that’s audible on Seger’s re-
cord.
“Sometimes even now, when I’m
feelin’ lonely and beat / I drift back
in time and I find my feet / Down
on Main Street …”
Seger grew up in the neighbor-
hood along Packard Street. He’d
frequent Blue Front, the old conve-
nience-store-turned-craft-beer oa-
sis, with his brother; it was an easy
walk from their home. Another of
Seger’s old haunts is still as much
an institution in 2021 Ann Arbor
as it was in the 1960s. Brown Jug
Restaurant at the corner of Church
Street and South University Av-
enue is today just as beloved as the
music of Seger, their former pizza
delivery boy. Although Brown Jug
declined to comment for this story
and Seger’s music rarely plays at
the restaurant these days, it still
somehow seems fitting that he was
involved with this Ann Arbor sta-
ple; it seems right that he, like so
many of us, has memories of nights
centered on this place.
Brown Jug isn’t the only long-
standing legacy Seger grew up
with. The singer also used to play
concerts at the University’s fra-
ternities. Chris Cioe, the musician
and writer who provided jazz in-
strumentals to The B-52’s and The
Manhattans, among others, vividly
remembers seeing Seger, clad in
“skin-tight black jeans, a turtle-
neck and a blue Beatles style cap —
the quintessential greaser-rocker,”
performing on the front lawn of
the Chi Phi house at 1530 Washt-
enaw.
T
hese days, the music echo-
ing out of the old stone
structure might tend more
towards Chance the Rapper than
Creedence
Clearwater
Revival,
more towards hip-hop than old-
time rock ‘n’ roll. But if you think
hard enough about what this scene
might’ve looked like in 1966, it’s
not so hard to picture Seger play-
ing on those front steps. It’s not
so hard to imagine the twanging
of the guitar floating out across
the busy street as the brothers and
their dates danced in the sunshine,
caught at that exciting juncture
between culture and countercul-
ture that came to define their gen-
eration, both shaping and being
shaped by Ann Arbor.
Seger’s fingerprints are also still
visible at Pioneer High School,
which Seger attended back when it
was still Ann Arbor High. He let-
tered in track and field, graduat-
ing in 1963. You can still find his
photograph in the yearbook. It
makes all of this a little more real:
He really was here. Those lyrics
really are about this town. You re-
ally have seen the same landscape,
walked the same streets.
That shared experience is wist-
fully portrayed by “Night Moves,”
one of Seger’s most-loved songs,
and arguably one of his best. Its
longing lyrics and the vivid scenes
of late nights sneaking away when-
ever possible still feels like a real
account of what it means to be
young.
“Workin’ on our night moves /
Tryin’ to lose the awkward teenage
blues …”
The song was inspired by “grass-
ers” that Seger and his friends
held in high school, out on Zeeb
Road. They turned on the head-
lights, played records from the car,
drank, smoked and danced. “Night
Moves” is simultaneously an ide-
alizing tribute to that youthful
rebellion and a sincere, profound
rendering of it.
“We weren’t searchin’ for some
pie in the sky, or summit / We were
just young and restless and bored
/ Livin’ by the sword / And we’d
steal away every chance we could
/ To the backroom, the alley, the
trusty woods …”
As I reached the end of the Bob
Seger tour, it felt as if it truly came
full circle, from the wistful longing
of “Mainstreet” all the way back
around to the earnest remembrance
of “Night Moves.” The songs seem
to have the same energy as Seger
intended when they were initially
created, somehow — the same bit-
tersweet recollection of earlier,
less complicated, but no less mean-
ingful days. The honest version of
Ann Arbor we see in Seger’s lyrics
that still affects us years down the
road seemed a fitting place to end.
Maybe this candid sentimental-
ity is why Seger’s music has en-
dured these many decades, because
it’s Seger’s Ann Arbor that I’d most
like to think is still accurate: Young
people, still trying to figure their
lives out, earnestly stumbling to-
wards some nebulous future, but
just as sincerely trying to appreci-
ate the good days before we’ve ac-
tually left them.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Bob Seger’s
Ann Arbor
BY ABIGAIL SNYDER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 — 13
REBECCA MAHON /Daily