Today’s mid-70s classic rock song of the day is “Night Moves” by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band. Released in November of 1976, it rose to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 early the next year. Rolling Stone magazine named it Best Single of the Year for 1977.
“Night Moves” is a coming of age song, filled with nostalgia for the singer’s younger days. It recalls his fleeting romance with a young woman when he was just 19 and still learning the ropes. She was a “black haired beauty,” as the song states, a year older than him, whose boyfriend was away in the military. She broke up with Mr. Seger when her boyfriend returned and later married the soldier. That left Mr. Seger somewhat broken hearted—enough that he was later inspired to write this song.
The lyrics are hyper descriptive, extremely effective in recalling the details and emotions of that time of life:
I was a little too tall, could’ve used a few pounds
Tight pants, points hardly renown
She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own, sitting way up high
Way up firm and high
Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy
Out in the back seat of my ’60 Chevy
Workin’ on mysteries without any clues
Workin’ on our night moves
Tryin’ to make some front page drive-in news
Workin’ on our night moves
In the summertime
Mm-mm
In the sweet summertime
I grew up a decade or so later but everything in this song rings true.
The chords are simple but a little tricky. It took me a while to figure out that the signature pattern in the verses goes G – F – C, with that F a one-beat strum leading into the C. It’s that F that threw me, as the song is in the key of G and the F chord, essentially a flatted major seventh chord, wouldn’t seem to fit. But as a passing chord it does the job, so I’m comfortable with it.
There were two influences that impacted Bob Seger’s songwriting on “Night Moves.” The first was seeing American Graffiti, a film that was based in the same era in which he grew up. Here’s how Mr. Seger recalls it:
“[‘Night Moves’] was inspired by the movie American Graffiti. It was all about cars and peg pants and rolled-up T-shirts with a cigarette pack up here and stiletto pointed shoes. That’s how I grew up, that was my high-school years.”
The other influence on Mr. Seger was Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album, in particular the “Jungleland” track. It’s as if listening to that album gave Seger permission to write and record something in the same vein.
Even though “Night Moves” is credited to Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, the entire band didn’t play on this one. This track was the last recorded for his upcoming album (which was eventually titled Night Moves) at Nimbus Nine Studios in Toronto. All the other members of the band had left save for Seger, bassist Chris Campbell, and drummer Charlie Allen Martin, so producer Jack Richardson recruited local studio aces Joe Miquelon and Doug Riley to play electric guitar and piano, respectively. It took fewer than ten takes to lay down the main part of the song, with Seger returning separately to record the acoustic guitar-driven bridge.
To me, listening to “Night Moves” takes me back to my college years, when it was released, and even further back to warm summer nights in high school. I didn’t have a ’60 Chevy (I was driving my mother’s ’69 Opel Kadett wagon at the time) but I was just as horny and just as clueless as Mr. Seger was in his song. I imagine most of us were, back then. Ain’t it funny how the night moves, with autumn closing in…
