The 1973 movie that inspired Bob Seger’s masterpiece: “That was my high-school years”
Reducing the expansive and illustrious career of Bob Seger down to one song is something of an impossibility. In terms of lasting fan favourites, though, you would have to go some way to eclipse his 1976 anthem ‘Night Moves’.
One of the great coming-of-age rock anthems, capturing Seger’s heartland sound and marking an unavoidable highlight of the mainstream rock airwaves of 1970s America, ‘Night Moves’ quickly became one of his definitive tracks.
While it wasn’t a colossal departure from the songwriter’s typical sound, at least at that point in his discography, the single was indebted to the inspiration of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ songwriting style, along with some choice inspiration from the Hollywood realm.
Music and film have always gone hand-in-hand, like Seger and his Silver Bullet Band, or Springsteen and New Jersey. A particular highlight of that shared relationship arrived in 1973, when film collided with 1950s rock ‘n’ roll Americana in George Lucas’ pre-Star Wars effort, American Graffiti. A movie so awash with musical excellence that its soundtrack album became a US top-ten release, its spirit invariably lodged itself in the mind of Bob Seger.
In particular, that film manifested itself within ‘Night Moves’, a song soaked in the nostalgia of 1950s teenage life, fast cars, and adolescent romance. “It was inspired by the movie American Graffiti,” Seger once attested, during a chat with Classic Rock, “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.”
That spirit certainly manifests itself within the track, along with the endearingly cheesy music video starring Matt LeBlanc. “It was the easiest song in the world to write, but the hardest song to finish. It took me six months to finish it,” he shared. Seemingly, capturing the entirety of your youth in one song isn’t such an easy task, at least in terms of finding a conclusion.
In the end, it was Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ that sparked the final stages of Seger’s anthem, leading the songwriter to the possibility of having two separate bridges in one song. Suddenly, ‘Night Moves’ makes a lot more sense when you realise that it is the product of American Graffiti colliding with Bruce Springsteen’s heartland genius.
Either way, once the song was eventually completed, it soon became clear that Seger’s career was to be forever changed. “People at Capitol Records told me after they heard the song ‘Night Moves’ that I had a ‘career record’,” he recalled, “They said: ‘This is a song that you’re gonna have to play for the rest of your life’.”
That prediction hasn’t been far from the truth, either. At 81 years of age, Seger has been officially retired since 2019, but ‘Night Moves’ continued to be a song that he performed right up until the final days of his beloved music career, belted out by legions of fans with similar memories of 1950s teen years, or their own tales that nevertheless fit with Seger’s universal ode to coming-of-age.
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