Bob Seger: The country songwriter who inspired Prince
There were many evenings when the international superstar Prince would sit down at his little writing desk and pen not a song but rather a letter of appreciation to his beloved Joni Mitchell. In his own idiosyncratic writing style, the page would be littered with hearts and a smattering of artistic appreciation.
While his own style may well have wildly differed from Mitchell’s, these cutesy interactions, which were often intercepted by Mitchell’s office staff and disregarded as the scribblings of a crackpot imposter, are proof of how truly eclectic his tastes were. In fact, anyone who plays 27 instruments is surely drawing from a wider pool than most.
But it was just an ear for great music that shaped his stylings. It was also a keen eye from the main chance. He also wanted to see how his music could interact with the zeitgeist that was currently in vogue. As Prince told The Observer regarding his evolutionary response to his own opus: “In some ways, Purple Rain scares me. It’s my albatross, and it’ll be hanging around my neck as long as I’m making music.” While that apparent albatross ostensibly never hindered Prince’s output, it would prove a masterpiece very hard to beat.
When it was written, Prince had already achieved stardom, but his celestial rise had somewhat plateaued. His sui generis ways had blown the door off the hinges for a guitar-shredding funk master, but behind that door was a niche room with a limited capacity as opposed to a giant stadium. In order to achieve the mass appeal that fellow individualistic stars like David Bowie had achieved with ‘Let’s Dance’, Prince needed a song that connected.
Fate would prove an illuminating light for the ‘Purple One’ when it came to knocking his niche through to the next room. As it happens, while touring his 1999 record in 1982, he happened to be following the trail of Bob Seger’s tour. The Horseshoe moustache-sporting all-American man of genre-mishmash was less focused on defining musicology and instead just wanted to impart blue-collar tales to his audience.
His folk-country-rock-pop soundscape might not have rattled new worlds open, but his words were relatable for an audience merely out to have a great night. His melodies were also catchy enough to have a whole stadium sing along. Perhaps most importantly, he appealed to the masses by blending styles: his drummer was from Grand Funk, the songwriter he “grew up with” was Glenn Frey, and his own motto was to try to write an entirely different song each time he sat down.
So, Prince managed to catch Bob Seger many times that year on their cat-and-mouse tours across the country, and his Revolution keyboardist, Matt Fink, would explain: “Well, it’s these big ballads that Bob Seger writes. It’s these songs like ‘We’ve Got Tonight’ and ‘Turn The Page’. And that’s what people love.”
Thus, Fink told Prince: “It’s like country rock, it’s white music. You should write a ballad like Bob Seger writes, and you’ll cross right over.” Prince took a leaf out of this book, and when he entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he acknowledged the inspiration: “Seger had a lot of influence on me at the start of my career; he certainly influenced my writing,” he acknowledged.
