"Turn the Page"

Seger, Bob and the Silver Bullet Band

The Rock and Roll Road, Immortalized

Bob Seger, the Detroit rocker whose bellowing ballad "Like a Rock" was used in pickup truck ad campaigns, wrote "Turn the Page" back when he was leading a band that openly emulated the hard-driving style of Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels. Seger hadn't yet authored the hits that would put him on the plush upper-tier touring circuit later in the '70s. But he'd been playing rock long enough to know the loneliness of life on the endless highway, and with "Turn the Page," he captured the vague sense of dislocation, and the overpowering need for normalcy, that settles in after a few weeks of hard touring.

In the verses, Seger talks in the first person about his experiences—telling how he's taunted for his long hair and haunted by the girl he met at the last stop. But in the choruses he takes himself out of the frame to watch from a distance, shifting into the second person to follow his rocker persona on stage, giving his all and at the same time going through the motions, questioning and possibly mocking his ambitions. Toggling back and forth between confessionals and scene-sketches, Seger creates an enduring, passionately wrought portrait that reduces most rock "road songs" to dust.

"Turn the Page" originally appeared on Back in '72, an album that mixed Seger originals with strong interpretations of several rock classics (among them the Allmans' "Midnight Rider"). Never issued on CD, that album has been in legal limbo for more than a decade. The version of "Turn the Page" in common circulation is a 1975 performance at Detroit's Cobo Arena, one of Seger's first headlining gigs. It's electrifying. There's Seger singing with the raspy, full-throated commitment of his "Night Moves" and "Like a Rock" prime about the lonely touring life of stardom that was just around the corner for him. You can almost smell the diesel fumes.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1973, Reprise
Appears On: "Live" Bullet; Greatest Hits, Vol. 2.
Another Interpretation: Metallica: Garage, Inc.
Next Stop: Gregg Allman: Laid Back
After That: Kid Rock: Cocky.
Book Pages: 687–688