Seger Back In Spotlight After Decade Off

For a long time, Bob Seger and his music were just about everywhere: on the radio, in concert, in the movies and on TV commercials.

But if you've been looking for him lately, you should have checked on his sailboat, his garage or around the house with the wife and kids.

"Most of the time, I'm here in Michigan and I'm taking out the garbage every Monday," he told Sunday Morning correspondent Russ Mitchell. "I get up and move a couple of cans out to the edge of the road like everybody else."

Seger lives a surprisingly ordinary life that lasted longer than most musician's careers. But now, after a decade out of the spotlight and off the charts, Seger is back.

"It's really exciting," he said. "It's really fun to go to work."

Work right now for the 61-year-old is a national tour with his Silver Bullet Band — the first since 1996 — and a new album, "Face The Promise," that debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard charts. It took Seger 11 years to release a new album, mostly because he was busy raising his children, he said.

"I had kids at age 47, and very late in life, and I'd been doing it for 30 straight years, writing songs, making a record and touring and starting the process right over," he said. "Then I had the kids and [thought], you know, it might be a good time to slow down and watch them grow up — you're never gonna get another chance to see it."

The rock star-turned-house husband says that as he watched his son and daughter grow, he grew himself. And he wrote the new songs with a very special audience in mind.

"A lot of it is me, maybe in a subterranean manner, offering advice to my kids," he said. "When you have kids, you start thinking about their future and you forget about yours. So I feel I've gotta take a stand on certain things. I wanna tell them how I feel about things — this may be my last chance to do it. You know, I'm 61 years old, so I want to go on record with them a little bit."

Seger was born in Detroit and grew up as rock 'n' roll was taking form. He knew early that music was in his blood. His father, an auto worker, played six instruments and passed his passion on to his son.

"I always loved music. You know, my parents said I started singing when I was 4, in the car," Seger said. "Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a book to play some chords, so I was laying down 'Hound Dog' and things like that when I was 10 years old in 1955. That's the way I was. My ear was glued to the radio. I knew right then what I wanted to do."

After high school, he did a couple of short stints in car plants, but the assembly line wasn't for him. So he hit the road, playing as many as 250 club dates a year with a variety of bands while gaining a faithful, but mostly Midwestern, following.

"When we played, we had what it took to move an audience. We always had that," Seger said. "So we always, in a sense, felt successful, you know? We just didn't have the money and the radio airplay and the records to prove it at that time."

Seger's big break finally came in his home town. "Live Bullet," recorded at Detroit's Cobo Hall in 1975, became one of the most successful concert albums of all time. He took us back to where it all happened.

"It's pretty wild," Seger told Mitchell as they visited the hall. "I haven't been here in a while. Thirty-one years ago we did 'Live Bullet' here. September 4th and 5th, in '75, yeah — right on that stage."

"Live Bullet" shot up the charts, and turned platinum the same day a second Seger album, "Night Moves," also sold a million copies. The extraordinary one-two punch propelled the Heartland secret onto the national stage.

"I like to think we went straight from station wagons to jets," he said. "There were no busses in between. It just took off like a skyrocket."

It was a 20-year ride fueled by a series of high-flying albums, with songs like "Against the Wind" that became rock 'n' roll standards.

Then, in 1996, a life of long drives and sharp turns took yet another twist. Seger decided to take paternity leave. He headed back to the Detroit area for good to help raise his son and daughter.

Actor Jeff Daniels, another celebrity who made his living in Hollywood but stayed home in Michigan, understands as both a father and a fan.

"It's the same thing with me," Daniels said. "Family came first. And with Bob, family came first. And everything else came second. He probably came to a point where the kids got a little older, when they become teenagers, they kinda go, 'We don't need you as much.' I think when Bob's kids said that he should go out and be Bob Seger, I think that gave Bob permission to go out and get back into that creative life again."

Seger said his children enjoy his career because they see their father as a rock star. In fact, he said they are his biggest supporters.

"They want to see me on stage so they're just getting it, you know, what I do," Seger said. "'Awesome, Dad.' That's what my son says."

"Face the Promise," filled with songs written during Seger's hiatus, has already gone platinum, adding to the 50 million albums he's sold over his career, but Seeger still cannot identify what inspires him.

"It's mysterious," Seger said. "You don't know what inspires you. You like to think you know what inspires you, but in the final analysis I don't think you really do. It's great to look at a blank sheet of paper, you know, and walk up to an instrument and not know what's gonna happen. It's the most challenging thing I do."

But taking a soon-to-be-senior-citizen's body back on the road for a 4-month tour is no picnic, either. Seger made sure he had his doctor's permission, and for now is keeping his plans decidedly short-term.

"I'm not looking past March, you know what I mean?" he said. "The tour is gonna run from November till March and we'll see how I feel after that. I just do everything as it comes. One day at a time."

Any day with Seger, is still enough to get fans to spend a night in line. One man said he drove 600 miles to see Seger. Even his teenage kids were excited about the show.

"I've been trying to see him for 30 years. This is the first chance I got and I took it," he said.

For the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, it's enough that he's still a good father, and his fans are still faithful. The rest, he says, will take care of itself. He hopes people will remember him as someone who told the truth about what he experienced.

"That I was out front and I didn't sugercoat things. I just try to write 'em and make 'em as deep as they can go, and that's all I do," he said.