The years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
I found myself further and further from my home, and I
Guess I lost my way
There were oh-so-many roads
I was living to run and running to live
Never worried about paying or even how much I owed
Moving eight miles a minute for months at a time
Breaking all of the rules that would bend
I began to find myself searching
Searching for shelter again and again
Against the wind
A little something against the wind
I found myself seeking shelter against the wind
Seger said of this song:
“My old friend Glenn Frey of the Eagles had an idea that our guitarist Drew Abbott should play along with the piano solo. He and I then went out and did the background vocals together. The line ‘Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then’ bothered me for the longest time, but everyone I knew loved it so I left it in. It has since appeared in several hits by other artists, so I guess it’s OK.”
Seger later clarified:
“The only thing that bothered me about that phrase was the grammar. It sounded grammatically funny to me. I kept asking myself, ‘Is that correct grammar?’ I liked the line, and everybody I played it for – like Glenn and Don (Henley) – were saying, ‘That’s the best line in the song,’ but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t right. But I slowly came around. You have to understand that songwriters can’t punctuate anything they write. I work in such a narrow medium that I tend to second-guess things like that. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen that line in a few other songs since I came up with it, so I guess it was okay after all.”
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As a tail-end baby boomer and writer and editor, this makes me love Bob Seger even more!
He does have a way with anthems, doesn’t he?
This is why writers have editors, even if the editor is your wife or friend. A writer needs to hear how the words sound to someone else.
Because times change, I quit buying disks. The last one I did buy was a Jason Aldean CD. For sad and infamous reasons which befell him, his concert passes into American history, but for musical reasons he’ll live on as well.
dang! Bob Seger got old! whos that other guy?
bgarrett, I was going to ask who the old guy in the glasses doing a Bob Seger cover was.