![]() ![]() It was also one of Tom Cruise’s iconic moments: when he removes his pants and slides into the song’s intro, the party is officially underway. Risky Business, of course, helped that along. ![]() So the song was a modest hit, but it didn’t really become a signature tune until after the fact. There’s a raucous sax solo from Alto Reed, and the piano pounder is none other than Craig Frost from Grand Funk Railroad. The live version (captured on the 1981 double album Nine Tonight) is a whole lot grittier, with the piano intro replaced by Stonesy guitar riffing, and the whole band getting loose. Released as a single in March 1979, “Old Time Rock & Roll” was given a place of honor at Seger’s live shows, as part of a string of hits played early in the set and it took on a whole other life onstage. “That was the dumbest thing I ever did,” he told a radio interviewer in 2006. As he explained in an interview at the time, he kept Jackson’s chorus lyric but rewrote all the verse lyrics himself – and because Seger didn’t peg the song as a hit, he never bothered to take a writing credit. Seger liked the song but thought it needed some work. The song’s co-writer George Jackson was an Alabama local with a couple of previous hits to his credit, including The Osmond Brothers’ first hit, “One Bad Apple” (so if anyone asks you the trivia question, “What do Bob Seger and Donny Osmond have in common?”, now you know). “Old Time Rock & Roll” was a late addition to the album sessions, brought in by the Muscle Shoals players. ![]() In the context of the album, it’s something of a ringer, more light-hearted and self-consciously retro than the rest of the songs, and one of the album’s only two non-original songs, penned by George Jackson and Thomas Earl Jones III. Only then, after Stranger In Town had been in the stores for nearly a year, did “Old Time Rock & Roll” get taken off the shelf. With its defiant sound and anti-authority lyric, “… Number” proved that Seger wasn’t all that far from the punk movement. Many stations now went with “Feel Like A Number,” the album’s toughest rocker. But FM radio still wasn’t done with Stranger In Town. All three songs were released as singles and crossed over to AM radio, and all three hit the Top 20, meaning he’d now bettered Night Moves commercially. Next came “We’ve Got Tonight,” the first Seger hit that was a straightforward love ballad. Radio went instead with the ballad “Still The Same” and the widescreen rocker, “Hollywood Nights,” both of which showed Seger’s flair for storytelling. Stranger In Town hit FM radio with a handful of obvious killer cuts, but “Old Time Rock & Roll” wasn’t one of them. In both cases, Seger, now hitting his mid-30s, wasn’t afraid to write about characters who’d done a bit of living. Once again, Seger divided the album between two back-up groups (his touring group, The Silver Bullet Band, and the Muscle Shoals session aces) and two mindsets: arena-ready rockers on one hand, reflective ballads on the other. And he succeeded by building on Night Moves’ strengths. He’d gotten the hit album after ten years of trying and needed to prove that Night Moves was no flash in the pan. As the follow-up to his commercial breakthrough, Night Moves, Stranger In Town was a key album for Seger. It’s worth remembering, however, that it didn’t start out that way. Thanks to its placement in movies and TV, beginning with Tom Cruise’s memorable lip-sync in Risky Business, “Old Time Rock & Roll” is the best-remembered track on Seger’s blockbuster 1978 album, Stranger In Town, and it’s practically the official theme song of classic-rock radio. Click to load video An iconic needle-drop ![]()
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