Album: Live Bullet (1971)

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• You hit the street, you feel them staring
  You know they hate you you can feel their eyes a glarin'
  Because you're different, because you're free
  Because you're everything deep down they wish they could be
  
  [Chorus:]
  You're lookin back (lookin back) they're lookin back (lookin back)
  Too many people lookin back
  You're lookin back (lookin back) they're lookin back (lookin back)
  Too many people lookin back
  
  They watch the news, see young men dying
  They watch them bleedin' and listen to them lyin'
  And if they're normal if they can see
  They just reach out and change the channel on the TV
  
  [Chorus]
  
  When they could vote, and end the war
  They're much too busy fittin' locks upon the back door
  Give you a foxhole, a place to hide
  Cause when the war come the cops'll be on their side
  
  [Chorus]
  
  
  
  Writer/s: BOB SEGER
  Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 5

• Dan from Columbia ScSkip Van Winkle's real name was Skip Knape, and after "Brand New Morning" stiffed, Bob toured with Teegarden and Knape as "STK" (Seger Teegarden Knape). Short in stature, Skip was apparently the inspiration for "Turn the Page" as when the group would get harassed for having long hair, he wanted to fight, but "you don't dare make a stand".
  
  STK were apparently strictly a covers band; the "Smokin' OP's" album is basically an STK album that Punch Andrews put out under Bob's name. The fourth member of the studio band was Alice Cooper guitarist/lead songwriter Michael Bruce, listed as "Mike Bruce" on the credits. (Vince Furnier wrote less than half of Alice Cooper's songs before the band split and Vince legally changed his name to Alice.) There are only two songs by Bob on the album, and "Heavy Music' is an old single from 1968, when Bob was with The Last Heard.
  
  I really wonder why Bob kept getting blocked; he disappears from "Noah" (contributes only the title track and some vocals; "Death Row" was the B-Side to "2+2=?") to the point where the album notes practically say that the rest of the band is willing to dump him and move on with Tom Neme in his place. Then after coming back to write the songs for "Mongrel", we get the IMO half-formed work on "Brand New Morning" and he goes on hiatus from songwriting again. Thankfully, he found his muse again, and his next five albums (IMO) were his songwriting prime.
  
  I somewhat understand Bob's wanting to forget his Days of Struggle, but a lot of great music is getting shortchanged. Personally, I think that "20 Years from Now" (from "Seven") is what the song "Night Moves" is trying to be. At least a compilation of pre-"Live Bullet" singles would be a start. JMO.
• Ron from Los Angels, CaI listened to a studio version of this song . It sucks because it's badly recorded. Many of the early Seger tunes were not very well produced. Re-recording these tunes will definitely open him up to a new audience.
• Bob from Southfield, MiThe backing musicians on this song were Dave Teegarden and Skip Van Winkle, the duo who also recorded the hit, "God, Love and Rock 'N Roll".
• Alan from Chesterfield, MiHe did release all those albums, but the studio version of Lookin' Back never appeared on an album. A live version is on Live Bullet. A lot of real early Seger stuff never appeared on Seger albums. Persecution Smith is on a compilation called Michigan Memories. East Side Story, Ballad of the Yellow Berets (not directly credited to Seger), Sock it to Me Santa, Vagrant Winter are all early singles released in the Detroit area that have never appeared on an album or CD. Most of these early non-album sides are credited to Bob Seger and the Last Heard. Many of his early singles hit the local Detroit charts, including "Lookin' Back," the studio version, in the Winter of 1971-2. Bob should release a "Greatest Early Hits" album of all his great Detroit local hits like Rosalie (covered by Thin Lizzy), Lucifer, Back in '72, 2 + 2, Ivory, Persecution Smith, UMC, Noah (great song!), East Side Story, Beautiful Loser, Lookin' Back, and probably a few others like Vagrant Winter that I can't remember. I liked all these early ones more than the later stuff.
• Steve from Torrance, CaAll right Ashley Jade, if you insist..... Firstly, this song did make the Billboard charts (peaking at #96) and may have appeared on an early studio album. Bob released 7 albums before "Beautiful Loser", none of which have appeared on CD and are all extremely hard to find as vinyl LPs. The albums are "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man", "Mongrel", "Noah", "Brand New Morning", "Smokin'OPs", "Back in '72", and "Seven". The lyrics to "Lookin' back" can take an almost humorous bent if one considers just how openly and honestly Bob continuously paid tribute to his musical influences in his own songwriting and covered the old songs of other songwriters. Also, if rock'n'roll is about "new and liberal" ideas, why are there so many "classic rock" stations that are rigidly determined to play the same 300 old songs (including many of Seger's) over and over and over again? Why are all of rock's newest bands so tediously derivative of everything that has come before? What is the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame but "too many people lookin' back"? I write all this as a long time listener who wonders what Bob (who just turned 61) thinks about rock today, or if he himself is still "lookin' back".

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