Book Preview: Bob Seger - 'Travelin' Man'

Book preview (WJRT) -- Tom Weschler's dreams of rock 'n' roll stardom came crashing down quickly.

SLIDE SHOW: Photos from the book.

COMMENT: Share your Seger memories at the bottom of this page.

"I used to clam up when I played bass in bands. It was terrible," Weschler chuckled as he took a sip of his iced tea at Duggan's Irish Pub in Royal Oak. "I was a good player but I got scared, y'know? Then I decided to play telephone instead of bass and be a manager. Much easier for me."

And so began Weschler's career, first as a roadie, then beginning in early 1969 as road manager for an extremely talented and hard-working young musician named Bob Seger.

Aside from the pay raise that came with his promotion, Weschler also took advantage of his new position to practice his other love: photography.

"When I was a roadie the first few months, I couldn't (take pictures) cause I had to set up and stay right there in case anything got messed up," he said. "But when you're the boss, you can have other guys do that. So we'd set everything up, and then I'd just take my camera and walk around and take pictures backstage, front stage. It didn't matter. I could go anywhere."

Weschler estimates that he has more than 20,000 photos from his time in the Seger camp, 161 of which are featured in his new book "Travelin' Man: On The Road and Behind The Scenes With Bob Seger," which will be officially released through Wayne State Press October 15 (although it is already in stock in many Detroit area bookstores as well as at Amazon.com).

The idea for putting together a photography book came about seven years ago during an encounter with famed music journalist Gary Graff.

"He did this show in Birmingham with many of the rock 'n' roll photos he's taken over the years," Graff said. "Good stuff. I mean, he had really great pictures. As I was leaving, I congratulated him, but I said, 'Next time talk to me before you write the captions,' because those weren't so good."

This planted a seed in both their minds to do something together. So they set up a meeting and began combing through Weschler's 240,000 or so negatives gathered in 40-plus years, looking for inspiration to focus the project.

"We got together and started planning on doing a book about everything from the Jimi Hendrix pictures I have to The Doors," Weschler says. "But while we were going through it all, the Seger stuff kept standing out cause there was so much of it."

So in August 2008, the two began meeting at Graff's house weekly to select the photos and put together stories to accompany them.

"We spent quite a few days just sitting around my family room BS-ing," Graff says.

"I just sat with him and told him stories and then he'd go write it out and send it to me over e-mail and I'd make whatever corrections and we'd go back and forth like that," Weschler remembers. "We'd meet up once a week and e-mail almost every night for about six months."

The resulting work is a career-spanning visual depiction of Seger, mainly focused on the years Weschler was directly involved with him, from 1969 through the late '70s. Along with the images are stories behind them that provide an insider glimpse of Seger's rise to fame.

The book features several photos of Seger and his bands on stage, including the locally infamous 1969 performance at the opening of the second wing of The Oakland Mall in Troy, the Goose Lake Music Festival from 1970 near Jackson, and, of course, the Sept. 4 and Sept. 5 concerts at Cobo Hall in 1975 in downtown Detroit that were immortalized in his breakthrough album "Live Bullet."

But most of Weschler's favorite shots are behind-the-scenes moments he captured.

"We hadn't played in front of 20,000 people before," he said of the Oakland Mall show. "So after the show, Bob was walking down with his guitar case -- which happened to be my guitar case, actually -- and he sat down on the ground and all these girls surrounded him and he started signing autographs. I had this brand-new, wide-angle lens and I stood up above him and shot it."

Weschler also chronicles the recording sessions from 1970's "Mongrel" and '71's "Brand New Morning." Another of the shots that stands out to him is from Pampa Studios in Warren while Seger was recording "mongrel."

"When you listen to your playback you usually sit in front of the soundboard, and you're on a couch with the speakers above you," he explains. "All four guys are listening to the playback of some of the tracks and I got this shot when Seger was real happy with something and he goes like this (points to the sky) and the rest of the band is just sittin' there all smiling."

Graff enjoyed the behind-the-scenes material as well. Especially the wealth of images of Seger's former bandmates.

"We know the Silver Bullet Band guys, especially the mainstays," he said. "But you don't know that much about (Phillip) Pep Perrine (drummer 1965-70) or Dan Honaker (bass 1965-70) and some of these guys who were part of the Last Herd (1965-68) and the Bob Seger System (1968-70)."

But Graff's favorite part of the book is the pre-beard shots of Seger.

"The baby-faced pictures are priceless," he says with a grin. "I think people are gonna look at this book and say 'My God, did that guy ever really look like that?'"

Amidst the pictures, "Travelin' Man" also includes an in-depth timeline of Seger's career, a thorough listing of band members through the years, a complete discography, and a foreword by John Mellencamp and afterword by Kid Rock.

Weschler also tells the stories behind the seven album covers he designed for Seger, including a few interesting alternate cover ideas that never came to fruition for one reason or another.

Both men are proud of their accomplishment, and are excited to give Seger a new kind of exposure.

"There hasn't been a Seger book yet, and that's kind of a glaring omission," Graff says. "We finally got him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and now it's time to get him into the bookstores some way, too. And hopefully out of the bookstores with tremendous frequency."

And Weschler is happy to share his story, and says he feels privileged to give Seger fans an inside look at the man through his lens.

"I've loved history all my life and if I had a chance to be a historian about the music I liked, well why not?" he said. -- Josh Daunt

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