Heck, I can’t believe we’re already halfway through Bob Seger Week!  Thanks go to Clive for suggesting this week … I’m having fun with it and I hope you are, too!  Today’s song is one I hadn’t heard until I listened to it last night.

Mainstreet is a slower, more nostalgic song than much of Seger’s other works. Seger recorded this song at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Alabama. The studio was owned by four of the guys who played on the track: David Hood (bass), Jimmy Johnson (rhythm guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums) and Barry Beckett (keyboards). The lead guitarist on the session was Pete Carr.

According to Wikipedia …

Seger has stated that the street he was singing about is Ann Street, just off Main Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he grew up. There was a pool hall there where they had girls dancing in the window and R&B bands playing on the weekends. He said, “Again, that’s going back to the ‘Night Moves’ situation where I was writing about my high school years in Ann Arbor and what it was like — the discovery, the total naivete and fresh–faced openness that I went through. It was sort of an entire awakening of my life; before that I was kind of a quiet, lonesome kid.”

Seger later expanded on the origins of the song:

Just like “Night Moves,” that song rings true. What do they tell you about writing? They say you have to write about what you know. I grew up near that street corner. My older brother was a lot of trouble and I was not. My parents always called me “the good one” and they said: “You’re the one we can trust.” So at age 10, 11, 12 I was able to walk through Ann Arbor until midnight if I felt like it.

There was a club, and this blues band from Chicago named Washboard Willie was playing there. In the window of this club there were people dancing, and occasionally there would be a beautiful girl dancing in the window. And at my age you were starting to wake up to girls. I would sit out there and watch through the window and listen to this great R&B. I’m looking and I’m listening and thinking this is what I wanna do with my life.

The club was very lively, and to a 12, 13-year-old that was pretty cool. I loved the groove because it’s Chicago blues, and the women are dancing and you’re starting to think the women are looking pretty good. So all that stuff ended up becoming the elements for the song “Mainstreet.”

VH1’s Mike McPadden selected Mainstreet as one of Seger’s 10 most essential songs, describing it as “sad, sweet, soulful, and even spooky” for how it evokes the emotions of a hopeful but frustrated young man watching a woman he is too scared to approach.

This one charted at #1 in Canada and #24 in the U.S., not at all in the UK.

Mainstreet

Bob Seger

I remember standin’ on the corner at midnight
Tryin’ to get my courage up
There was this long lovely dancer in a little club downtown
Loved to watch her do her stuff

Through the long lonely nights
She filled my sleep
Her body softly swayin’
To that smokey beat
Down on mainstreet
Down on mainstreet

And the poolhalls, the hustlers, and the losers
Used to watch ’em through the glass
Well I’d stand outside at closin’ time
Just to watch her walk on past

Unlike all the other ladies
She looked so young and sweet
As she made her alone down that empty street
Down on mainstreet
Down on mainstreet
Ooh

Sometimes even now
When I’m feelin’ lonely and beat
I drift back in time and I find my feet
Down on mainstreet
Down on mainstreet

Down on mainstreet
Down on mainstreet
Down on mainstreet
Down on mainstreet

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Bob Seger

Mainstreet lyrics © Gear Publishing Company Inc, Gear Publishing Co. Inc.