‘Live’ Bullet is a live album by American rock band Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, released on April 12, 1976. It was recorded at Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, during the heyday of that arena's time as an important rock concert venue. The album is credited, along with Night Moves, with launching Seger's mainstream popularity.
History
Live' Bullet became a staple of FM rock radio in Detroit. Classics such as the live version of "Nutbush City Limits" and the medley of "Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser" were among the most widely played live tracks on Detroit stations such as WWWW (W4), WRIF, and WABX. Other tracks such as "Let It Rock", "Turn the Page" and "Get Out of Denver" also received wide airplay in Detroit.
The success of Seger's music at this time, however, was highly regional, with Seger still remaining quite unknown in adjacent media markets such as Chicago. Even in his home state of Michigan, Seger often struggled to garner mass appeal outside the Metro Detroit area. In December, 1975, 3 months after Live' Bullet was recorded, a scheduled concert at Western Michigan University was cancelled after only a few hundred advance tickets were sold. In June 1976, Seger played the Pontiac Silverdome in metropolitan Detroit at a historic concert that also included Point Blank, Elvin Bishop and Todd Rundgren. 78,000 people were in attendance and the concert lasted until nearly 1:30 a.m. The next night, Seger played for fewer than a thousand people in Chicago.
However, it was only in the following winter that the release of his next recording, Night Moves, launched Seger into more national markets. Over time, the life-on-the-road tale "Turn the Page" would become the most nationally played song from Live' Bullet, and a perennial favorite on album-oriented rock and classic rock stations.
For Detroit fans, however, the entire Live' Bullet recording captured a Detroit artist at the height of his energy and creativity, in front of a highly appreciative hometown crowd. Live' Bullet also captured the wild and free spirit of rock concerts in the 1970s, and has great historic value in that regard.
Critical reception
Critic Dave Marsh called Live Bullet "one of the best live albums ever made."
In 2015, Live Bullet was ranked No. 26 on Rolling Stones "50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time" list. Readers of Rolling Stone ranked it No. 10 in a 2012 poll of all-time favourite live albums. In an article supporting the 2015 list, Seger states, "We were doing 250 to 300 shows a year before Live Bullet. We were playing five nights a week, sometimes six, as the Silver Bullet Band, and we just had that show down."