Bob Seger Mulls Over Retirement
The legendary singer will probably hang up his mic next year
In an interview with Billboard Seger revealed that he will probably quit touring and recording before he is 67 (he turned 66 earlier this month). "I've been doing this a long time," he notes. "I don't know if I want to do this when I'm 67, you know?"
Seger will complete a 27 date North American tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday, and then after playing a private show next week he plans to take "about a month" off before returning to work on a new album - his first since 2006's "Face The Promise" - that he previously said will feature "different feels, different speeds, different approaches to the stuff I do."
The album will include his latest single, a cover of Tom Waits' "Downtown Train," as well as a "father-daughter" song called "Hannah" that features guest appearances by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow -- the same trio that recorded "Collide," the latest single from Rock's "Born Free" album -- a "very Led Zeppelin" track called "The Sea Inside;" and "Hey Gypsy," a Texas swing-styled "homage to Stevie Ray Vaughan."
No title or release date have been decided on for the album, but Seger says that, like touring, it might also bring an end to an era of his life. "I'll still be writing songs, but I don't know about recording," Seger says. "I'd write for other people, because recording takes a lot more time than the writing, and I think I could better use my time just writing and then turn (the songs) over to someone else and hoping they do them well. And there are so many writers in Nashville to work with... I've been writing alone for years and years and years, and maybe to write with other people would not only speed up the process but expand it, expand the horizons, and it might be fun. But that's down the road."