• Writer: Bob Seger
• Producers: Bob Seger and Ed “Punch” Andrews
• Recorded: 1977 at Cherokee Studios, Hollywood, California
• Players:
  Bob Seger–vocals, guitars
  Chris Campbell–bass
  David Teegarden–drums
  Bill Payne–keyboards
  Julie Waters, Maxine Waters, Luther Waters, & Oren Waters–backing vocals
• Appears on: Stranger In Town (Capitol, 1978)
• Also on:
  Nine Tonight (Capitol, 1981)
  Greatest Hits (Capitol, 1994)
• “Hollywood Nights,” from Bob Seger’s album Stranger In Town, peaked at Number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978.
• Stranger In Town peaked at Number Four on the Billboard 200 chart and has sold more than five million copies.
• There was a song recorded for the album titled “Stranger In Town,” but Seger chose not to put it on the album, and it remains unreleased.
• Seger acknowledges the autobiographical nature of “Hollywood Nights”: “The chorus just came into my head; I was driving around in the Hollywood Hills, and I just started singing ‘Hollywood nights/Hollywood hills/Above all the lights/Hollywood nights.’ I went back to my rented house, and there was a Time magazine with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover… said ‘Let’s write a song about a guy from the Midwest who runs into someone like this and gets caught up in the whole bizarro thing.’”
• One distinguishing feature of the song, Seger remembers, is the drums. “Our drummer, David Teegarden, played an entire set of drums as we recorded and overdubbed another entire set of drums playing a different pattern. In other words, there’s two sets of everything: snare, kick drum, hi-hat, etc.”
• Seger says Little Feat keyboardist Bill Payne, who played on the track, gave him the ultimate compliment on the song. “When he was done, he asked for a tape to listen to on the way home. He called me the next day and said while he’d been listening, he looked down and found himself going 100 miles an hour on the freeway.” 

FAST FORWARD:

• In recent years, Seger has concentrated more on sailing than on music. In 2001 and again in 2002, he captained his yacht Lightning as it won the Bacardi Bayview Mackinac Race championship.
• After numerous personnel changes, the Silver Bullet Band now consists of Craig Campbell and Alto Reed, with former Grand Funk Railroad keyboardist Craig Frost, who joined in 1980.
• He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
• His most recent album, 2006’s Face The Promise, was his first in 11 years. He spends most of his time these days at home in suburban Detroit with his wife, Nita, and their children Cole and Samantha.