It’s not very often that people are given an opportunity to thank their pop culture idols. I’ve captured that lightning in a bottle twice.

While living in Washington, D.C., I reported on a Smithsonian Institution tribute to George Lucas, the creator of the innovative and checkbook-draining “Star Wars” movies. I did not have much time with Lucas, but I passed him in a lobby and was able to talk with him just long enough to thank him for the kick-start his films gave my young imagination. My creative horizons expanded with the energy and vision he captured.

Lucas was demure and appreciative; he has undoubtedly been cornered like that thousands of times by thousands of fans, but he still played along and expressed gratitude.

In 2004, while serving as news editor of the Daily Telegram in Adrian, I conducted a telephone interview with rock singer Bob Seger. Quotes from that interview, reprinted with kind permission from the Daily Telegram, allowed me to settle another longstanding debt.

As a teenager, my interest in women far exceeded my experience, knowledge and communication skills with them. As I entered what should have been the prime of my learning curve, I lacked the confidence to establish a comfort zone with the female classmates who caught my eye, selectively defined as “every single one of them.”

I played football for four years, but even at my most lean and active, I possessed a body fairly described as candy-coated, and while my face has never frightened small children, it hasn’t landed any modeling offers, either. The resulting confidence deficit kept me from asking women for dates, attention or anything more interactive than sharing air in the same ZIP code.

Then, one Friday evening just past my 16th birthday, riding in a car tuned to WIOT 104.7 FM in Toledo, I heard a glorious noise that changed everything.

It started with a clunky crash of percussion that laid the foundation for an organ and driving guitar. The singer attacked the song with an energy and conviction that demanded my attention, so I reached over and turned up the radio, rattling the car’s overworked and inadequate speakers.

“Yeah, I’m gonna tell my tale come on, come on, give a listen,” he sang. It sounded like Bob Seger, but I had never heard the Seger of “Night Moves” and “Against the Wind” sing anything as primal and raw as this.

“I was just 13 when I had to leave home/Knew I couldn’t stick around, I had to roam,” the voice confessed, and I was hypnotized by the roughness of the sound pouring out of the strained-to-their-limits speakers.

I was primed, paying full attention, for the next words I heard:

“Ain’t good looking, but you know I ain’t shy/Ain’t afraid to look you girl, right in the eye.”

The rest of the song blurred by — and didn’t matter. The clouds had parted, the world faded away, and those words gathered speed in my head, clinging to brain cells and etching themselves onto my DNA.

“Ain’t good looking, but you know I ain’t shy/Ain’t afraid to look you girl, right in the eye.”

There it was. The answer. In a 1969 rock song.

And what a song, what a record! “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” stands beside Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” as rock’s greatest musical celebrations of slinky, melting, single-minded, joyous, testosterone-driven young lust. It is the essence of the original salacious meaning of the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll.”

I think I howled with capering glee at being given the keys to the carnal kingdom, even if the howl never left my throat.

A decade later, grizzled actor Jack Palance would sum up the philosophy in an after-shave commercial: “Confidence,” he half-purred, half-growled, “is sexy.”

But it was Seger who inspired me to adopt a damn-the-torpedoes approach to dating and mating, and during my subsequent collegian conquer-and-divide days, I brandished Seger’s words like a flaming sword.

After finishing my 2004 interview with Seger and thanking him for his time, I drew upon that confidence to tell him I wanted to specifically thank him for something, and I related a Reader’s Digest version of my tale.

His delighted laughter confirmed he understood, and he offered a hearty, “You’re welcome!”

Seger was still laughing as we hung up the phone.

And that, my friends, is rock ’n’ roll.

Postscript: While writing this article, I discovered that the official lyrics are “Ain’t afraid to look it girl, hear me out,” not “Ain’t afraid to look you girl, right in the eye.”

Doesn’t matter. I’m sticking to my version, and my memories.

Michael S. Miller is editor in chief of Toledo Free Press and Toledo Free Press Star. Email him at mmiller@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: Bob Seger, Daily Telegram, George Lucas, Lighting The Fuse, Michael S. Miller, Star Wars

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Lighting The Fuse, Opinion.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.