Bob Seger reflected on the change of heart that meant Chevrolet got to use his 1986 song “Like a Rock” in an advertising campaign, and said he was proud of having let it happen.

Taken from his album of the same name, it became one of the compositions of which he’s most proud, which is one of the reasons he initially held out against the truck company, as he told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show.

“I went to [record label boss] Danny Goldberg… I played that song for Danny at his house: ‘I wanna play you this, tell me what you think,’” Seger said. “And he was just killed. He said, ‘Oh my gosh, if the rest of the album’s this good…’ I said, ‘Well, it isn’t! I hope it is, but I doubt it!’ He continued: “Probably since ‘Night Moves‘ that was the strongest of that type of song I’d written. It’s just a powerful song and it just affected a lot of people. Friends just thought it was one of my great ones. It’s one of my favorite songs. It got some airplay but it didn’t really [become] a big hit, you know? But it was a great video and people were really affected by it.”

Chevrolet approached him with the idea of using the track for an ad campaign that was to become so successful that it continued from 1991 to 2004. “[W]hen Chevy asked for it, for a long time I turned it down, because I just didn’t want it to be in an ad,” Seger said. “I’m really glad I did it now, because it sold a lot of trucks to save a lot of jobs, and, you know, this is my home state. So it’s a good thing. And people keep hearing it, so that’s great!”

Chevrolet ‘Like a Rock’ Ad

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Source: Bob Seger’s Proud That ‘Like a Rock’ Sold ‘a Lot of Trucks’