DOUG Talks to THOMAS WESCHLER ABOUT HIS PHOTOGRAPHS OF BOB SEGER on display at The Detroit Historical Museum

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Yeah, hither the Detroit t Wheels. Hi. Tom Wesler. Here,
Tom Wesler, how are you,my friend? Good to talk to you,
Tom. I'm good, Douglas,how are you. I'm doing well.
We've got Tom Wesler, photographer androad manager for Bob Seger and the
Silver Bullet Band pretty much. Youknow, you were doing that through his

(00:20):
entire career. I started out asa kid in nineteen sixty eight with him.
Nineteen sixty eight. So what wasthe big song then? Rambling Gambling?
Was that? Yeah? All right? Okay, so I still know
my Bob Seger musical history. Ohthat early stuff, Tom, that was
That was my Bob Seger era.Persecution Smith, Chainsmoking, east Side story.

(00:45):
I mean music, Yeah, yeah, heavy music, all that early
you know, hightout cameo stuff thatwas on those labels are still some of
my you know, Pride and Joyrecords. I love them. Yeah.
I like that era too. Iwas lucky enough to be able to see
him at the hideouts you know,the teenage no kidding, yeah, go

(01:06):
to all right, and every timehe played somewhere there was always a ton
of women there. So it wasalways good for us to go a couple
of years ago you put a bookout with Gary Graff called Traveling Man,
And now now you've got your photographson display. I mean, this is
pretty big stuff. Tom Detroit.I appreciate that Detroit Historical Museum. Not

(01:30):
a lot of guys that I knowor talked to have their paintings, their
artwork, their photographs displayed at theDetroit Historical Museum. So tell me how
this all came about. Well,it started with with Public Broadcasting. You
know, they have those fundraisers everyspring, and the guy that runs is

(01:55):
Fred and mayhad He called me andhe said, hey, would you be
willing to go on the air withme and telling me about some of the
photos in your book. We're usingyour book as one of the perks for
people to donate to us. AndI said, yeah, sure, I'll
be glad to So little did Iknow they sent a limo to pick me

(02:15):
up. Whoa, And I waslike that's what I said, Whoa.
And we got there and we wentinside the station and they had a makeup
person there and did my makeup.Holy smoked, I never had makeup before,
and bingo we were on the air. We did a whole show and
he said, okay, well thisis going to this is going to show

(02:37):
in another month. When we startthe fundraiser. I said, oh,
okay. I thought we were doingit right there, but I didn't see
any telephones or anything, so Ifigured maybe it wasn't right right at that
time. So a month later theyput it on the air and they started,
you know, getting all kinds ofpeople that wanted the book, and
they you know, they donated moneyand so on. Then about a month

(03:00):
later he called me and he said, oh, it's going to be shown
again. Since then they've shown itnine times. Oh my goodness, of
course it's successful. Yeah, itworked out really well. So then he
contacted me and he said, youknow the museum down Detroit, the Historical

(03:22):
Museum, wants to do something withyou. And I said, oh really
okay, So we Alex Green,my manager, and I went down there
to talk to them, and thelady said, well, this is great.
Here's what we want to do.And they wanted thirty five of my
photos from the book and they madethem into big, huge, sixteen by

(03:42):
twenties. They put them in madAt frames and she said, come back
down here on the fourteenth because that'swhen we're going to have this soiree ahead
of Bob Seeger Day, which isthe fifteenth of March. And so we
did and I was blown away theyI mean they had stuff. They had
my camera case there and my nikonin these glass cases. It's all on

(04:08):
display now. And I said toher, I said, well, how
long are you going to leave thisup? She said, well till September.
I said, oh good, thenmy friends will have a chance to
come down and see this so theyknow I'm not kidding them. Yeah.
No, there's no fooling around.I mean, that is Wow, that's
pretty special, Tom. It iswhat photographs from the book? I mean,

(04:32):
did you pick out like the onewith Karen Savelli laying on the desk
or no? I hope she doesn'thear that on this podcast. But they
chose the photos themselves, and youknow they're they're the anchor piece. Is
Bob and Bruce at Pine Knob?Yeah, yeah, of course. And

(04:56):
then the one with Bob and Bruceand Rosalie, So you know that those
are the ones that they pointed outto me first. Then they pulled something
funny on me. They said,oh, by the way, this is
on the fourteenth, Gary and Ihad to be there so we could give
this talk and everything, and wedid that and that was kind of cool.
That was that night on the fourteenthand the lady said, oh,

(05:17):
by the way, you have tobe here tomorrow morning at eight thirty.
I said why. She said,because they're going to put you on Channel
two. I said, oh,okay, So we had to get up
early and get on down there again, and then they interviewed me on Channel
two, which was kind of cool. I like that. When did you
start, actually, now, youknow, taking photos of Bob Seeger And

(05:42):
did did you ever have any ideathat these things would turn out to be
so historical? No? I didnot. I took pictures of him right
out of the box. My firstgig with them was at Callahan Hall at
UOD and I pictures there. Itook some pictures when we went down to
Carbondale, Illinois for the second gigthat I did with them, and then

(06:08):
we'd go in the studio and Ishot pictures in the studio, and you
know, I just I recorded everythingthat I was doing with him. And
when I became road manager, whichwas in the spring of nineteen sixty nine,
I really went to town with mycamera. I photographed everything I could.

(06:31):
Yeah, And I mean you've really, in a sense, you've documented
his career from the early days almostright up to the very end. And
you know what a display that hasgot to be at the Historical Museum.
I'm going to definitely have to makeit on down there. Well. Being

(06:51):
the photographer of these shots, evenI was blown away at how nice the
display was. I looked at itand I said, I did all this.
She goes yep. Yeah. Whenthey blow them up that big,
right, they probably looked fabulous.They were happy with it. Put it

(07:13):
that way, yeah, no question. So tell me about those early days.
Sixty eight sixty nine, you're justjoining up with the management team Bob
Seger. It wasn't the Silver BulletBand then, was it. Oh?
No, it was. The veryfirst group was Bob Seger and the last
heard they changed the name to theBob Seger System. And then I stayed

(07:40):
on the road with the Bob SegarSystem all the way through, you know,
recording Smoking Ops and back in seventytwo and Seager seventh and all the
albums that we did on Palladium,which was Punches, the label and then
I stayed for a while. Bobdecided he wanted to go solo, and

(08:03):
I said, and he said,no, no, man, I'm going
solo. I said, okay,great for me. All I got to
do is lay out a rug foryou to stand on, put up the
pa and sit down and light upwith camel and watch the show. That
only lasted a little while, andhe decided to get a band together again,
and they did and he had KeyGarden and Van Winkle for a while.

(08:26):
We ended up playing the John SinclairResting Peace John Johnson Clair Freedom Rally
in seventy one. Anne Arbor.Yeah, actually, my wife and I
had just kind of met, andthat was one of the first concerts I
took her to on a date.She was supposed to be home at midnight.

(08:50):
We didn't get home till five inthe morning because John Lennon didn't even
come out till three a m.But, yeah, thank you for bringing
up Johnson. Claire Douse absolutely restin Peace. We had a riot at
that when we were when we firstgot there, we were saying, Bob
and I were standing in the likethis dack stage area where the cars pull

(09:15):
in and you know, and thepeople that are playing there get out of
their cars and stuff, and wewere standing there talking leaning against the wall
and this big white limo pulls up, and out of the limo comes Yoko.
Oh no, She nods at thetwo of us. Then Lennon got
out and he looked at me,and I had my camera with me,

(09:37):
but I didn't take a picture unfortunately. Wow. But he looked at me
and he did that thing with hiseyebrows where he puts him up. Then
he went to Bob and thanked himfor coming to the show and playing for
it. And that's the last,first and last time I ever met John
Lennon. Well, I mean thatwas pretty good, you know, I
know, it was a thrill.I mean that was you know, when

(10:00):
you look back on John's life,that was one of the big highlights.
He really didn't do much live,so no, you know, to see
him there was pretty incredible. Thatwas definitely there's you know, Lenny Sinclair
on John's wife at the time.It filmed that and if you go on
YouTube you can see Seeger playing acouple of chuck Berry tombes from that show.

(10:28):
It's really cool. Yeah, thatera was just it's just fascinating to
me that Bob Seger era right there, especially you know you mentioned that solo
stint where you know he just youknow, did it himself. If you
can find the Brand New Morning album, Brand New Morning, that's what it
was called. Yeah. Now,the song was the song I really liked

(10:48):
on that was Railroad Days. Yeah, Railroad Days. That was my favorite
too on that album. I likedit a lot. Bob didn't like the
album too much, and that's probablywhy he decided to get right back to
band stuff, you know. Yeah, he probably realized, gee, you
know, this would sound much betterif I had drums, bass, had

(11:11):
a keyboard. If you can evenfind that album today, it's probably worth
about a thousand bucks. Yeah,it's easier to rock when you have when
you have all of that. Sowhat was your first experience like meeting Bob
Seger And who introduced you to him? Who who introduced you to him?
Was it Punch? Was it BillBlackwell? Who was no? No,

(11:33):
Blackwell was still in college? Oh, okay, I had. I had
gone to the hideout in nineteen sixtyfour with a bunch of my friends from
Rochester. We went down to thewhat they called the Gross point hideout.
It was really in another city.Yeah, it was in Saint Clair Shore

(11:54):
As I believe, Yeah, yeahthat or yeah, yeah, one of
those cities I remember. And itwas in a basement of a bullying alley
or something. Well that was therecording studio. I'll tell you about that
in a minute. So we getthere and my friends and I go inside
and I meet this girl right away, really nice girl. She says,

(12:16):
hey, let's go out to thecar and talk about the things. I
said, okay. So we wentoutside and I'll see you at the hideout.
If you went in, you weren'tsupposed to come back, you know,
if you left, you weren't supposedto come back in. And we
were outside and then we decided tocome back in, and we walked up
to the side of the building andSeeger came out to have a smoke.

(12:41):
He opened the door and came outand she goes, oh, maybe we
can go in this way. Isaid, oh, let's go find out.
And I said okay, And Isaid, Bob, can we come
in this way? And he goes, why were you guys already in?
And I said yeah, and hegoes, that's okay, come in.
So we walk in and I walkin when Buzzy Van Houghton, he's the

(13:05):
guy that he's the doorman that's youknow, supposed to make sure people don't
drink and you know, and arenot over twenty one and all that.
He said, Hey, where's thatgirl that you went outside with? I
said, oh, she's right here, right here, and she wasn't right
there, and Buzzy looks, hegoes there she is talking about. Then

(13:28):
Buzzy says, yeah, won't seeher no more. It was my first
introduction to Bob. Yeah, wow, all right, well yeah, and
I've worked with buzz Van Houghton inradio for christ I don't know, twenty
years. So your photographs are goingto be on display at the Detroit Historical
Museum through September all summer. That'sthat's great. People got to get out

(13:52):
there and check that out. Now. I was with you. I think
it might have been last year,right around this time at Ito Ramedaner and
Royal Oak, and they always havethat place is great. They do great
things for artists like yourself. Andyou had your artwork on display, your
photographs, and I remember you wereselling, you know, we bought some

(14:13):
and people were buying them. Thankyou? Now can people purchase these still?
Do you have copies that you selland how could they get that?
Or yes? Okay website okay,it's Tom Westler w E S C H

(14:35):
L E R Photography dot com.And that website has just been put up.
It started about three or four daysago, and okay it's up now.
And all those photos of Seeger I'mincluding and then plus a lot of
my other ones, like the firsttime Pink Floyd ever played here, they

(14:58):
opened for the who Grandy Ballroom.There's photos. A lot of my photos
are up there. Well. Yeah, the one that was near and dear
to my heart was Jimmy Hendrix playingCobo Hall and you took some photographs of
that, and that was my veryfirst concert ever. It was nineteen sixty

(15:18):
eighth Cobo Arena. Yeah. Iwas expecting to hear Purple Haze and Foxy
Lady and he comes out and doesthe entire Electric Lady Land album nobody had
ever heard because it wasn't even outyet. I mean that's because Hendrix is
a genius. He really was.That gig was very It was unusual for

(15:43):
me because all those amps, thesun amps, that were on the stage
for the bass player. Those weremine from the store that I worked at.
That's how I got to be thereand got to take the pictures and
all that kind of stuff. Iworked at a music store called Artists Music.

(16:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, and wehad we had three stores in the
Detroit area, and I was theyoung eighteen year old truck driver, so
I got to go to all thevenues. Back then, bands didn't major
bands didn't travel with three semis loadedwith stuff, and like they do now,
they depended. They brought their guitarsand their drums, and they depended

(16:27):
on the promoter too, or ifthey had a deal with a manufacturer,
they would get the equipment from thestore that handled that stuff. And our
store handled all of it. Andyou know, we had everything I set
up for the Yardbirds when they playedat the State's there, and it was

(16:48):
box equipment that they wanted, andso I brought the box equipment and Jimmy
Page came right up to me andhe said, right, oh, my
goodness, Thomas, You've got somegreat stories and some incredible photographs and right
now on display at the Detroit HistoricalMuseum through the summer through September. Just

(17:11):
congratulations Thomas on an incredible career throughoutthe years, but on what's happening with
you right now. You couldn't bemore happy, I would imagine, and
what absolutely truth. Thank you verymuch, Doug. It's always a pleasure
to talk to you, whether it'sin person or on the phone. Well,
it's always a pleasure to see you, and especially to talk about great

(17:33):
successes like this with people who havereally earned it and deserve it, and
you are one of them, Thomas, So a real tip of the cap
to you. Thank you very much, my friend. All Right, Well,
have a great showing. I'm gladyou don't have to get up at
eight o'clock in the morning for therest of this thing, and we will
definitely get down there and check itout. I'll let you know you know

(17:56):
my thoughts on it, but I'msure it is, you know, fantastic.
So okay, thanks you, thanksagain, all right, thanks again.
Thomas Weschler, road manager photographer forthe Bob Seeger Band. Right here
on Detroit's wheels