About The Song
“Roll Me Away” is Bob Seger’s open-road manifesto, issued as the third single from The Distance on May 10, 1983. Produced by Jimmy Iovine and backed with “Boomtown Blues,” it distilled Seger’s mix of heartland punch and reflective storytelling into a four-and-a-half-minute escape: big piano, clean guitars, and a voice that sounds both restless and resolute. Coming after the Top-20 “Even Now,” the single sustained the album’s radio momentum well into 1983.
The song’s spark was literal: Seger took a solitary motorcycle trip west toward Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and came home with a narrative of leaving, learning, and looking for a truer version of himself. That ride shows up throughout the lyric—the long miles, the barroom detour, the moment of clarity at the Continental Divide—yet the writing stays plainspoken and cinematic rather than confessional. It reads like the diary of a traveler who understands that moving on is sometimes the only way forward.
On record, the arrangement is taut and purposeful. Roy Bittan’s piano sets the tone with ringing, hymn-like figures, Waddy Wachtel’s guitar provides lean counterlines, and Russ Kunkel’s drums keep the groove steady and unhurried. Seger sings at conversation level, saving any bravado for the choruses; the Silver Bullet Band’s Chris Campbell (bass) and Craig Frost (organ) round out a mix that feels like a highway at dusk—wide open but not empty.
Part of the track’s pull is how precisely it balances muscle and restraint. There’s no extended solo, no studio gloss to hide behind. Instead, the performance breathes: verses stride with measured confidence, bridges ease the throttle, and the coda opens into a horizon rather than a tidy full stop. That design makes the record both a road song and a reckoning, a soundtrack for leaving and for deciding what you’re leaving for.
Commercially, the single did exactly what it needed to do. “Roll Me Away” climbed to No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached No. 13 on the Mainstream Rock chart, a strong showing for a reflective mid-tempo cut in the heart of the synth-pop era. It also helped keep The Distance in the public ear after its late-1982 release, extending a run that had already yielded big crossover numbers earlier in the year.
The song’s cultural afterlife has been unusually durable. It closes the 1985 film Mask in full and turns up in the 1984 movie Reckless; later anthologies and sports broadcasts have used it as shorthand for freedom with a cost. Those placements fit the record’s mood: the sense of a chapter turning, of motion becoming meaning. Heard out of context, it still carries the same charge—an invitation to go find out.
Today “Roll Me Away” sits near the center of Seger’s canon, a hinge between the widescreen memory of “Night Moves” and the mature reflection of “Against the Wind.” Its elements are simple—voice, piano, a steady backbeat—but they add up to something larger: a promise that clarity is possible if you’re willing to chase it. That’s why the song keeps moving people decades later. It knows the road is hard. It rolls anyway.
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Lyric
Took a look down a westbound road
Right away I made my choice
Headed out to my big two-wheeler
I was tired of my own voice
Took a bead on the northern plains
And just rolled that power on
12 hours out of Mackinac City
Stopped in a bar to have a brew
Met a girl and we had a few drinks
And I told her what I’d decided to do
She looked out the window a long, long moment
Then she looked into my eyes
She didn’t have to say a thing
I knew what she was thinkin’
Roll, roll me away
Won’t you roll me away tonight
I, too, am lost, I feel double-crossed
And I’m sick of what’s wrong and what’s right
We never even said a word
We just walked out and got on that bike
And we rolled
And we rolled clean out of sight
We rolled across the high plains
Deep into the mountains
Felt so good to me
Finally, feelin’ free
Somewhere along a high road
The air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone, oh, oh
Stood alone on a mountain top
Starin’ out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west
It was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin’
And my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin’
Roll, roll me away
I’m gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin’, gotta keep ridin’
Keep searchin’ ’til I find what’s right
And as the sunset faded I spoke to the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We’ll get it right
Roll me away
Roll me away
Come on
Roll me away
Roll