About
The man on the bus
Tom Weschler wasn't shooting from the press pit. As Bob Seger's road manager, he was inside the machine — with a camera, and with access no press pass ever granted. When he wasn't on the road, he was Detroit's inside man at the Grande Ballroom, Cobo, Olympia, and the Masonic, photographing the golden era of the greatest rock city in America.
Every photograph in this archive is his — shot by him, owned by him, printed from his own negatives. No label licensed these. No management approved them. This is what it actually looked like.
Timeline
- 1964
Age 15: photographs the Beatles’ first Ed Sullivan appearance off the family TV with a Kodak Brownie Super 27 — and sells prints to schoolmates. Never looks back.
- 1968
Delivering band equipment by day, shooting Detroit’s Grande Ballroom by night: Pink Floyd, The Who, Cream, Fleetwood Mac, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
- 1968–70s
Meets Bob Seger and becomes his road manager — tour manager and photographer through the hard-gigging years before Live Bullet and Night Moves, working with Seger and manager Punch Andrews. Designs Seger album covers along the way.
- 1970s–80s
Promo photography for Capitol, Atlantic, Mercury, EMI, Columbia, and Arista across the Midwest; shoots feature subjects for CREEM Magazine. Frames from these years: the Rolling Stones at the Masonic, Queen and Tom Petty at Cobo, Seger and Springsteen sharing a stage at Pine Knob.
- 2009
Co-authors Travelin’ Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger (Wayne State University Press) with Gary Graff — foreword by John Mellencamp, afterword by Kid Rock. The book becomes a Detroit Historical Museum exhibition.
Sources: Wayne State University Press · WCSX Detroit · Detroit Historical Society