“Hollywood Nights” (B. Seger) – Bob Seger & The Silver Bulleet Band; Capitol label, # 12 Billboard Hot 100 – 1978. Inducted in 2013.
Released as the second single from Seger’s 1978 LP, “Stranger In Town”, “Hollywood Nights” was one of the last songs written for Seger’s important follow-up to “Night Moves”, his certified platinum album released in 1976. According to the Seger File web site, the cover photo for “Stranger In Town” was shot on the lawn of the house that Seger rented while recording the album in Los Angeles. The house was in the Hollywood Hills and helped provide the inspiration for “Hollywood Nights”. 
In a radio interview Seger explained, “I had to stay in LA for 2 and 1/2 months while recording the album. I rented a house for the second month and a half. It was up in the Hollywood Hills, and every night when we’d get back from the studio I would look out and there would be all the lights of the city. I was just sitting there with an electric guitar, and I started bashing it out.”
Seger explained some of the lyrics to the Detroit Free Press: “The chorus just came into my head. I was driving around in the Hollywood Hills and I started singing “Hollywood nights, Hollywood hills, Above all the lights, Hollywood nights. I went back to my rented house, and there was a Time magazine with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover”, Seger recalled. I said “Let’s write a song about a guy from the Midwest who runs into someone like this and gets caught up in the whole bizzaro thing.”
