"Night Moves" has roots in Bob Seger's adolescence; he wrote the song in an attempt to capture the "freedom and looseness" he experienced during that period of his life and the song is largely autobiographical.  At a certain point, he began socializing with a rougher crowd, who thought he was cool because he played music.  His group of friends would often hold parties they called "grassers", which were held in a farmer's field outside Ann Arbor.  Through these parties, he met a woman whose boyfriend was in the military and was away.  "It's about this dark-haired Italian girl that I went out with when I was 19, she was one year older than me," he later recalled.

The song took Seger over six months to complete writing. He had recently purchased a house due to the success of his first live album, Live Bullet, and he and the band would write and practice in its basement.  The ending lyrics were written first. The use of descriptive imagery was inspired by Kris Kristofferson's “Me and Bobby McGee”, a song that Seger loved and which motivated him as he was developing his writing style.  The catalyst for writing "Night Moves" came after Seger saw the 1973 film American Graffiti:  "I came out of the theater thinking, ‘Hey, I've got a story to tell, too!  Nobody has ever told about how it was to grow up in my neck of the woods.”

The song was recorded at Nimbus Nine Studios in Toronto.  Seger and the Silver Bullet Band had gone there for three days to record a few tracks with The Guess Who's producer, Jack Richardson at the request of Seger's manager, who wanted him to produce a more "commercial" song.  Richardson remembered Seger first playing the song at a piano in his office, though Seger did not feel it was good enough to record.

Much of Seger's band had returned home by this point and the song was recorded with several local session musicians.

Released as a single in December 1976, it reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Seger's first hit single since "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" from 1969.  The song was responsible for changing Seger from being a popular regional favorite into a national star.

Various Sources