Get Outta Here: 'Katmandu' by Bob Seger
- edgarstreetbooks
- Feb 21
- 2 min read
‘200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs Vol. 2’ Book Excerpt
Frank Mastropolo
Bob Seger mixed classic rock with a geography lesson in “Katmandu,” first released on his 1975 LP Beautiful Loser. The single reached №43. The song refers to the capital of Nepal, located in the Himalayan Mountain range. Seger wrote “Katmandu” to poke fun at the music business.
“‘Katmandu’ was a song about getting completely out of the country because nobody cares,” Seger said in a 1979 radio interview. “It was written sort of tongue in cheek to the industry: You know, if you’d gone through what I’ve gone through, you’d want to go to Katmandu, too. You’d just want to disappear, if you can dig that.”
Working with the Special Olympics in 1991, Seger finally got to visit the city he called “K-K-K-K-K-K-Katmandu.” Seger described the experience in the Detroit Free Press.
“A few weeks ago, I was in Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, visiting King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev. I didn’t expect to end up talking about my music with a monarch, but at one point, out of the blue, the king leaned back and asked, ‘What made you write that song, anyway?’
“I gave him the same answer I’ve given many interviewers. When I was five, my dad would show me National Geographic. When I was eight, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Mt. Everest for the first time. I always was fascinated by exotic places, and I wrote the song from the perspective of someone who yearned for a place as far from America as anybody could get, someplace exotic and distant.
“I found visiting Katmandu a bittersweet experience, however. There is, of course, the great beauty of the Himalayas and of the Buddhist temples, as well as the spirituality of the people. But there is no disguising the fact that this is a third world country; it’s the fourth poorest in the world; one in five children is dead before age 1; the average adult life span is 42 years.
“What made the trip most worthwhile was working with Special Olympics. We had such a great time with the kids. I worked with 14-year old Min Sejuwal, who is from a town in the Mu Gu province west of Katmandu. He was such a great kid. His father was a leper with no hands who died when Min was a year old.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs Vol. 2, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
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