In the 1976 Bob Seger hit "Night Moves," he sings about a young love: We'd steal away every chance we could To the backroom, to the alley or the trusty woods Dupree's song is more of a proposition, as he is asking a girl to steal away into the night with him after he catches her sneaking a glance. No word on if she took him up on the offer.
The lyric doesn't have any special meaning to Dupree, who says it's not about anyone in particular. "It was a very simple rhyme song that was not anything meant to be heavy," he said in The Yacht Rock Book: The Oral History of the Soft, Smooth Sounds of the '70s and '80s. "It was a song where the words and the melody fit together, and they were cool. I thought it was nice."
Robbie Dupree didn't have a record deal when he recorded this song; he included it on a five-song demo that he shopped to record companies, but he found no takers. Short on cash, he took a job loading carpet on trucks. A few months later, he finally got an offer after the brother of the drummer on his demo played it for an executive at Elektra, who wasn't impressed with "Steal Away" but liked another song on the tape. "Steal Away" was the first single; it was a substantial hit, climbing to #6 in the US, but it had incredible staying power, getting constant airplay even generations later. Dupree's next single, "Hot Road Hearts," went to #15. Elektra dropped Dupree in the middle of recording his third album, as they felt his West Coast sound was outdated. "Like all lame corporate companies," he later commented to Rock United. "They chased the New Wave."
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