George Thorogood: Still Bad To The Bone

George Thorogood: Still Bad To The Bone

George Thorogood loves the blues. It’s evident in his grin as he stalks the stage, mugs for the crowd and plays his guitar like a man working a chain saw. No matter the venue, it feels as if you’re part of a private party at a small, closed off blues club somewhere in a slightly more dangerous part of town.

He plays the blues the way we love to hear it; raw, primal and LOUD. It seems that the blues, in the Gospel according to George, is the real thing and frankly, the only thing. His slide work is animalistic. It stings and it roars. It hits hard and yet still manages to evoke the same pain, joy and power that the blues forefathers had intended. There’s something slightly unpolished about the majority of Thorogoods’ music and it is that lack of shiny note for note production that makes it appealing.

He was born on the starting edge of the start of the rock and roll era on February 24th, 1950, in the town of Naamans Manor (neighboring Wilmington, Delaware). The middle son of 5 children, George like so many others before and after, initially harbored a dream of a professional sports career. But unlike so many others, George had actual skills and was playing semi-pro baseball for a team named, coincidentally enough, The Delaware Destroyers in the Roberto Clemente League. As a second baseman, Thorogood was an impressive talent with an eye towards a professional baseball career. But after seeing John Hammond Jr. perform in 1970, Thorogood decided that music was going to be his life, walked away from baseball and picked up the guitar.

“I started out as a solo act that played acoustic guitar. I was doing okay, but when I picked up the electric guitar, and started playing those licks you hear, then I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I still play the electric like I did an acoustic. I finger thumb pick like an acoustic blues player. I just took that style over to the electric realm,” he told Jeb Wright in an interview for Classic Rock Revisited.

He decided to head to California where he found some work opening for Bonnie Riatt and some local West Coast bluesmen but he eventually found his way back home to Delaware. In 1973 he formed the Delaware Destroyers with Michael Lenn on bass, Ron Smith as the second guitarist and drummer Jeff Simon. After a little coaxing from George, the band relocated to Boston where they took to the local blues clubs. The band recorded their first album a year later but it was not released until a few years later as Better Than The Rest. In 1975, the band met John Forward, the man who helped them land a contract with Rounder Records. It seemed an odd pairing considering that Rounder was known more as label bent on preserving folk and roots records rather than the blitz-centric blues-rock of George Throrogood and The Destroyers.

Shortly before the band released their debut album, Lenn left the band and was replaced by bassist Billy Blough. Their self-titled debut was released in 1977 and carried two monster singles, scorching covers of John Lee Hookers’ One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer’, and Elmore James ‘Madison Blues’. Despite the fact that Rounder was a relatively tiny label, the disc sold 100,000 copies occupying the top spot as the biggest selling disc in the labels history. That record didn’t last. The follow up album, Move It On Over, released in 1978, hit the Top 40 on the strength of the title track, a remake of Hank Williams classic eventually went gold selling a mammoth 500,000 copies. The album contained the hits ‘The Sky Is Crying’ and ‘Who Do You Love?’

Before their third release, Ron Smith left the band and George added sax player Hank Carter. After the release of 1980’s More George Thorogood and The Destroyers, the band was signed to EMI. It was high times indeed for the band as they opened for the Rolling Stones on a 1981 world tour. After the tour was complete, the band embarked on what is considered legendary journey; the 50/50 tour. The band played 50 dates in 50 states without a break.

George’s work ethic is legendary in rock circles. The band refused to take time off even when they had it often showing up at local clubs to play under the name of Sidewalk Frank.

The first EMI album was 1982’s Bad To The Bone, which became a staple on MTV with a video featuring George and one of his major influences and personal friend, Bo Diddley. The album went gold and stayed on the charts for almost an entire year.

Prior to the release of 1985’s Maverick, the band added Steve Chrismar as a second guitarist. Maverick gave the band two more hits, ‘Willie And The Hand Jive’ and ‘I Drink Alone’, both becoming staples of classic rock radio along with the bands previous hits. 1986 saw the release of their first live album and also the studio effort Nadine. The band struck again in 1988 with Born To Be Bad whose title track and ‘You Talk Too Much’ gave the band another round of radio hits.

The band continued to record and tour heavily through the 90’s, securing another chart hit with Get A Haircut, which made it to number 2. In 1997, the band released Rockin’ My Life Away and hit the road again in a tour to support the disc. In an on-line interview with Floyd Van Gogh, Thorogood remarked about the lack of venues for people to go out and have a good time. “Sometimes you go and see a comedian, and you walk out feeling worse than you did when you walked into the place. I say, let’s get these people up and dancing on their feet, get ‘em laughing and dancing for about 90 minutes or two hours. Let them know that there is still a good time to be had”.

The band has continued to record and tour relentlessly through into the 2000’s, still packing clubs and small venues (Thorogood insists that the band prefers the smaller venues as opposed to the larger and more impersonal touring spots). Last year, the band released 2120 South Michigan Avenue, an address known to blues fans worldwide as the location of the former Chess Records in Chicago. The record is jammed with covers of some of Chess’s memorable recordings, a homage of sorts to some of Thorogoods’ major influences. In various interviews, Thorogood admitted that he could handle some of the Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry tracks but he needed help with some of the others. That help came in the form of producer Tom Hambridge (who also played drums on some of the tracks) and additional guitarist, Texas’s Jim Suhler. “We would have never have pulled it off if we didn’t have Jim Suhler on guitar … he can do anything”. He added with a laugh, “When we finally wrapped it up, I was about 15 pounds lighter and I slept for a month”.

So with a career that spans 40 years, George Thorogood is still blasting hard blues, his passion for the music evident both on stage and in the studio. It’s a good thing he loves the blues because according to George himself, it’s all he knows how to do. “Me, I can’t play anything else. If I could go into the studio and create Bridge Over Troubled Water, I’d do it! I’m limited; when you hear me on stage live, that’s my passion. There’s no faking it!”
And to anyone who has spent any time listening to George Thorogood, there should be no doubt. He is not faking it. For hard-core, in your face, good time, after midnight, hooting and hollering blues-rock, George Thorogood is as real as it gets.