Cowboy State Daily Interview: 50 Years Of George Thorogood Is Awesome To The Bone

For artists like George Thorogood, or any music act really, making it all comes down to that one big break. It’s usually a first single that gets a ton of airplay, goes viral and, well, a career is launched.

For Thorogood, it happened pretty much like it has for so many before and after him. Rejection, tenacity and right-place-at-the-right-time luck.

Thorogood is and always has been a blues guy. He loves mining obscure numbers and repurposing them in a jacked-up signature way of his band, The Destroyers: harder, faster, louder.

That’s what he was doing when his first record label found him, signed him, and put him on a relentless tour schedule in the late 1970s.

His eponymous “George Thorogood and The Destroyers” in 1977 and “Move It On Over” the following year — both on Rounder Records, both going Gold — hit at just the right time. Disco was king, but not all worshipped strobe lights and leisure suits.

“We had a couple things going for us when we released our first two records. They were very raw. Very low budget. Rounder didn’t have a lot of money,” Thorogood told Cowboy State Daily. “But they caught people’s attention.

“During that time the disco craze was very big and a lot of people were a little down on that for some reason. I don't know why. And we were embraced as something different.”

Rock and roll has made similar runs. Birthed out of teen rebellion to the big band sounds of the 1940s, the genre roars back into the mainstream following temporary hiatuses.

A disco slapback helped Thorogood’s Destroyers get off the ground. Seattle’s grunge scene was the alternative answer to the over-synthed new wave ’80s decade.

Whenever mainstream pop has become too refined, artists like Thorogood swing the pendulum back to music at its rawest.

Move It On Over

Known in certain circles, Thorogood was still searching for that signature song, the big hit that would define him.

More than five years knocking around on the road playing mainly old blues standards, The Destroyers were just treading water when the ’80s came and still opening for bigger bands like the Rolling Stones.

Maybe “Just Can't Make It,” the Hound Dog Taylor cover off “More George Thorogood and The Destroyers” in 1980, was destined to be the band’s defining number.

It was then Thorogood finally put words to a blues riff the band had always warmed up with during sound checks. The best songs come easy and Lonesome George said “Bad to the Bone” wrote itself in about two hours.

Still, Thorogood never envisioned it a song he would perform. He first shopped it around, beginning with his idol.

Pitched to Muddy Waters as something that would fit nicely into the legendary bluesman’s catalogue as a modern-day version of his 1955 standard “Mannish Boy,” he got nowhere. Waters’ people reportedly told the brash 27-year-old white guy from Delaware to pound sand.

Thorogood thought it reverse-discrimination, but the rejection lit a fire. He recorded it himself, released it on 1982’s “Bad to the Bone” and, though it was a slow burn, the song solidified Thorogood into the annals of boogie-woogie blues.

I Drink Alone

Thorogood’s sweat-drenched live shows are still high energy even as the showman turned 74 this year.

The Destroyers play an average of 70-75 shows a year these days. That’s a far cry from 1981 when George Thorogood and The Delaware Destroyers played an unimaginable 50 states in 50 days.

The ambitious 50/50 tour was nuts.

Other than flights to and from shows in Hawaii and Alaska, George and company drove, sometimes up to 500 miles a day, in a converted checker taxi. It conjures up images of the Bluesmobile (1974 Dodge Monaco sedan) used by the Blue Brothers in their 1980 Universal Pictures film.

The group was originally trying to play at the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins, Wyoming. The show ended up getting moved to Casper.

“When we played 50 states in 50 days, we played in Casper,” Thorogood remembered. “It was crazy. When we played there, Casper was about 50,000 people. We played a venue that seats about 2,000 and we drew 1,900 people.

“That’s a pretty good percentage for the amount of people that lived in that town at that time.”

Thorogood, who is an imposing 6-foot-2, paces himself more these days. The former baseball player was once a minor league standout in the 1970s before an axe replaced his bat.

“My routine [on the road] is to try to get into a horizontal position as often as possible. You can take that any way you want, alright?” Thorogood said. “Look, we have an excellent crew around us. The best thing for all involved is to leave Thorogood alone. Keep him away from other people.

“I have a tendency to be pretty much of a blabbermouth. And you know, I'm getting up there in years and I like people. I like to talk to them. But I gotta save my voice and energy for the show. So, they try to isolate me as much as possible. Get as much rest and liquids as I can. It sounds boring but it is necessary.”

Thorogood says he is looking forward to a return to Wyoming. It’s been a while.

The band is in Park City, Utah, the night before it will descend upon Casper at the Ford Wyoming Center on Aug. 14.

“What do you call Wyoming? I know you got a cowboy on the license plate. What’s your moniker over there, the Cowboy State?” he asked.

Willie And The Hand Jive

Thorogood hasn’t set foot in a recording studio in a while. But his hits live on and a robust touring schedule proves he is still in demand.

“I'm very fortunate over the years that our music has never really gone away,” Thorogood said. “When we started, there was no MTV. When MTV came along, we had the right song at the right time: ‘Bad to the Bone.’

“A few years after that we had classic rock radio. And we rode the gravy train of that. I don't deny it. Now there is Sirius radio, which is all over the world and in every category. I've heard songs on there by our band that I forgot I even recorded.

“You have so many more outlets for exposure now. Due to that we have been able to retain some kind of image. Of course, not on a level of a Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift. Nobody can be up to that level. But we’ve been able to maintain.”

Thorogood shows continue to pack punch.

His tour is less reunion garbage like some rock band rebrands. George can still lay it down. Drummer Jeff Simon has been there since Day One. Bassist Bill Blough played on the first album and never left. The newest Destroyers, Jim Suhler (lead guitar) and Buddy Leach (sax), still count 55 years with the band between them.

Thorogood says he never tires of playing the same material night after night. “I Drink Alone,” “Gear Jammer,” “If You Don’t Start Drinkin’” and “Get a Haircut” are all predictable staples on the setlist.

Two-thirds of the way through the night, Thorogood will likely cup his ear and ask the crowd what they came to hear before hammering the opening notes of “Bad to the Bone.”

“The other cats kind of stick to what they did originally [on the records]. As time goes on, my memory fades as to how I originally did it, so it evolves into something different which is nice,” Thorogood told Cowboy State Daily. “And you’ll get very few solos, anyway, from me.

“Let’s face it, I'm a rhythm guitar player and a slide guitar player. Jimmy Suhler is brilliant at what you would call conventional rock/blues lead guitar. That’s just not me.

“I've heard some people come to see our show and go, ‘Well, Thorogood didn’t play that many solos. He relied on his other guitar player too much.’ I say, ‘No, you don't get it. I don't play lead guitar. I'm not any good at it. I'm rhythm and slide. Jimmy plays lead. He sticks to the main thing. I just get there and let it go, and let nature takes its course.’”

No Particular Place To Go

George Thorogood and the (Delaware) Destroyers are survivors. Plugging away at a genre that has never truly gone away. Thorogood, rhythm and blues. They’re one in the same and as enduring as the Mississippi Delta.

They’ve been punks to Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.”

“Coming out of disco there was also this punk rock thing happening. We would, believe it or not, draw a small amount of punk rock audiences who thought we were a punk rock band,” Thorogood said. “I thought, ‘I don't know about that’ but every dollar’s green, right?”

Fast forward to now. With programs Ableton and Pro Tools, the computer age gives anyone with purchase power the ability to record in their bedroom, market and distribute with a click.

“In this day and age where you are recording into a computer. Something’s gained and something’s lost. Technology might be brilliant, but there might be some character lost from the days when you recorded with one mic in the studio and the amps were kinda sub-par,” Thorogood said. “Sometimes that added to the charm of the music.”

It’s hard to imagine the original Destroyer being anything but raw. Could he fit in today’s Gaga world?

“It would be interesting if I were starting out now. I won't say I prefer the times I came up in, because with all the exposure you can give yourself nowadays from your own house,” Thorogood pondered. “You can make you own video, make your own album.

“That would have been interesting to not have to rely on a record company or rent a studio, which costs a lot of money. It poses an interesting thought.”

Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.