In the 34 years since the release of their self-titled 1977 debut album, George Thorogood and the Destroyers have forged a career of exceptional durability. Delivering guitar-driven roadhouse rock and houserockin' blues, the blueprint established by that debut has been followed by the band ever since, and songs from that album like "Madison Blues" and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" are crowd-pleasers still played by Thorogood and the Destroyers to this day.
This basic blues-rock sound has brought Thorogood criticism from blues purists even while it's made Thorogood and the Destroyers one of the most popular blues-based bands on the road and in the studio. Over the course of 15 live and studio albums – two which have gone "Platinum" for a million units sold, and six that have been certified as "Gold" – the hard-working trio has become known for signature songs like "Bad To The Bone," "Move It On Over," "Born To Be Bad," "Get A Haircut," and their raucous cover of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?"
A Classic Rock Radio Staple
Thorogood is the first to admit that his musical palette is limited, and that the fans expect to hear the old songs that have dominated classic rock radio for decades. "I bumped into Dickey Betts," says Thorogood, "and I said 'Dickey, how come you don't play "Rambling Gambling Man" in your show every night?' I live in L.A. and I hear that song on the radio maybe twice a week. He said, 'well, it's an old song, it's going back…' I said 'they're still playing you on the radio. Do you know how big L.A. is? If you're playing on the radio, you ain't dead!' Two years later, I'm watching the Grammy Awards on TV and they had Dickey Betts playing with Elvin Bishop. Guess what song he was playing?"
Thorogood credits his longevity on his handful of hits, even while he's still releasing new material for listeners to chew on. "You got to have those tunes," he says, "something to build on around those tunes. There's only one Miles Davis can walk out there and just blow his brains out on his horn and freak everybody out. The rest of us mortals got to have a catalog. Especially with classic rock radio, which everybody has grown up on the past 25 years. They've heard these songs and they still expect to hear them. If you stay healthy long enough, they're going to hire you to just do that. I think that's pretty cool!"
The Golden Era of Rock 'n' Roll
The guitarist uses Bob Dylan's never-ending tour as an example. "People see Dylan, they want to hear the old songs. There's something else to be said about that," says George. "As great as Modern Times was, as great as his two acoustic albums were...it's not as good as his old stuff. That's the bottom line. The reason they want to hear it, it's not because they're re-living their youth, it's because they were better songs.
"From 1955 to about 1975, that was the 'Golden Era,' the era where 90% of the top stuff in rock came out. The kids love "Bad To The Bone" just like their dads do; like their moms do...the kids love "Get A Hair Cut." There are kids that love "Move It On Over"...a good song is a good song is a good song. Are you going to walk out of a Stones show and say 'dammit, they played "Jumpin' Jack Flash" again?' No one's going to be disappointed."
George Thorogood's 2120 South Michigan Avenue
2120 South Michigan Avenue is the latest from George Thorogood & the Destroyers, and is the band's heartfelt tribute to Chess Records and its artists, named for the Rolling Stones instrumental and the address of the label's long-time Chicago home. But the album didn't necessarily start out that way as much as it evolved into the excellent homage that it became. "My idea was to try to keep the Delaware Destroyers on the road for another couple of years," Thorogood says, "and get a couple of tunes on there."
"Once I got into it, though, Capitol wanted to have a tribute to Chess Records because they were so turned on my the tune we did, "Taildragger," which is a Howlin' Wolf song that was on Chess. They wanted a whole album of that stuff. I said 'that's easier said than done, but I will give it a try.' So we got Tom Hambridge to play drums and producing, but we never would have pulled it off if we didn't have Jim Suhler on guitar, out of Texas, because he can do anything."
Songs From The Chess Catalog
"My style is a little limited to Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry," George admits. "That covers three songs, and you have to do more than that. I've been doing those three riffs since 1977...that's how I got everybody's attention to begin with. So I had that covered, but it wasn't going to be as easy as you think. When we finally wrapped it up, I was about 15 pounds lighter and I slept for a month."
"Capitol has a list of material that they were interested in," George says of the album's track list, "there were a couple of them that I'd suggested, but for the most part, they wanted "Let It Rock," they wanted "Spoonful," they wanted a Muddy Waters song..."Two Trains Running" came up. They expressed the artists they wanted, and we said 'you're going to get one [song] by each artist, you can't have two by somebody, and it has to be a Chess thing, either recorded on Chess or a high profile Chess artist."
Producer Tom Hambridge
"That's when we started getting into some difficulties," says George, "because I've been doing the same kind of stuff for over 30 years, so I said 'we're going to need somebody else to play with us.' There's nobody in the world better at playing Chuck Berry or Howlin' Wolf than me and Billy and Jeff together. Outside of that, we were going to need some other players, and we were going to need a really good producer to help me with this."
