To capture the performances they wanted for 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Thorogood & the Destroyers enlisted the help of producer Tom Hambridge, who has worked with legends like Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. "I met Tom the first time in 2002, we were doing a record with Jim Gaines," says Thorogood, "and he came in to give me some vocal assistance. I talked to him a little bit and I found out that he was a massive Destroyers fan, crazy about "Madison Blues." I'd never met anybody in the business, on that side of the console, who was that turned on by what I've done in music. We started on shows on shows, him opening for us, us occasionally playing together. So when this happened, I said 'this is the guy we want.' Tom is an up-and-coming guy, he produced Susan Tedeschi; he did Buddy Guy, which won a Grammy. He's the guy in that world right now."
The Chess Legacy
Although he later developed a life-time love affair with Chess Records and its artists, Thorogood didn't know what to make of the label's records at first. "When I heard my first Chess record, it was very hard to listen to because I'd been listening to well-produced things on the radio by the Beatles and the Beach Boys, people like that," says George. "It was very raw, and their recording style was very primitive. It was hard to get behind it, because my ears were not adjusted to it as a kid."
While he's proud of the record the band has made in 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Thorogood is still somewhat puzzled why he was asked to make the Chess tribute album. "They probably want to re-master a lot of that stuff so that it would sound better," he says of the label's original recordings, "but I guess to get attention to it they – and I'm flattered to think of myself as a 'high profile' rock artist – I still can't understand why they didn't go after Eric Clapton, or Jeff Beck, or John Hammond or somebody like that, but hey, they chose me, so I'm flattered." Thorogood definitely has an affinity for the material that many other blues-oriented artists may not.
Eric Clapton & the Blues
"Clapton made his statement back in 1971 with Howlin' Wolf's The London Sessions album," he says. "That album brought our attention to a lot of things, so he's already done it. The Stones have already done their Chess days. I've done a lot of Chess stuff already, over 20 tunes that were done by Chess artists, so I had to hip Capitol that "Tail Dragger" wasn't the first Chess song I'd every approached...I've been doing this stuff since I started. They said 'all the better, that's why we want you.' It was tough to find tunes that I hadn't already done, or that other artists hadn't done."
"Blues, more than anything, is a style of music where people are really exposing their soul...like Janis Joplin, or Otis Redding, or Jimi Hendrix," says Thorogood. "It's all a business now, and they pick the artists today for that reason, and they're not thinking of it in those terms, they're thinking of 'fame, fame, fame.' It's like a machine, now…you talk to them, and they're lost. I ask them, 'what's your passion? What really gets you?' Like Bette Midler once said, 'I always feel kind of bad that I went middle of the road, I want to do soulful things like Tom Waits did,' she admitted it. Billy Joel said the same thing."
A Passion For The Blues
"Me, I can't play anything else," says George. "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!" It was those early Chess songs, performed by the Stones and heard as a teenager, that charted the course of Thorogood's career. "When I heard the Rolling Stones, they offered hope to me," he says. "When I heard Bob Dylan, he was the truth, but I thought 'no one's ever going to do what Dylan does.' The Beatles represented freedom to me, they had all the freedom in the world...they were young, they were good-looking, they were talented, they were rich, they were famous...they had it all."
"The Stones represented hope; they weren't going to make it on their looks, and at the time they weren't writing things like "Satisfaction" and "Ruby Tuesday," they were doing blues covers and they were on the Ed Sullivan Show. So I thought that there was hope for a guy like me...a slim chance, but there's a chance. So I started listening to the music they listened to; pretty soon I was as passionate about Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley as they were...." (Phone interview, June 15, 2011)
