Thorogood says he doesn’t mind performing them again and again, though, because “We play for a different audience every night. In all, they’ve released fifteen studio albums (and Thorogood also released a solo album, Party of One, in 2017).īy now, many George Thorogood and the Destroyers songs have become cultural touchstones that audiences expect to hear at every show the band plays. They continued this momentum with subsequent releases, finally gaining international stardom 1982 with “Bad to the Bone” (the title track from their fifth album). Their debut album, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, came out in 1977 and gave them their first hit single with “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” Their next album, 1978’s Move It On Over, was just as successful thanks to the title track. Thorogood put together his band, the Delaware Destroyers (later shortened to the Destroyers) in the mid-‘70s, and they found their footing after relocating to Boston later in that decade. You may as well go out and be one – but you can’t just lay on the couch all the time dreaming of it.’ You sleep ‘til four in the afternoon like a rock star. “They meant to say, ‘When are you going to do this, George? It’s all you talk about. “They came up and said one word to me: ‘ When?’” he says. Thorogood admits he only got serious about a career in music when he was already a couple of years out of high school – and he did so at his parents’ urging. I just thought that was a natural way to go.” John Lee Hooker style of guitar and the slide guitar of Elmore James. There are certain areas of it that I adapted to very quickly. It’s not unlike having a restaurant: you have steady customers, and you put something new on the menu you think they would like.”Īs for why Thorogood has never strayed from his blues rock style, he says with a laugh, “It’s easy: I can’t play anything else! George Thorogood knows two songs, and about a hundred variations of those two songs.” He does have a more serious answer about what attracted him to playing blues in the first place, though: “I dug it. “After you do a couple of albums and you get that under your belt, and you play live night after night after night, you get a sense of what your audience enjoys hearing,” Thorogood says, “so we would select songs or write songs according to the taste of the Destroyers fans. Thorogood says fans’ reactions have often guided the decisions on which songs to perform and record. His versions of “Who Do You Love?” (by Bo Diddly), “Move It On Over” (Hank Williams), “My Way” (Eddie Cochran), and “Nobody But Me” (The Isley Brothers), among others, have become as famous as the originals (and in some cases, even more so). You can put together a song in two hours, or you can spend a whole month on it.”īesides his own original songs, Thorogood is also known as a particularly memorable interpreter of other artists’ songs. “There’s all different ways to approach this. I put some words around it or I’d have an interesting title and try to make some music to it,” Thorogood continues. “I’d be banging on the guitar and a lick would happen. And then come home and work on the song some more. Just checking things out and letting the ideas flow. Then that night I’d go out and see a band. “I would generally get up in the morning – or afternoon or whatever – and work on a song and get some exercise, then go bowling alone, and I’d come home alone. “My general way of doing it was, I’d have to spend a lot of time alone with no distractions,” he says. Looking back on that time, Thorogood recalls how he went about his songwriting process.
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