Spending over 40 years tearing up bars and night clubs with his raw, scorching rock boogies, George Thorogood and his band The Destroyers channelled Chicago's blues greats and adopted swaggering Rolling Stones flavoured guitar riffs as they notched up sales of over 15 million records and had the world stuttering along to their huge signature tune 'Bad to the Bone'.
Like many of his generation, Thorogood's world was changed when he saw The Beatles on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' as a kid, and he was soon out playing house parties in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware and became obsessed with blues legends like Elmore James, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. Packing in a career as a minor league baseball player, he made his way from busking on street corners in San Francisco and roadying for Hound Dog Taylor in the early 1970s to supporting The Rolling Stones and jamming with Bo Diddley at the giant Live Aid concert in 1985. Propelled by regular airplay on MTV, hit single 'Bad to the Bone' reached number three in the US charts in 1982 and continues to be an iconic piece of growling blues attitude that is regularly used in advertising campaigns and movies and at sports stadiums.
Remaining a big figure on the blues-rock scene, Thorogood stripped back his sound and released his first solo album 'Party of One' in 2017. It was a way for him to free himself from the bombast of the band, re-trace his early roots playing with mentors Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and acoustically cover tunes such as 'I'm a Steady Rollin' Man' by Robert Johnson, 'One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer' by John Lee Hooker and 'Bad News' by Johnny Cash. The new sound took Thorogood out of the clubs and onto his front porch, and offered a soulful, intimate insight into the man's personality and defining influences.
