During a 40-year career fronting a band called the Destroyers and writing some monster-sounding blues-rock songs, George Thorogood’s music has gained a large and loyal following around the world. Eight of his 16 studio albums have either gone gold or platinum, and he’s sold more than 15 million recordings. His biggest single, “Bad To the Bone,” is one of the most iconic songs and packs one of the most familiar riffs from the early 1980s. The song still gets plenty of airplay, is heard regularly at sporting events, has been used in commercials and has popped up in movie and TV shows.
So it’s probably just as well that songs Thorogood originally wrote with other artists in mind never got made, for one reason or another. “Bad to the Bone” is a perfect example: Thorogood initially thought blues legend Muddy Waters would be perfect for the song. But the tune never got past Waters’ front line of defense. In fact, Thorogood said, the bluesman’s manager was almost offended. “They said it’s a real sacrilege that an up-and-coming white blues musician would write a song for one of the all-time great blues masters,” Thorogood recalled with a sardonic laugh during a recent phone call. “And I said that’s silly, a great song is a great song. If Elvis Presley had been alive, I’d have given it to him.”
It wasn’t that Thorogood wanted to give away songs because he lacked confidence in the sound he and the Destroyers were producing. When they were just getting known, they were good enough to appear as the music stars on Saturday Night Live. And, in 1981, they parlayed what was supposed to be a one-night one-off into a full-blown tour opening for the Rolling Stones. So they weren’t exactly chopped liver; it’s just that Thorogood heard other voices in his head singing lead vocals on his original music.
For instance, Thorogood wrote “I Really Like Girls” with the band Stray Cats in mind. “I Drink Alone” should have been a George Jones song. And “Born To Be Bad,” he said, was written thinking Steppenwolf would be the perfect group, because Thorogood liked lead singer John Kay’s voice.
“When I put those songs out there, I was always thinking of it in those terms,” said Thorogood, who’ll lead the Destroyers onto the stage of the House of Blues at Showboat Thursday night, June 19. “It’s like someone who puts together a movie and they go, ‘We’re gonna make this movie and it’s gonna be called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I see Harrison Ford playing the part.’”
Today, 40 years after he first performed an electrifying first show in a residence hall at the University of Delaware, Thorogood, 64, is surprised he’s lasted four decades in the music business. Or any business, for that matter: There was a time when he was hoping for a career in baseball. In 1976, he played for a semi-pro team in Delaware that was part of the Roberto Clemente League and he was good enough at second base to earn rookie of the year honors. But after he saw a performance by blues singer John P. Hammond, music became a powerful lure, and as he began developing his guitar chops, he found himself juggling baseball with blues rock. Eventually, when it became clear he was a better musician and songwriter than he was a ballplayer, Thorogood plunged into show biz full time.
But old habits and interests die hard. When speaking about his 40 years in the music business, Thorogood can’t help but invoke the name of baseball legend Willie Mays and the ballplayer’s reaction after hitting his 500th career home run. A reporter asked him if he ever though he’d hit 500 homers. “Mays said, ‘When I was a rookie, if I thought I was going to hit 500, I wouldn’t have hit 50. My goal was to hit one, and after I hit one, my goal was to hit two,’” Thorogood said.