By ROBERT DiGIACOMO, Atlantic City Insiders |
George Thorogood isn’t one to wax nostalgic about his 40 years in rock.
“Every night I walk on stage — that’s the moment,” says Thorogood, who appears with his band The Destroyers at the House of Blues in Atlantic City 8 p.m. Thursday, June 19. “I just don’t take it any farther than that. That’s all you got right at the time. I don’t have yesterday. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to be. This is the biggest thrill of my life — here and now — as a musician, anyway.”
For the Wilmington, Del., native, the last four decades have taken him on a ride he never imagined.
Thorogood, whose guitar style was heavily influenced by early blues and rock greats such as Elmore James and Chuck Berry, didn’t necessarily envision becoming a household name when he launched his career at the height of the soft rock era of the mid-’70s.
“Nobody thought rock was going to last that long,” Thorogood recalls. “There was no MTV, no classic rock radio, no satellite radio. We didn’t realize the industry was going to boom the way it did, that it would have the impact that it did on the world. When I picked up an electric guitar, soft rock was in — James Taylor, Cat Stevens, John Denver and things like that. Aerosmith and ZZ Top and Springsteen hadn’t happened yet. I figured I’d get a blues band together.”
Thorogood found commercial success with his booming cover of Hank Williams’ “Move It On Over,” the title track of his second album, and has stuck by his guitar-driven, blues-rock credo through more than a dozen subsequent albums.
The current band — Jeff Simon on drums, Bill Blough on bass, Jim Suhler on rhythm guitar and Buddy Leach on saxophone — is touring behind last year’s “Icon” (Universal Music), a greatest hits collection featuring a new version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Do The Do,” and the live DVD “Live At Montreux” (Eagle Rock Entertainment).
“I didn’t have any choice to do what it is I do — this is what I am, this is what I do,” he says of his musical style. “It’s like an actor who’s good at playing westerns, and all of a sudden hospital movies are en vogue. I don’t have that kind of range. I can’t just jump over the fence and do hip-hop or rap or disco or country rock — whatever the trends are for the big money. But there’s been a market in it for me. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been able to survive, with honing my act more than changing it.”
So don’t expect to hear Thorogood going unplugged anytime soon. But fans wanting to hear Thorogood’s signature versions of hits such as “Bad to the Bone, “Who Do You Love” and “I Drink Alone” won’t leave disappointed — those songs form the core of his show, along with some newer tunes.
“There’s so much to draw from, but there’s only so much time you’re allowed on the bandstand — you only have a certain amount
of time to get up and do it,” Thorogood says. “We pencil in six or seven or eight songs that we know people are paying top dollar to hear. You go to hear the Eagles, (you) want to hear ‘Hotel California.’ You go to hear the Stones, (you) want to hear ‘Honky Tonky Woman.’ Am I wrong?”
For the no-nonsense musician, the key to surviving all these years has been to give audiences want they want.
“I play to the taste of our audiences, just like a guy who runs a restaurant,” he says. “If people want to eat burgers, I serve them burgers.”
How does he know what the audience craves?
“After (more than) 35 years of doing this, I think I know what they want when they come to see Thorogood. There’s no mystery when I walk on that stage,” he says.
Having outlasted many of those soft-rock peers, Thorogood is pragmatic about what’s to come.
“My goal, my friend, is to stay in a vertical position as long as I can,” he says.