‘Bad to the Bone’ after 40 years of blues

And after 40 years, he remains the one constant carrying the blues torch to the mainstream rock audience.

But if you really want to engage George Thorogood in a good conversation, if you really want one of the most successful musicians of the past 40 years to kick back like you’re at a bar and shoot the breeze over a couple of beers, one subject gets his undivided attention.

Baseball.

The man who wrote “Bad To The Bone” is also a former semi-pro second baseman and still a die-hard New York Mets fan. Not that he’s too excited about the prospects of his Mets this year.

“If they could get a catcher, three outfielders, and a first basemen, and four more pitchers,” Thorogood says with a sarcastic sigh, “they’d be OK.”

Bring up the fact that this year marks the 64-year-old Thorogood’s 40th anniversary of touring, performing and recording, and the Delaware native doesn’t take you on a trip down memory lane to those early days in New England opening for such blues legends as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Hound Dog Taylor.

No, Thorogood would rather recall that day in 1986 standing in a locker room in Denver waiting to take the field for a celebrity baseball game when Joe DiMaggio walked up and asked, “Who are you?”

“I was in my Mets uniform,” Thorogood says, “and when DiMaggio came up and started talking to me … I was speechless.

“Standing behind (DiMaggio) looking over his shoulder were Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, all of these Hall of Famers who idolized DiMaggio. And he was talking to me — it was too surreal.”

Aaron was within one home run of breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time record in 1973 when Thorogood was fresh out of Wilmington, Del., with his band the Destroyers playing their first gig at some University of Delaware residence hall.

Saturday, George Thorogood and the Destroyers — drummer Jeff Simon, bassist Bill Blough, rhythm guitarist Jim Suhler and saxophonist Buddy Leach — swagger into the Blue Chip Casino with 40 years, 8,000 shows and 15 million records sold worldwide tucked under their belts.

It all started with the blues.

“I was 15 or 16 watching the show ‘Shindig,’ and Howlin’ Wolf was on,” Thorogood says. “And I went out and got some Howlin’ Wolf records. At that moment, I said, ‘That’s what I wanna do.’ ”

The first, self-titled George Thorogood and the Destroyers album caught the blues crowd’s immediate attention in 1977 with covers of Elmore James’ “Madison Blues,” John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” Robert Johnson’s “Kindhearted Woman,” and his own “Homesick Boy” and “Delaware Slide.”

But it was Thorogood’s live shows that ripped the guitarist a reputation for being one of the most electric performers anywhere. That rep got a huge shot in the mainstream arm when he was brought on to open for The Rolling Stones on their U.S. tour in 1981.

His reputation preceded him on a level that was beyond his wildest dreams — and that was before Charlie Watts walked up to him backstage with Thorogood’s first album and a pen in hand.

“The first thing one of The Rolling Stones said to me was, ‘Could I have your autograph?’ ” Thorogood says. “Charlie Watts had our first record and he wanted me to sign it. I was so flabbergasted I had to ask him to spell it.”

Opening for the Stones was just the beginning. Thorogood’s covers of Hank Williams’ “Move It On Over” and Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love” were hits off his second record, “Move It On Over,” and then the original “Bad To The Bone” exploded onto the charts in 1982 and made Thorogood a video star when MTV was just getting off the ground.

“It was kind of freaky,” Thorogood says. “We were just trying to get a gig, that’s what it was for me, just entertainment. We didn’t know it was gonna be MTV or rock classic radio or, now, satellite radio. All that happened for us. When we started, there was just album-oriented radio and FM radio.

“Bad To The Bone” would be used in several movies, including “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and “Christine,” and the song would become Al Bundy’s trademark tune of triumph in various episodes of the TV series, “Married … With Children.”

“Somehow,” Thorogood says now, “our music stood the test of time.”

Forty years of time, he admits, that probably wouldn’t have been the same without the blues. But Thorogood’s voice grows fidgety at the suggestion that his career can be compared to those of the blues greats.

“At that time when I was first getting started, people like Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Taj Mahal, were all going strong,” Thorogood says. “It just got people’s attention when ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” got on the radio, but I said I’m not doing anything different than Taj Mahal was doing, or Paul Butterfield, or Steve Miller — before Steve Miller was a rock guy, he was a blues guy, and he was the read deal.

“I saw about 15 years ago that when Columbia Records released the Robert Johnson double-disc (‘The Complete Recordings’), it was a gold record,” Thorogood says. “At that moment, I said now I can stop playing the blues, because the blues was now a commercial success. The greatest bluesman of all time has now gone gold.”

One of the greatest blues rockers of all-time has no plans to slow down in his 40th year in the business.

“Sleep more,” Thorogood says of the secret to maintaining a high energy level onstage.

“At times when I’m not on stage, I find a horizontal position and …”

His voice trails into his favorite subject again.

“You know, Roberto Clemente could sleep 15, 16 hours at a stretch,” Thorogood says, “and then he could go out and play baseball like nobody else could.

“I have a physical show. I don’t do what Miles Davis did … just stand there and blow the most amazing horn you ever heard. I can’t do that. I gotta shuck and jive, and that takes energy and rest, and proper diet.

“But I have to do these things to stay on top of my game,” Thorogood says. “I can’t afford to go up there and be sleepy.”