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Courtesy Madi Silvers | Medium.com

How does it feel to be 17 again?

This was not your average Friday night. Sitting in a pool of my own sweat during Paris’ record-breaking canicule, I really started to question my own sanity. While weather alerts continued flashing across my phone with phrases like “nobody is safe,” “keep your skin moist,” and “stay inside,” I, per usual, chose the path of most resistance, and for what? For music, duh. As I headed back out into the thick of it with my hair becoming more and more like Rod Stewart’s by the minute and the streets of Paris’ 11th arrondissement steaming around my feet, I arrived at one of the city’s many temples of music: The Bataclan.

In that, here we are folks, all in the name of rock and roll. King of boogie blues George Thorogood and the Destroyers took the stage, but not before Wisconsin native Jared James Nichols opened things up. He serenaded the audience with something very much akin to the love child of Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, and Aerosmith all rolled into one. Epic might be the word of choice. Nichols’ long blonde curls and finger-tapped guitar solos landed enthusiastically with the evening’s crowd.

At one point, a roadie wandered across the stage wearing a Loveless Café t-shirt. It was a detail that somehow felt perfectly at home in the strange fever dream unfolding before us. For those of you who have spent time inside this Nashville-adjacent dining establishment, consider this to be a very special shoutout. Meanwhile, security guards at Bataclan spent most of the evening spraying concertgoers with Evian mist bottles, extending what felt like an olive branch during an otherwise merciless week. Very French and very appreciated.

Then something very, very American was about to transpire. As the humidity rapidly increased, so too did the excitement. The lights dropped and Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” rolled through the venue’s speaker system, which was the most relevant walkout song imaginable as we stood embroiled in what felt suspiciously like Dante’s Inferno. Then, a somewhat shy-looking 76-year-old man stepped onto the stage, but within minutes, George Thorogood had turned back time. We were no longer looking at a 76-year-old, we were suddenly in a recording studio in 1976 in Wilmington, Delaware.

A thick fog hanging in the air, the melodies were rolling and he was no longer shy. Mesmerizing the audience through a string of hits including “Who Do You Love?”, “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” and the definitive “Bad to the Bone,” Thorogood reminded everyone exactly why he remains one of rock and roll’s undisputed masters. Part musician, part comedian, and part traveling preacher of the gospel of rock and roll, he stalked the stage with a glossy black Epiphone ES-125 slung across his body. A blistering rendition of “Talk to Me” featured an absolutely unhinged solo from guitarist Jim Suhler while Thorogood answered with a string of his own fiery leads and signature guitar excursions. What makes him so compelling, however, isn’t simply the playing — it’s the performance.

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