George Thorogood on Party of One, His ES-125 and More
Courtesy Gibson.com
By Anne Erickson
When George Thorogood picks up his ES-125 and starts playing, it’s obvious the sound is coming from George Thorogood. He champions a thick, low-down guitar tone that simply has a great vibe.
“Over my career, two people have come up to me to talk to me about the tone of my guitar,” he told Gibson.com. “One was actually the guitarist for Paul McCartney, and they said they were knocked out by the tone of my guitar, and the other was once the guitar player of Muddy Waters, who was extremely interested in how I got my tone.”
Now, Thorogood and that distinct tone are all over his first-ever solo album, Party of One. The collection, out on Rounder Records Aug. 4, features Thorogood putting his spin on a variety of songs by the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and many more.
Thorogood spoke with Gibson.com about the new record and his beloved ES-125, which he calls “the only guitar I want to play.”
Artist Profile: George Thorogood
Courtesy Huffington Post
George Thorogood is as cool, calm and collected as you would expect from one of Rock and Roll’s stand outs when discussing his current album Party Of One, a 14 track ode to his heroes that are stripped down mostly acoustic solo performances.
Famous for his hard driving powerful rock and blues, and his seminal hits including “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” and “Bad To The Bone,” the traditional classics and modern blues he’s chosen for his latest album show a range Thorogood is rarely known for. The heartfelt “Soft Spot’ (Gary Nicholson) or ‘Pictures From The Other Side Of Life” (Hank Williams) ring clear with a kindness in their melancholy you don’t expect from the hard driving Destroyer. His fans will be happy to know his Willie Dixon and Johnny Lee Hooker classics and other blues standards have the hard charging signature style he’s known for. But the acoustic choices on many pieces, like “No Expectations” (Rolling Stones) and “Tallahassee Women” (John Hammond Jr.) are an unexpected pleasure and make these songs feel unusually intimate, as if you had the good luck to be sitting next to Thorogood at home while he pulled out his guitar in a chair beside you to lament his fate.
“It didn’t start that way,” he says. “There was talk for years of doing a solo or acoustic record, but I just never got around to it,“ Thorogood has sold more than 15 million records world wide, and released 16 studio albums which include six gold and two platinum discs. “As the years went on I finally got to the spot where I thought, well I’ve pretty much done everything I wanted to do, and this solo acoustic record was still on my list.”
Visit GuitarPlayer.com for New Exclusive Video Premiere
Visit GuitarPlayer.com for an exclusive video premiere of "Boogie Chillen" from the upcoming George Thorogood release, Party of One.
Bad to the Bone: Working solo is tough for George Thorogood
Courtesy Time Free Press
For George Thorogood, recording a solo album that featured just him singing and playing guitar was "like walking around in public naked, which I've never done, but you are alone and exposed. It's very difficult."
Thorogood, 67, will be performing with his band, The Destroyers, tonight at Riverbend (9:30 p.m., Coke Stage). He says he's not likely to ever record another solo album such as "Party of One," nor is he ever going to perform by himself. At least he doesn't think so.
The idea of doing a solo record is not new for him, but it just never worked out before, he says. Rounder Records pushed the idea, and it worked out. This time.
"There won't be a second," he says of the new CD, which will be released Aug. 4. It contains covers of tracks by everyone from Bob Dylan to Robert Johnson to the Rolling Stones. They are songs that mean something to Thorogood — and also ones that he could play and sing.