THOROGOOD ANNOUNCES "WHO DO YOU LOVE" CHARITY CAMPAIGN
This holiday season, legendary classic rock band George Thorogood and the Destroyers are spreading the love through their "Who Do You Love” holiday campaign. The campaign, running from November 25TH to January 5TH, aims to raise awareness and support for three impactful charities.
Our opening act is Musically Fed, a nonprofit working nationally with artists and producers in the music and live entertainment industries to help feed veterans, seniors, and families facing food insecurity by reducing catering and food waste. We love Musically Fed because they leave a lasting and positive impact on communities by treating everyone with dignity and feeding the least fortunate among us. They’ll be featured from November 25TH through December 8TH.
From December 9TH through December 22ND, the second leg of the campaign will focus on Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, an organization committed to providing financial assistance to musicians facing illness, disability, or age-related problems. Fans are urged to lend their support to ensure that the music never stops for those who bring joy to our lives.
Concluding the campaign, George Thorogood and the Destroyers shine a light on The Marla Thorogood Memorial Fund for Ovarian Cancer Research from December 23RD through January 5TH. This fund, in memory of George's late wife, aims to advance research and awareness surrounding ovarian cancer and fans are encouraged to contribute to this vital cause and honor Marla's legacy. Proceeds from the Marla Thorogood Memorial Fund will go toward the research of Ronald D. Alvarez, MD, MBA, Chairman and Clinical Service Chief and Betty and Lonnie S. Burnett Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Part of Alvarez’s work studies gene mutations that put women at risk for ovarian and breast cancer and identifies those at risk to prevent cases.
George and Marla Thorogood were married in July of 1985. At the time of Marla’s passing, they had been married 34 years and have one daughter, Rio, who has performed with her father and is an accomplished musician and actor in her own right.
This holiday season, let's come together and show love to those in need. Each charity holds a special place in our hearts, and we hope our fans will join us in supporting these incredible causes.
Fans can get involved by engaging with the band's official social media channels to raise awareness and contribute to the featured charities. George Thorogood and the Destroyers believe in the power of music to make a positive impact and invite their fans to join them in spreading love and support this holiday season.
For more information and to join the cause, visit:
facebook.com/georgethorogood | instagram.com/georgethorogoodofficial twitter.com/thorogoodmusic
GEORGE THOROGOOD & THE DESTROYERS CELEBRATES THEIR FIRST SHOW & 50 TH ANNIVERSARY WITH TWO FAN-CENTRIC CELEBRATIONS
Anniversary Events Include Sold-Out Celebration at GRAMMY Museum ® ,
And Intimate KLOS Performance At Secret Location
On December 1, 1973, George Thorogood & The Destroyers played their first show at The University of Delaware’s Lane Hall. Fifty years later, the one-of-a-kind rock party thrown by “one of the most iconic bands in rock history” (Rapid City Journal) is just getting started.
To commemorate this milestone, The Recording Academy’s GRAMMY Museum® is proud to present ‘An Evening With George Thorogood & The Destroyers’ on Thursday, November 30, at The Clive Davis Theater in Los Angeles. The sold-out evening will feature an intimate conversation moderated by Matt Pinfield, followed by an electrifying live performance.
On Friday, December 1 – fifty years to the date of the band’s very first performance – Southern California’s renowned rock station KLOS-FM will host George and the band for a private show and an exclusive interview with esteemed KLOS DJs Matt Pinfield and Marci Wiser, with 200 lucky fans.
As George Thorogood reflects on this half-century journey, he shares, “I’ll admit to a warm feeling of satisfaction, maybe a bit of pride, and definitely a whole lot of gratitude. But, I must admit, fifty years doesn’t feel like a long time when you love what you do. Every show we play can still feel like the biggest night of our lives.”
With more than 8,000 live performances, more than 15 million albums sold, and iconic hits such as “Get A Haircut,” “I Drink Alone,” “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” “Move It On Over,” “Who Do You Love” and the definitive anthem “Bad To The Bone,” Thorogood and his long-time band – Jeff Simon (drums), Bill Blough (bass), Jim Suhler (guitar), and Buddy Leach (saxophone) – continue to captivate audiences like no other. Their legendary status is underlined by the fact that they remain one of the most remarkable live acts in the world, having completed their “50 Dates/50 States Tour,” participated in landmark events like Live Aid, and shared stages with legends like Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones. Their commitment to their fans is evident with last year’s extensive tour of nearly 100 shows across 17 countries on three continents, including Europe and Australia.
Details on the George Thorogood & The Destroyers 50th Anniversary Celebrations:
AN EVENING WITH GEORGE THOROGOOD & THE DESTROYERS AT THE GRAMMY MUSEUM – THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30
The GRAMMY Museum® is thrilled to welcome George Thorogood & The Destroyers for an intimate event at the museum’s intimate 200-seat Clive Davis Theater. The sold-out evening will include a conversation moderated by Matt Pinfield celebrating their 50th Anniversary, with a performance to follow. To join the waitlist for tickets, please click HERE.
KLOS PRESENTS AN INTIMATE CONCERT AND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE THOROGOOD & THE DESTROYERS AT A SECRET LOCATION – LIVE ON THE KLOS LIVE STAGE – FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1
On Friday, December 1, 2023 – fifty years to the day of George Thorogood & The Destroyers, first-ever performance, legendary Los Angeles radio station KLOS will join in the celebration by hosting a private event to celebrate this momentous occasion in rock history. Two hundred of George Thorogood & The Destroyers’ biggest fans will descend upon a secret location in the Mid-Wilshire area for a private performance and interview with Matt Pinfield and Marci Wiser. Fans interested in attending this intimate event can win tickets by listening to 95.5 KLOS-FM or by registering to win at www.955klos.com. Winners will be chosen at random and notified in advance of the event.
Listen to George Thorogood & The Destroyers’ Greatest Hits HERE.
INTERVIEW: George Thorogood still loves rocking at age 73
Courtesy Randy Ho - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
George Thorogood has never received a Grammy nomination or landed a Top 40 pop hit. He has never been nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But Thorogood doesn’t honestly care. Over multiple decades, he has focused on performing songs such as “I Drink Alone” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” for his dedicated fan base, critics be damned.
“Would I rather be the critics’ choice or the people’s choice?” he said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution before his concert Nov. 9 at City Springs’ Byers Theatre in Sandy Springs. (Tickets available starting at $66.35 at citysprings.com.) “The people are the real critics. They’re it!”
Thorogood is credited with conjuring up one of the catchiest riffs of the 1980s on the song “Bad to the Bone.” It was heard in movies like Stephen King’s ‘Christine,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “The Parent Trap,” “Problem Child” and “Major Payne,” to name a few. TV shows such as “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Family Matters” and “Married... With Children” used it. Rudy Giuliani, for better or worse, sang it on “The Masked Singer” earlier this year.
“We actually turned down 90% of the requests” to use the song in commercials, film and TV, he said. “We’ve only said yes maybe 10%. of the time.”
Thorogood still loves to play “Bad to the Bone” live and actually got some love from Billboard magazine’s staff two weeks ago. They released the top 100 best pop songs that never made the Billboard Hot 100. No. 91? “Bad to the Bone.”
How Billboard spun it: “The riff that launched a thousand beer commercials, and the growling, cocky-as-hell vocal that made a white blues rocker an improbable star of the synth-pop era.”
Thorogood has always taken pride in his band’s live show, which he has honed over five-plus decades, thousands of guitar pics and buckets of sweat. “We just played our butts off, then came back the next night,” he said.
He has no qualms about playing fan favorites, no questions asked. “We put a poll out every six months on our website to see what the response is and we work from there,” he said.
Thorogood ― who was inspired as a youth by both blues legend Robert Johnson and country star Hank Williams ― said touring is a thing he will keep doing based on the three d’s: demand, delivery and desire.
“If the demand is there, if the desire is there, the question is, can we still deliver?” he said. “I don’t want to get to the point where I’m not delivering. I don’t want them reacting just to see me and I’m not moving them.”
Over the years in Atlanta, he and his band Destroyers have performed at the Fox Theatre (1985), Chastain Park (1992), Lakewood Amphitheatre (1999), Variety Playhouse (2010) and Atlanta Symphony Hall (2016). He also has clear memories of a 1980 gig at the long-closed Midtown venue Rosie’s Cantina.
“That was a fantastic venue,” Thorogood said. “(Wrestling legend) Dusty Rhodes used to jam there!”
And by the way, George Thorogood is his real name, not a stage name.
“I met Rodney Dangerfield one time in the 1980s,” he said. “Then I met him again a year and a half later. He said, ‘You still have that name?’ He changed his name from Jacob Cohen for show business. He thought mine was made up.”
Thorogood said it’s a Scandinavian name stemming from the god of Thor that eventually made it to England. His family changed it first to Thoroughgood but when his grandparents migrated to the United States, they went back to Thorogood.
IF YOU GO
George Thorogood and the Destroyers, 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7. $60.35-$92.65. Byers Theatre at Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center, 1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs. citysprings.com
At 73, is George Thorogood still bad to the bone? Lexington is about to find out.
BY WALTER TUNIS CONTRIBUTING MUSIC COLUMNIST
At 73, is George Thorogood still bad to the bone? Lexington is about to find out. BY WALTER TUNIS CONTRIBUTING MUSIC COLUMNIST NOVEMBER 06, 2023 6:00 AM
Wasting no time in getting to the crux of a conversation, George Thorogood did away with requisite introductions and greetings. There was no ‘Hello’ or “How ya’ doin’?” as the veteran rock ‘n’ roll roots merchant, the “Bad to the Bone” boogie-man, opened the interview. He instead opted for a question of his own. “What do you want to know that you don’t know already?” The greeting isn’t rude, just practical. With a devotion to blues, boogie, folk-country tradition and all things rock ‘n roll that began in high school and a recording/performance alliance with his Destroyers band a mere month away from its 50-year anniversary, Thorogood assumes his fans know who he is and what he does.
Pondering a half-century milestone, though, was not part of the plan at first for the guitarist/bandleader, who returns to the Lexington Opera House for a Nov. 7 concert. During the band’s early years, the primary goal was simply survival. “Fifty years, I don’t know about that,” Thorogood said. “You don’t even know if you’re going to live that long. With the world of music back then, there was no way you could have predicted this.” HANK WILLIAMS, BO DIDDLEY AND THOROGOOD “When we started, there was no MTV. There was no Sirius radio. There was no classic rock radio. There was no American casino rock at that time. All these different avenues, House of Blues and what have you, popped up and were created over the last 25 or 30 years, which has allowed me to make a living. So, no, I never would have thought that back then because we didn’t know what the future was. We thought we would be in small, quality venues, of course. But we didn’t know it would expand like this.”
When Thorogood’s initial records with the Destroyers began gaining traction with rock radio stations around the country in the late 1970s, the industry was being overtaken by the punk revolution – a rebellion against lofty, over-produced records in favor of scrappier, coarser and more immediate rock music. Thorogood had all the attitude of a punk rocker, but his music was inseparably bound to tradition. He was a proud disciple of such stylistic journeymen as Hank Williams, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon. His 1978 sophomore album, “Move It On Over,” sported youthful, high octane guitar re-wirings of tunes by all of those giants. The thrill of discovery, Thorogood said, came as much from the song as the sound or style that first gave it life.
“First of all, we’ve got to like the tune. It doesn’t have much to do with the kind of style it is. I love Hank Williams. So people are like, ‘Oh, so you like country music.’ Well, I don’t know what you call what he does. He’s not a country artist because he came from the city. He came from Montgomery, Alabama. He’s a city guy. If I hear certain reggae tunes I love and I could play them, I would play those, too. If I could play ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ on my guitar, I’d do it. When we pick certain songs, we’re thinking, ‘Well, I just happen to like this tune, so let’s see how it works.’ Then we play it and if a live audience digs it, we stay with it.” THE SONG THAT MADE HIM A STAR The same kind of thinking went into Thorogood’s own songwriting. The title track to his 1982 album “Bad to the Bone” became a major radio hit, a jovial ode to the blues and boogie grinds of Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. The tune’s accompanying music video (which featured Diddley) then introduced Thorogood to audiences of MTV, the cable music network then in its infancy. Topping it all was the song’s appearance in numerous hit movies from the 1980s. Among them: “Lethal Weapon,” “Bull Durham,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “The Color of Money” and “Christine.”
In short, “Bad to the Bone” became not only Thorogood’s biggest hit, but an anthem to the roots-savvy grooves his music was born out of as well as the attitude — yes, the punkish attitude — that fortified it. “Well, we had the attitude before we ever played a note of music,” Thorogood said, erupting into laughter. “That came first. That had to come first. Jerry Lee Lewis was a wild one before he ever touched the piano. Keith Richards was from the other side of the tracks before he ever touched a guitar. So with certain people, it’s attitude first and then it just comes out of them in whatever they happen to do.
“(Marlon) Brando was such a natural. He just rebelled against authority naturally. He hated it. He went to boarding school and something just rubbed him the wrong way. Somehow, that just came out in his work. You can see it and feel it. The attitude is always there first. Then comes the other stuff. It doesn’t go the other way around. It’s not, ‘Well, now that I learned the guitar, I’m going to learn to be a bad ass.’ No, no, no, no, no. Keith Richards was a bad ass to begin with. People tell me, ‘Well, your guitar playing is kind of dirty and nasty and it’s borderline punk rock. And I’m, ‘No, I was a nasty little (expletive) even before I played.” BACK ON TOUR AFTER HEALTH SCARE Thorogood is now 73, so being bad to the bone brings with it some staying power. Still, real life occasionally intervenes. Last spring, a month’s worth of North American concerts were canceled due to what his website announced only as “a very serious medical condition that will require immediate surgery and quite of few weeks of recuperation and healing.” Thorogood didn’t stay on the sidelines long, though. He has been touring steadily again since late July.
”Things are in a good place right now because I’m not in the hospital and I’m not in the joint. Everything else is a bonus.” GEORGE THOROGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS When: Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. Where: Lexington Opera House, 401 W. Short. Tickets: $60.50-$80.50 through ticketmaster.com.