After 40 years on the road, George Thorogood can’t get enough of playing for beer-loving Canadians
George Thorogood and the Destroyers first crossed into Canada in 1978 and has maintained a strong following ever since. ‘I can think of one thing that might have something to do with it. Canadians like beer.People who watch this band are beer drinkers,’ he says.Photograph by: Handout photo , Universal Music Enterprises
Courtesy - CalgaryHerald.com
“My father said to me, ‘George whenever you get a chance to get out of work take it.’”
Thorogood’s easy sense of humour was definitely at work on this phone call, but he is serious about certain things.
“I always tell my associates, I never underestimate the value of a good night’s sleep. And I eat right. If you put good gas in your car it’s going to run better. If you don’t abuse the car, you are going to last longer.
“All my heavy stuff happens on the stage. It’s always been that way. I’m so tired after a show that I can’t do much more.”
Thorogood has been, in his past, a pretty fair country baseball player, so he knows how to stay fit. But when it came to a career choice, music was an easy pick.
“I saw the look in an audience’s eyes when I hit the first chords on Who Do You Love and I saw the reaction when I managed to hit a 13-hopper up the middle and there were five people watching. It was an easy thing to decide where my future was.”
That said, these days he can take baseball or leave it.
Congratulations to Eddie Shaw for entering the Blues Hall of Fame
George Thorogood: Rock is a very real job
George Thorogood & The Destroyers
Courtesy - The VancouveSun.com
May 2-3, 8 p.m. | Hard Rock Casino Vancouver (Coquitlam)
Tickets: $49.50 plus charges at Ticketmaster.ca
“Get a haircut and get a real job.”
At the mid-point in his career, now 40 years strong, George Thorogood wrote an unlikely hit.
In 1993, during an era dominated by grunge, with plaid flannel shirts and long, greasy hair the signifiers of a new rock generation the same way paisley print and bell-bottom pants (and long, greasy hair) had been that of the ’60s, there was little room for a blues-rock anthem.
Yet, Get A Haircut became Thorogood’s new calling card, a tune as beloved now as the other big hits in his catalogue — Bad To The Bone, and his classic reboot of Bo Diddley’s House Rent Blues/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer — and one that, unlike many of his hits, he penned himself.
“We just got incredibly lucky with the timing,” Thorogood said in a recent phone interview. “The grunge rock/garage thing was big at that time. I said, ‘Eventually, Neil Young is going to write a song like this. And he’s going to give it to Nirvana or Alice In Chains or someone like that.
Bad to the bone … George Thorogood moves it on over
Courtesy - Prince George Free Press
Now THAT was a rock concert.
George Thorogood is not just good, he’s one of the best in the business.
Time – 40 years of albums and concerts, and counting – has done nothing but make this “Born to be Bad” blues rocker even better. He looks good, he sounds good, he plays guitar like he was born with one in his hands.
And if he wasn’t born to be bad, he learned to act bad…just for show.
Dressed in black, he’s lean and full of energy. He jokes around with the crowd, flashes lots of smiles and tells them what they want to hear – besides great music – managing to slip “Prince George” into song lyrics and dedicating Get A Haircut to “sophisticated” rock fans. That kind of natural ease and showmanship only comes at this level of a solid music career that spans decades and includes hundreds and hundreds of live performances.
To be honest, rockers have a reputation.
They like to party and play around. But I’ve never yet seen one who can flirt with an entire audience. Thorogood does. He turns his back, wiggles his bum, combs his hair with his back to the audience, turns around and, like a black panther, he paces across the stage with the mike in one hand and the audience in the other.
Opening with Born To Be Bad, he had 2,600 fans in delirious frenzy in less than five minutes.
He told the audience it had been “nine long years” since he and the band last played Prince George – too long, he said. Later on, he promised us to keep coming back here until the day he died.
This one will be hard to top.
Bad to the Bone .. .George Thorogood and the Destroyers rocked the house at CN Centre Wednesday night. The rock and roll band on their 40 Years and Still Strong tour played for 2,600 appreciative fans. Teresa MALLAM/Free Press
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