Courtesy Ultimate Classic Rock
For most people, the first thing that comes to mind about George Thorogood & the Destroyers is "Bad to the Bone." The song. But not the album of the same name.
Thorogood's iconic hit, part of enough movie and TV soundtracks to buy him much more than one bourbon, scotch or beer, serves as the title track for the band's fifth album and the first for a major label, EMI, after a tenure with the independent Rounder Records. The 10-song set caught Thorogood and his group in high flight, too, hot off dates opening for the Rolling Stones and the Freeze-Frame-hot J. Geils Band. The band had been in front of a lot of eyeballs and eardrums, and the moment to capitalize had arrived.
"It was a big deal — a bigger deal, at least," Thorogood, who rerecorded seven of Bad to the Bone's tracks for a 2007 reissue, told this writer a few years later. "It was a bigger record company and they were ready to put some money behind us and get the records in the stores and push it. ... I don't know if we felt pressure. We just went in and did what we do. It'd be stupid to try to be anything else."
That philosophy served Bad to the Bone well. The album reached No. 43 on the Billboard 200, went gold and spawned Thorogood's first two Top 40 Mainstream Rock chart hits: his version of the Isley Brothers' "Nobody but Me" (later a Top 10 garage-rock hit for the Human Beinz), which climbed to No. 32, and the title track, which reached No. 27.
"Bad to the Bone" has gotten and continues to get its due. But what about the rest of the Bad to the Bone album? It's certainly a record that can be held up as one of the Destroyers' best, and a case can be made that it's the best. To prove it, we steer you to these half-dozen additional tracks that put some extra meat on the Bone beyond its celebrated title song.
"Back to Wentzville"
"Back to Wentzville" is a Chuck Berry-styled rocker with onetime Rolling Stone Ian Stewart pounding piano in the background and Hank Carter unleashing a ferocious saxophone solo. The first of Thorogood's three originals is a bar-band template that gives your speakers, or earbuds, an aerobic workout.
Read More: 'Bad to the Bone': Beyond George Thorogood's Hit Song