George Thorogood says his band’s current tour is The Baddest Show On Earth. You can judge for yourself Sept. 5 when the band shakes the Charleston Music Hall.
The legendary Destroyers backing band continues to be anchored by original drummer Jeff Simon and longtime bassist Billy Blough. Alongside sax player Buddy Leach and guitarist Jim Suhler, the band creates a confident but never cocky style of bluesy rock ’n’ roll for its frontman.
Meanwhile, the high-energy Thorogood can’t be contained by his classic, all-too-familiar “Bad To The Bone” riff, which is still as prevalent in mass media as ever.
Think of him instead as a swaggering, gritty true believer who can still peel skin with his slide guitar playing as he cranks out lean and mean rockers like “I Drink Alone,” “Get A Haircut” and his definitive version of John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.”
In other words, he’s loud and brash and serves up nasty, straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll like the barroom antihero he is.
In a conversation with the Charleston City Paper, Thorogood was also a man who seemed to give zero f*cks. Most of his answers were either jokes or sports-related.
A question about why this tour was called “The Baddest Show On Earth” was met with the following: “Because it’s the baddest show on Earth.”
Thankfully, after a pause, he expanded a bit.
“I would have to say fans and people in radio have been telling us that we have the baddest show on Earth for so long that we figured, what the heck, we’ll make that the title of one of our tours because we’ve been hearing it for so long,” he said. “We may as well make a buck doing it.”
Of course, calling your show “The Baddest Show On Earth” means you’ve got to prove it all night, every night, a challenge that Thorogood is fine with achieving.
“I’ve always admired Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali,” Thorogood said.
“Because he really put his head on the chopping block when he kept telling people he was the greatest. And it was a great gimmick to sell tickets. But on the other hand, he had to back it up, didn’t he? And he did.”
Thorogood, born in 1950 to a middle-class family in Delaware, has been making music with the Destroyers since 1973, but he still stalks the stage like a young punk with his black Gretsch guitar, sweat-soaked and playing vicious slide solos.
That takes a toll, and there are mornings, forgive us, afternoons, where he feels every bit of it.
“Your first mistake is saying that I get up in the morning,” Thorogood said. “But it’s like any other job. Some days, you get up and you go, ‘Oh, not again.’ Then sometimes you spring out of bed and can’t wait to get to the bandstand. But you’ve got to go to work, and that’s where it’s at. Look at Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, okay?”
No retirement plans
To be clear, Thorogood probably doesn’t NEED to go to work. He’s the sole songwriter of both “Bad To The Bone” and “I Drink Alone,” which have been streamed more than 350 million times combined.
He’s sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, and every time you hear his snarling riff pop up in an ad, movie or TV clip, he gets paid.
He shrugged off any talk of retirement, though.
“I get to the point where I think, ‘Well, I think people have heard ‘Bad To The Bone’ enough,’ or they’ve heard ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch & One Beer enough,’ ” he said. “Then I get a phone call and say, ‘HOW much?’ ”
And for any of you who might wonder if Thorogood ever gets tired of playing “Bad To The Bone” every night, he had a quick answer.
“If you’re making love to somebody and they’re screaming out as loud as they can, ‘I love it! I love you!’, you’re gonna say ‘OK!’, right? So I’m going to keep playing it.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Doors open at 7 p.m., Sept. 5, Charleston Music Hall, 37 John St., Charleston. Tickets range from $80-$269: charlestonmusichall.com
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