You sleep ‘til four in the afternoon like a rock star. “They meant to say, ‘When are you going to do this, George? It’s all you talk about. “They came up and said one word to me: ‘ When?’” he says. Thorogood admits he only got serious about a career in music when he was already a couple of years out of high school – and he did so at his parents’ urging. I just thought that was a natural way to go.” John Lee Hooker style of guitar and the slide guitar of Elmore James. There are certain areas of it that I adapted to very quickly. It’s not unlike having a restaurant: you have steady customers, and you put something new on the menu you think they would like.”Īs for why Thorogood has never strayed from his blues rock style, he says with a laugh, “It’s easy: I can’t play anything else! George Thorogood knows two songs, and about a hundred variations of those two songs.” He does have a more serious answer about what attracted him to playing blues in the first place, though: “I dug it. “After you do a couple of albums and you get that under your belt, and you play live night after night after night, you get a sense of what your audience enjoys hearing,” Thorogood says, “so we would select songs or write songs according to the taste of the Destroyers fans. Thorogood says fans’ reactions have often guided the decisions on which songs to perform and record. His versions of “Who Do You Love?” (by Bo Diddly), “Move It On Over” (Hank Williams), “My Way” (Eddie Cochran), and “Nobody But Me” (The Isley Brothers), among others, have become as famous as the originals (and in some cases, even more so). You can put together a song in two hours, or you can spend a whole month on it.”īesides his own original songs, Thorogood is also known as a particularly memorable interpreter of other artists’ songs. “There’s all different ways to approach this. I put some words around it or I’d have an interesting title and try to make some music to it,” Thorogood continues. “I’d be banging on the guitar and a lick would happen. And then come home and work on the song some more. Just checking things out and letting the ideas flow. Then that night I’d go out and see a band. “I would generally get up in the morning – or afternoon or whatever – and work on a song and get some exercise, then go bowling alone, and I’d come home alone. “My general way of doing it was, I’d have to spend a lot of time alone with no distractions,” he says. Looking back on that time, Thorogood recalls how he went about his songwriting process. He was the man behind several bands back then (‘back then’, a period in time I seem to like to go to, often) whether producing or engineering bands such as Joe Cocker, Wattstax, Alex Chilton, Big Star, James Taylor, Leon Russell, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Jason & The Scorchers, Rhino Bucket, George Thorogood and The Destroyers, Joe Walsh, Johnny Winter, The Rainmakers , The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Molly Hatchet, The Angels, Johnny Diesel and The Injectors, Lenny Kravitz, Jimmy Buffett, Shakira, Crash Test Dummies, Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, Widespread Panic, and many others. He’s a number of things (musician, composer, photographer, family man, pilot and much more, evidently). He’s done it all performing and producing. But to the many who don’t have much time to spend reading and investigating on things, he is a monster of music. Photo Credit: Josh Reynolds, The Boston Globe.įirst off, some of you – you younger ones or even you, among the older ones not necessarily into the industry of music – who is Terry Manning? Well, to me personally, he means a lot of things which I will try and explain to you, briefly.
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