“You heard of the Boogaloo? You heard of the Philly Freeze? You heard of the Boston Monkey?”
That’s how a loud and animated George Thorogood starts the conversation. It’s akin to chatting with a tightly coiled snake. You never know when he’s going to strike. Once a devoted blues disciple and now elder statesman, he’s one of the few left from the last generation who got to see the genre’s greats like Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters live and in person.
“I was there – and I know about the blues like nobody else on the planet knows about it except for maybe John Hammond, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, Buddy Guy, and Taj Mahal. And that’s it,” Thorogood tells Vanyaland. “And I’m the last of them. I’m the kid. I always say, ‘I didn’t graduate from the right college, but I knew I went to the right school.’ Whereas Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal graduated with straight A’s, I squeaked by with a C+, but at least I went to the right school.”
Class never let out for the Delaware native, now 74, who comes to The Wilbur on Tuesday night (June 18) with his longtime band The Destroyers. From staking his repertoire on rebuilt Bo Diddley chestnuts like “Ride on Josephine” and “Who Do You Love?” to original taproom jams “Bad to the Bone” and “I Drink Alone,” Thorogood has proven to be one of the more indelible torchbearers of the blues, slinging his rumbling hollowbody electric guitar across stages for a half-century.
During the pandemic, Craft Recordings released the 4LP Live in Boston, 1982: The Full Concert. Like the title hints, it’s the complete document of a boozy, bluesy, debaucherous night at The Bradford Ballroom on Tremont Street, now a Courtyard by Marriott, with the club Royale in its place. The show was the second in as many years for Thorogood at the venue, with the 1981 gig a part of his wildly ambitious 50/50 tour where he played all 50 states in 50 days.
Had it been put out closer to the recording date, Live in Boston, 1982 would easily be considered with the preeminent live albums in music history like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 or The Who Live at Leeds. Thorogood and his Destroyers are on fire. He spends the show namechecking places like South Station, the long-shuttered Inn-Square Men’s Bar in Inman Square, and going through a list of nearby cities to find out where the audience members were from.
Sure, lots of artists were doing that then – and still do – but this wasn’t just placating the hometown. In fact, he was sorta one of them. Thorogood moved to Boston in the mid-’70s, residing in Allston, and recorded his first six albums in the region at places like Dimension Sound Studios in Jamaica Plain and Blue Jay Recording Studio in Carlise.
Currently, Thorogood is supporting John Fogerty on the ex-Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman’s Celebration Tour. The two are playing a bunch of area dates – which started at Mohegan Sun last night – with stops in Gilford, New Hampshire, and Lenox later this week. But tomorrow’s show at The Wilbur is a detour for Thorogood, a solo performance that’s right across the street from where his scorcher of a set went down more than four decades ago.
Ahead of his visit to the other side of Tremont, he touched on those times for Vanyaland as part of our 617 Q&A series (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings). Thorogood reminisced about how bad downtown Boston’s Combat Zone used to be, talked about what brought him to the city in the first place, the popularity of his drinking songs, and why The Rolling Stones are still going strong.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: Not a lot of people know this, but you spent a good amount of time actually living in Boston at the start of your career. How did that happen?
George Thorogood: Well, I went to Max’s Kansas City in New York City to do a guest set when Bonnie Raitt was playing with Little Feat. I was a street musician and I ran into Dick Waterman, who was the manager of Bonnie Raitt, and he sent me up to his club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it was called Joe’s Place, which is basically the Boston area. And I went there, and I did a guest set there with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and they hired me on the spot. Then, I just drifted into the Boston scene. Kind of stuck around there for a while. That’s how I got started.
***
What did you get out of the Boston scene that you weren’t getting from, let’s say, the Delaware or the New York scene?
At that time, it was a big blues mecca. There was The Speakeasy, there was Joe’s Place – and that’s where the action was. And all the top blues acts out of Chicago… I mean, they went everywhere, but staying there, you’d see Howlin’ Wolf, you’d see Hound Dog Taylor and Muddy Waters and Freddie King and people like that. New England, especially at that time, was very keen on the blues, especially the Boston area.
One of the things that came out from you in the past couple of years was Live in Boston 1982: The Complete Concert…
That’s the wrong title. Wrong title.
What’s the right title for it?
[In a loud, gravelly voice] Live…from the Combat Zone!
Oh yeah – that’s right in the heart of where the Combat Zone was.
That’s right. And then we renamed that record Live….from the Combat Zone. The cops would come up to you – if you had a problem in the Combat Zone, they wouldn’t even help you. They said, “If you’re dumb enough to go to the Combat Zone, we can’t help you.” Now, it’s called the Boston Common.
It is nice for families to go now.
It wasn’t back in my day! [howls with laughter] It wasn’t nice for anybody to go there, which is a tribute to our fans because they came there two years in a row in 1981 for our 50/50 tour and [a year later] packed that place. And that was a very rough area, very rough neighborhood. And for our fans to bear the elements, of course, they’re Boston people, so they’re used to it. You know what I’m saying?
Why did you want the whole show to come out?
I didn’t. That was a record company’s idea. It was a record company’s idea to release it anyway [originally in 2010]. I thought it’d be a cool idea to record the whole 50/50 tour and release that. But later they did this Live in Boston and it seemed to get some response, and then they decided to do the whole concert. It was out of my hands. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I just don’t like the title. Live in Boston sounds boring. Live from the Combat Zone! That sounds like something.
Are you happy with that show though, as a document of you and the band at that time?
I don’t know – I’ve never listened to it. I’ve been busy, man. I don’t listen to The Destroyers. I listen to J. Geils. You know what I’m saying?
Are you going to get Peter Wolf up there on stage with you at The Wilbur?
I sure hope so. I want Peter Wolf to join our band, be our lead singer because after all, he is the Geator with the Heater, the Boss with the Hot Sauce, make your knees freeze and your liver quiver and your back crack. Correct?
I cannot argue with that. The Bradford Ballroom, which is where you played back in ‘81, back in ’82, where the live record was recorded, is now a wedding chapel you can go to and get married.
[laughs] That gives me a laugh. Hey Michael, thanks for warning me so I can avoid that place. Me and wedding chapels don’t get along. It’s not my bag, baby.
***
Blues will always be around, but how does it feel for you to be one of the last ones to have had that firsthand experience seeing all those guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf – the blues legends – and then going down that musical path? I mean, you saw all the old bluesmen and the people that play the blues today that are coming up, they’re good players, but they don’t have that firsthand experience like you did.
I look at it this way. We were the ones who were lucky enough to get there at the 11th hour of the party. So, I learned at the feet of the best of the best; Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Robert Lockwood, Hound Dog Taylor, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters. And like Howlin’ Wolf would say, “The cat’s playing today, they all play nice and all that,” but for me, it is an interpretation of the blues. It’s not the blues of John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf, who I played with and met and hung out with and learned from.
So yeah, it is no fault of people when they’re born. I would’ve liked to have been born in the time of Beethoven or Van Gogh or people like that to learn those things. But you’re looking at the last of – or the youngest of them anyway – because Elvin Bishop is your guy. He was in on that scene as all those other cats I mentioned, but there’s very few of us left and I’m the last one. There’s no doubt about it. The last of the Mohicans right here, baby.
Do you ever think about how you are now older than Hound Dog Taylor was when he died, when Howlin’ Wolf was when he died, and you are still going?
Look at Mick Jagger. He’s 81 years old and from the chin down, he’s got the body of an 18-year-old cheerleader. You know what I’m saying? He weighs exactly the same as he did back in 1965 when he was on The Ed Sullivan Show. Now, that takes a lot of work. Granted, Mr. Jagger was born with a thin frame. But to sustain that is a lot of hard work and a lot of these cats, Hound Dog Taylor and all these cats, not unlike Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison and people like that, they lived like there was no tomorrow. That’s why they didn’t live ’til tomorrow – if you know what I’m saying. So that was the times. We saw Muddy Waters when he was 51 or 52, and everybody thought he was “an old blues guy.” And I said, “51 or 52 is not old.” With all due respect to Willie Nelson… but that’s another story.
Speaking of Mick Jagger, are you surprised that the Stones are still going, or do you think they’re just part of that blues lineage anyway? I mean, their goal was to be their heroes and play into their 80s.
No, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Keith Richards is in love with his guitar and in love with his fans, and he’s in love with his songs, and with what he does. And Mick Jagger is absolutely hooked on being a live performer. I won’t say he’s an applause junkie or anything, nothing of that sort. He just is a man who has a burning desire for performing. Like he said years ago, he was going to go as long as he could, like Marlene Dietrich or Liberace or anybody, even if he has to walk out there with a cane, because that is his passion, and he’s getting paid very well for it. [laughs] I mean, come on, Michael, I don’t care what age you are, if someone comes up and says, “Do you want to play anymore?” “Well, I’m semi-retired.” “Oh, that’s too bad. We’ll give you 300 million dollars to do a tour.” “Ah! Okay, I’m ready.” Nobody turns down that kind of money.
Does it bother you that a lot of people are like, “Oh, George Thorogood. He sings those songs about drinking. He sings ‘I Drink Alone.’” And a lot of times some of those aren’t even about drinking. Like “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” that’s about a guy that can’t pay his rent.
Pretty much, yeah.
But people are still like, “Oh, it’s the drinking songs. It’s the drinking songs.” And from what I know, you’re not even a big drinker. But you’ve got these songs “If You Don’t Start Drinkin’ (I’m Gonna Leave)”
That’s three. That’s three.
***
But they’re the ones that get a lot of the play.
Well, because those are the ones that the public caught onto, you see. That wasn’t any of my doing. We just happened to put the songs out. Now look how many songs Johnny Mathis has done about love. Look how many songs The Beatles have done with the word “love” in it, and it caught on. So those songs were just one or two of ’em. The record company got on it, the radio got on it. I just released those songs just like any other song… “Move It on Over” or “Who Do You Love?” or any of the other songs we do. There was no special crusade of imbibing in alcohol. It was just another song. But you see, it’s like James Cagney. He’s most famous for his gangster films, and he only made about seven of them. He made 50 films. You see what I’m saying? But they’re the ones people like, they’re the ones that people want to see.
So, when you’re an artist and you put out stuff, sometimes you have no control over what the public dig. For instance, Clint Eastwood made a lot of movies that aren’t Westerns, but they’re the ones that people want to see and want to hear. You know what I’m saying? So that’s just the way the world is. The world likes drinking. [laughs] Not me! They just say, “Well, this is a great song.” The theme of “I Drink Alone” really is about a loner who wants to be alone. Because we spend 90 percent of our time in our life alone, Michael, isn’t that true? You go to the bathroom alone, you eat alone, you drive in a car alone, you sleep alone… for the most part.
So that could have said anything. I could have said, “I watch television alone.” “I go to the market alone.” But all those names of alcohols sounded like people’s names. And I said, “It’s just a matter of time before George Jones writes this song.” It’s that simple. When we put it together, “My friend Jack Daniels, my Old Grand-Dad.” That was very easy to put together. You should hear all the ones I left out. [laughs]
Have you ever in your life sat down and had in succession one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer?
No, I don’t like scotch. I can’t stand the smell of it. I leave the scotch to Humphrey Bogart.
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Stay away from fried food and stay out of Italian cars.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Obviously, people can’t go see those bluesmen from the past because they’re all gone. But if someone came up and said, “George, I really want to get into the history of blues. Who are seven guys that I need to go and listen to their catalog?“
I would say there’s only one: Robert Johnson. The next six can be anybody. The essentials, is that what you’re talking about? Because all those people, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James and Jimmy Reed and all those great blues artists, they’re all descendants of Robert Johnson. He’s it. I count things on one hand. I said blues: Robert Johnson; country music: Hank Williams; rock and roll: The Beatles. That’s it. That’s the top-of-the-line right there.
The only other two that you can fit on your hand that have made the monster contributions are Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry. That’s it. Those are the big five. Those, you can’t say enough. But if you have to listen to anybody besides blues, you have to listen to those five artists that I just mentioned. Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, The Beatles, Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan. That’s it. After that, well… wait a minute, maybe Booker T. & the M.G.’s.
GEORGE THOROGOOD & THE DESTROYERS :: Tuesday, June 18 at The Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont St. in Boston, MA :: 8 p.m., all ages, $65 to $85 :: Event info :: Advance tickets