George Thorogood
Don't Get It. Never Have. His stuff all sounds the same and I think I'd rather put a bullet in my brain than hear "Bad To The Bone" again. When he fisrt exploded on the scene in 1979, I really thought he'd be a flash in the pan and be done soon. He didn't write much of his own material and while his "50 states in 50 days" tour was admirable, I thought .."what was the point?" He was one of my most cantankerious interviews (my attitude may have had something to do with it), but he did get off the best line while finishing it up. He was obviously tired and I put him into a corner with a statement about now not being able to understand how four chords produced five albums. He looked at me, winked and said "that's six albums, but who's counting. "One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer" is atrocious, the rest of his catalog less so, but he gets points for working hard. He is still out there, so what the heck do I know?
2 comments:
Somehow I think Thorogood would be the first to agree with you. He's never been a songwriter, never been an especially creative guitarist, and never really claimed to be much more than a bar-band musician. All he's ever tried to do is get people up off their ass and have a good time, and by that standard, he's been a success. Anyway, rock has never been about writing symphonies, it's about taking those four chords and making them work. John Lennon once said, "I'm not a great technical guitarist, but I can make it howl and move", and I think Thorogood does that as well.
I also saw your 25 most influential LP's. Great list.
To use Gene Simmons' analogy about the appeal of Kiss, sometimes you want Filet Mignon for dinner (say, Led Zep, Springsteen, The Who, Moody Blues, etc.) and sometimes you just want a big sloppy Double Whopper with cheese (Kiss, Black Oak Arkansas, Thorogood, et al).
Or in the Delaware Destroyers' case, they're more like a Town Topic double greaseburger for me. GT's a little too cocky for his own good, sometimes, btu I always thought his band was tight, and when they hit their stride in concert, they're like a runaway freight train.
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