George Thorogood and his trusty ES-125 guitar are heading to New Zealand this week. Photo / David Dobson
George Thorogood and his trusty ES-125 guitar are heading to New Zealand this week. Photo / David Dobson
George Thorogood is a showman, a storyteller, a Blues legend and, in his own words, he and his band The Destroyers are “probably playing better now than we ever have”.
For context, they began in 1973.
The 75-year-old is back in New Zealand this week to play three shows- Christchurch on May 15, Auckland, May 17 and Wellington, May 18 - with longtime friend Billy F. Gibbons and ZZ Top.
“We were hired to do a tour with ZZ Top in 1994. Since the day we met we’ve hit it off great, we’re like blood brothers. It’s wonderful being around him,” says Thorogood.
They have plenty in common beyond their age - longevity in an unforgiving industry being one thing. Their tireless will to entertain is another. And, of course, their love of the blues.
Billy F. Gibbons (centre) and ZZ Top will play Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington. Photo / Blain Clausen
By the mid to late 1970s, Thorogood - a white guy from Delaware - was playing southern blues so well that he won the respect and friendship of some of the greatest African American Bluesmen of all time – including John Lee Hooker.
“That took a while,” says Thorogood of his relationship with Hooker.
“I was a big fan of his when I was starting out on the guitar. Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker and Elmore James are the three people that I listened to - especially Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker,”
“His music is very basic, very primitive. It’s not complicated, but it’s very, very deep.
“So, we cut a couple of songs by him and as time went on we got to be friends. That was a bonus to the whole deal.”
In 1977 Thorogood recorded One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer – a medley of two John Lee Hooker tracks that starts with House Rent Boogie.
Hooker spoke publicly about Thorogood’s ability to play just like him – a feat that few managed.
“Being able to capture what he does, and to capture his admiration and friendship, means the world to me,” says Thorogood.
George Thorogood & The Destroyers performing at Whitianga Summer Concert in 2020. Photo / Chris Traill
Covering other artists was common in the blues. Hooker’s own version of One Bourbon was derived from a 1953 song by Rudy Toombs. Thorogood says taking on songs by better-known artists wasn’t as brave as it might seem.
“It wasn’t a ballsy thing to do. I had no choice because I don’t know how to play anything else. And that’s my passion, that’s what I know how to do.”
Thorogood says that after listening to his Blues influences over and over, he learned to play the guitar very quickly.
“It happened so fast it almost scared me. I picked up John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, Robert Johnson and slide guitar so quickly that I said, well, ‘this is for me. This is what I’m meant to do’.”
Muddy Waters
His grasp of the slide guitar was so good that he attracted the attention of another of the blues’ biggest names – Muddy Waters.
“He enjoyed my guitar work. I played a Muddy Waters song right in front of him with a slide guitar, and he said, ‘You play that thing better than I did’ - meaning his song,” recalls Thorogood.
“I thought, here’s a guy from the Mississippi Delta who cut his teeth on it and on Robert Johnson, who’s listening to me play a Muddy Waters song, and he’s saying I’m playing it better than he ever did?” says Thorogood, still with a sense of amazement.
But not everybody was enamoured with Thorogood’s Blues.
“John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters think what I’m doing is great,” says Thorogood.
“Yet all these critics are saying I can’t play the Blues. All those people saying that are white people. Don’t you find that ironic? I do.”
Despite the praise, Thorogood says he didn’t have much of a friendship with Waters, though he did play with his band from time to time. One of Thorogood’s biggest hits was adapted from Waters’ song Mannish Boy and was written with Muddy Waters in mind – 1982’s Bad to the Bone. Thorogood offered the song to Waters through his management.
“I don’t think it was him that spurned it. It was his management. His manager got back to our agent - he was infuriated. He said, ‘Muddy Waters will never record a blues song written by a white man,’” says Thorogood.
“I said, that’s bullsh*t. If Keith Richards or Eric Clapton wrote that song for Muddy Waters, they’d have recorded it in a minute,” says Thorogood.
Despite its origin in America’s Deep South, Thorogood says the blues has no skin colour.
“There is no colour for pain.”
Greatest blues song ever
“Blues to me is passion,” says Thorogood.
To underline the broad spectrum of blues music, in Thorogood’s opinion, he offers up his take on the greatest blues song ever written.
“Yesterday by The Beatles,” he says.
“When I heard Paul McCartney sing Yesterday, what could be sadder than a young man singing about the death of his mother? That’s the blues, isn’t it?” asks Thorogood, before revealing that the late, great Chuck Berry had a similar opinion.
On tour again, Thorogood and The Destroyers are dialled in to what their fans want and they take great pleasure in delivering it each night.
“I’m fortunate with the band that most of the songs that we recorded over the years are still very popular with the general public of rock and roll. We’ve been playing these songs a long time,” says Thorogood.
Yet he still plays them with the same mischievous demeanour that he did when he broke through 50 years ago. You know the songs, you know the stories they tell and you know how they end – but Thorogood has his audience hanging off his every lyric, just the same.
“We’re like a good rerun of the Three Stooges!”
Mike Thorpe is a senior journalist for the Herald, based in Christchurch. He has been a broadcast journalist across television and radio for 20 years and joined the Herald in August 2024.
