It was back in the late seventies, when you could still hear a variety of music on F.M. radio, that one night as I was getting ready for bed I heard this voice coming out of my radio that sounded like it had been around for a thousand years. I was really surprised to hear that the song "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" was from the first album of a guy named George Thorogood.
A year later I was sitting in front row seats in a small concert hall watching him lead his Destroyers through a set of high-powered blues originals and standards. He was like a ball of energy duck-walking across the stage while playing some incredible slide guitar. He was still in the public eye when he released his second collection of songs, including a brilliant cover of Hank Williams' "Move It On Over", but after that he seemed to fade out of my view.
You'd occasionally hear "Move It On Over" or "One Bourbon…" on the radio, but not much more. I assumed that he was still out there working the circuit, but like so many other Blues musicians preferring to play music the way he wanted to instead of compromising for the sake of fame and popularity. I'm not trying to make out like he's some martyr for the Blues or anything like that; I'm sure he'd laugh off such a suggestion, it's just that he'd found his niche and was content with it.
Hell any guy that has the guts to say "I went to the same school as Eric Clapton. He graduated with honours, I scraped through with a C minus" has a better sense of his place in the world than most gurus or swamis can hope to achieve in a thousand lifetimes. Neither he nor his music make any apologies for what they are, or figure they owe anybody any explanations.
The fact that he does what he does out of love for the material and the music couldn't be more evident than on his latest release The Hard Stuff. He can still grind out the tough as nails bar rock blues that has formed the foundation for every blues-based band since the sixties but he also knows when to pull back and apply a lighter touch when needed.
The title track, "Hard Stuff" is just what it says it is. Tough, hard, and gritty rock and roll that makes your ears ring and your sternum hurt if you were to stand too close to the stacks of speakers in a bar. Hearing that as the opening cut sets you up for what you think will be a long, bumpy ride, but on the very next song he switches gears and takes you by surprise.
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