March 6, 2025
George Thorogood review
Photos and review by BARRY LEVINE
RIDGEFIELD, CT. — Shhh…don’t tell anybody, but George Thorogood just celebrated his 75th birthday on February 24.
You wouldn’t have known if you caught the “Bad to the Bone” rocker’s spirited performance at the Ridgefield Playhouse on March 3. Based on his frenetic and fabulous guitar work, he came across as a Wunderkind who should have been carded at the door of the venue.
“How’s it feel to be 17 years old again? Rock ’n roll’s for derelicts like us,” George cracked, smiling mischievously, to the sold-out crowd about two thirds of the way through his gig with the Destroyers on this continuing “Baddest Show on Earth” tour.
To be honest, I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I took the drive from NYC to this concert hall with its immaculate carpeted lobby that had me, out of guilt, picking up my popcorn kernels from the rug after a pre-show munch out.
What was left of George, now five decades in and more than 8,000 live shows and 15 million album sales later, I wondered. But true to his on-stage boast about youth, he did take me back to when I was 17 (ok, 18 actually), when I used to catch him in his rock infancy at the bar J.C. Dobbs on South Street in Philadelphia in 1977, when I was a college freshman.
Beginning a year earlier, George began playing his blues-rock sets at Dobbs on Saturday nights and then he’d do three sets on Sunday afternoon. And instead of driving back to Delaware for the night, he would often crash on the second floor of the bar to catch some sleep.
It was at Dobbs, in fact, when he decided to cover “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” He later explained: “They kept hiring us back to play that song. You see, you only stay in business long if you make your partners a profit…Drinking will always be popular…I thought if we have a clever song about that, we’ll be in business for a while.”
And during his 12-song, 90-minute set, the world’s oldest teenager transported me back to a packed Dobbs in its haze of cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer. Watching George play his famous slide guitar, with all its gusto, and loving every second of it, you could clearly see from his face, we were indeed all young again.
And it was nice to see George surrounded by some of his oldest bandmates. His old high school pal Jeff Simon, three years younger, who he formed his band “the Delaware Destroyers” with in 1973, is still at his side in front of the drum kit. And Billy “The Doctor” Blough, is still going strong on bass guitar, having been with the boys since 1976. The band is rounded out by Jim Suhler, on rhythm guitar, who goes back to 1999, and Buddy Leach, on saxophone, has been in place since 2003.
As has been custom on this tour, which will take the Destroyers to Australia in April and May, George’s entrance followed a recording of Barry McGuire’s 1960’s hit “Eve of Destruction.” Then the P.A. announcement: “The undisputed, undefeated heavyweight rock ’n roll champions.”
George couldn’t be happier as he and the boys took the stage to thundering applause. “How sweet it is,” he crowed, adding of himself: “That’s a rock star. I can’t believe it’s really me.”
They ripped through their opener, “Rock Party” from 2006. George’s voice was a little gravelly but the champ was back in the ring, and his fans were thankful after he recovered from what was called a “very serious medical condition,” which required emergency surgery in 2023, and forced the cancellation of the band’s 50th anniversary tour.
As is his running tongue-in-cheek badass attitude on stage, George constantly reminded the audience what a bad dude he was and peppered the audience with reminders of his love for the ladies and booze. He told the crowd: “People told me right next door is the local police station. Good for you! Bad for me! We’re gonna play some nasty stuff.”
The Bo Diddley cover “Who Do You Love” was nicely done and then the rockabilly J.B. Lenoir cover “Mama Talk to Your Daughter” came roaring. Then, the house erupted as they segued into his rock radio staple, “I Drink Alone.” As soon as the opening riff rang out, some in the house were lifting their beers.
After the song, like the bad boy he is, or pretends to be, George turned from the audience, pulled out a comb and began combing his hair like a high school greaser with his white t-shirt rolled up to his shoulders.
Cheers then erupted when he treated us to the classic Amos Milburn cover, “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” Many came specifically for this number and the fans didn’t hold back, joining in to enhance the chorus.
While George plays the tough guy, he was quick to remind the audience not to drink and drive, but cracked to the guys in the audience, “You can get your buddy’s girlfriend to drive you home.” George chuckled and said, cracking up, “We might as well get into it…foreplay! I’m so full of shit.” He gave a shout out to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash before beginning his cover of Johnny’s rockabilly “Cocaine Blues.”
The songs were fast and furious and the Destroyers, like a well-oiled machine, then blasted into an instrumental jam while George took a few minutes off stage — only to return, dressed now in a black t-shirt, with a killer slide performance on “Gear Jammer.”
“Hard rock, that’s the way,” he shouted. “I’m dedicating this to Barbara, Laura, Janet, Cathy and Sharon.”
At that point, we were all definitely young again and he was fired up and showed it so with a stellar “Get a Haircut,” one of his signature songs from 1993, although he began playing it in the 70’s. George took a drink from the stage from a plastic shot glass and then flung it. “That’s tea,” he joked.
A young woman in the audience from a few rows back shouted: “Can I get a kiss?” George, to the crowd’s roar, summoned her to the edge of the stage and he reached down and smooched her hand to more applause.
Next up was the Destroyers’ anthem, the jukebox classic “Bad to the Bone,” which was well executed by all. We felt like we were definitely all B-b-b-b-b-bad and back in 1982, the year it was released when its music video became a sensation on MTV.
George was so revved up as he kicked into a high-octane version of the Them cover “Gloria.” “Move It on Over,” the Hank Williams classic cover, which George electrified, was next. We didn’t want it to end but we all had to return to 2025 sometime. George and crew returned to the stage for an encore of his 1988 favorite,“Born to be Bad.”
It was quite a night for a guy, no matter how many times he’s played these songs, to twist and shout all the way through and continue to put on a clinic for guitar lovers.
The outro over the P.A., as usual at his shows, was the recorded version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As we were leaving, I heard one group of guys talking about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s glaring omission that George and the Destroyers have not been inducted.
A petition drive was actually started last year back in his Delaware hometown of Wilmington, pushing for the band’s inclusion.
As George sings in “Get a Haircut,” “I hit the big-time with my rock and roll band/The future’s brighter now than I’d ever plan.”
In my opinion, after wailing his badass guitar across stages for a half-century, the Hall owes it to the world’s oldest teenager to induct him. And whether he gets in or not, he doesn’t ever want to stop playing. As he told a recent interviewer: “I want to be better than George Thorogood was last week.”
George Thorogood Talks Life at 75 (from interviews from this tour):
On aging musicians: “Look at Mick Jagger. 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…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…not unlike Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison and people like that, they lived like
there was no tomorrow…”
On what his crowd likes: “We’re like a restaurant with a menu, and if something on it appeals to people and they keep coming back for it, we keep that thing on the menu, but we might add something new to it. But it’s never been about writing a song because I’m heartbroken, my wife left me, or because my father passed away. There’s nothing personal about it.”
On secrets from the road: “My amplifier we call it the ‘mystery mutt,’ it’s the combination of about 1000 other amps. It’s a creation from our tech people, like taking a car and using 100 parts to make it. I wanted something that didn’t break down all the time and the guitars and amps I use if you don’t put them on max, you don’t get the sound I need.”
On “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”: “No, I don’t like scotch. I can’t stand the smell of it. I leave
the scotch to Humphrey Bogart.”
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