When John Peel, the nation’s best-loved DJ, was interviewed for these pages two years ago he was asked what he liked listening to in the car. “My favourite driving CD would comprise the first four tracks of an EP by George Thorogood, including a version of Elmore James’s The Sky Is Crying,” said Peel. “Wow,” says Thorogood, ahead of a European tour that brings him to London, Belfast and Dublin next month. “That’s not bad at all. I’ll take it.”
The late Peel is not the only one to have found the American rocker’s music the perfect accompaniment to driving on a hot summer’s night. With his gear-shifting slide guitar and songs infused with the imagery of classic automobiles, Thorogood’s take on the blues is always going to be more Jeremy Clarkson than Clarksdale, Mississippi.
But despite building a reputation as the ultimate “road dog” with such highway-pounding tours as his “50 dates in 50 states” assault on American rock venues, Thorogood has a confession: he doesn’t like cars that much. “Chuck Berry loves cars but I am not that kind of people,” he says. “I am so chicken that I wear my safety belt to drive-in movies.”
Thorogood’s career as one of the most electrifying rock’n’roll performers began almost by accident. In the early 1970s he tried to form a baseball team called the Delaware Destroyers — but not enough people turned up. So he formed a rock band instead. His drummer and bass player have been with him ever since. The only change is that the name has been truncated to the Destroyers.
Their first album in 1977 featured the band leaning against a blue Chevrolet milk truck. “That was given to us as our tour bus by the grandmother of Jeff (Simon), the drummer,” says Thorogood. “It was a big break for us. She had come into some money and decided to buy it for us. It lasted quite a few years before we bought something more comfortable: another Chevy.
“In those days we didn’t have any money and we would take it in turns to sleep in the van. There would be enough money for one of us to get a room but the others slept in the van. It comes with the territory that you have to travel a huge amount. For 50 dates in 50 states we did Hawaii and Alaska first and then flew into Oregon and took to the road, doing a state a day until we had finished. We actually did 51 dates because we played in Baltimore, Maryland, in the afternoon and Washington DC in the evening. A double header.
“Nowadays we try to keep the driving to below double figures. Hours that is, not miles. But when you are driving from Milwaukee to Portland, Oregon, there is not much in between except miles and miles of highway. Let’s put it this way. If Bob Dylan has a Rolls-Royce dealership, I have a used Chevy dealership. But I’m in the business. That’s all I wanted from this thing. A gig, man. And I got a gig.”
The hard work has paid off. By 1981 he and the Destroyers were opening for the Rolling Stones. In 1985 they played the American leg of Live Aid. One song, the transmission-trashing Gear Jammer, became a favourite of truck drivers. Another, Bad to the Bone, became a hit with the Nascar car racing crowd and is in demand for commercials for Cadillac and Harley-Davidson. There was even a Nascar called Bad to the Bone.
Thorogood, whose father emigrated to the US with his own parents from Colliers Wood, southwest London, is not the type to have taken it for a spin. “I have no affinity for cars,” he says. “It took me years to buy a car, I didn’t get a licence until I was in my twenties. I really didn’t like cars. I thought they were death traps and I thought it was a big insurance scam.
“I said that until they build a car that’s perfect I am not buying one. That’s why I went out and bought a BMW. It’s the best car on the road. They are safe and high performance.
“I have a daughter (Rio) so I want to play it safe. I am not going to ride around in a piece of junk that will jeopardise her life.”
He is now on his second BMW. His wife has had three. “I’ve got one of those great ones. It’s a four-seater but it almost looks like a sports car. It’s got a little fin on the top and looks like a shark. My daughter calls it ‘the Black Shark’.
“It’s a great piece of machinery. It will go from 0-90mph in about 1Å seconds flat. It’s got me out of a lot of jams. There have been lots of times where there could have been an accident but because of the BMW we were able to turn on a dime and get out of the way. The car has actually saved my life. It’s a 5 or 7-something series. I got the very first one in the United States about five years ago when it first came off the boat.”
Thorogood may exaggerate its performance but clearly it’s a million miles from the Dynaflow, a 1930s jalopy he sings about on his new album, The Hard Stuff.
Now he is planning his next car purchase — for Rio. “When my daughter is 16 I’m going to buy her one of those two-seater BMWs, the type Pierce Brosnan drove in the James Bond movies. Not that I’m going to be speeding in it. I’m going to colour it deep purple and not go anywhere but just drive around and piss the neighbours off.”
