Lonesome George Thorogood as he likes to call himself tore up the Olympia with his own brand of hard rocking slide guitar blues Monday night.
Not since the great Elmore James first dusted his broom has an audience witnessed such a stage technique emphasising blistering well-lubricated raw and primitive power chords sliding into a stratosphere of musical excitement and sexuality.
With the seating removed on the ground floor the tightly packed audience jived and bopped away all night long reminiscent of a 1950’s high school hop.
The show promptly got off to a real treat from a Detroit country blues band called The Deadstring Brothers. Front man Kurt Marschke bounced about the stage like a young Pete Townshend with windmill arcs across the strings of his battered Fender Telecaster in-between his excellent vocal duets with Marsha Marjieh. Their music grooves along full of magical American classic rock influences, its Mamas and Papas meets early 70’s Rolling Stones wild horses era with the urban echoes of the MC 5 and The Ramones all bubbling away in a nice new Country Stew full of modern flavours similar in taste and texture to Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash, Sheryl Crow and The Dixie Chicks. The textured keyboards and pedal steel contributions were timely and sublime in the mix and each song revealed a solid road tested quality. Warning up the audience for someone revered as much as George Thorogood is a big ask but one that The Deadstring Brothers accomplished with confident ease gaining many new fans in Dublin on the night.
The 55-year-old George Thorogood and his band the Destroyers known in the early years as the Delaware Destroyers has been rocking the blues since his debut album release back in 1974.George arrived on stage in dark shades dressed in black as were the rest of the Destroyers and launched into a new potential anthem from his new CD Hard Stuff called Rock Party prowling the stage, scanning the crowd at different levels leaving no one in any doubt that the main man had arrived for the main attraction.
The Destroyers are a well-oiled machine moving in synchronised patterns to the pounding beat, Slim Jim Suhler on Gibson Les Paul, superb skin hammering pile driver Jeff Simon on Drums, Bill Blough on Bass and Buddy Leach on Saxophone.
A purple hue hung over two banks of 6 foot high black covered amplification on each side of the Drums sitting on a high rise.George throws the glasses across the stage and launches into Who Do You Love, the drums sounding like thunder behind the driving Bo Diddley rhythm.
The songs roll on one after the other with hardly time to draw a breath between each classic hit and when George does start rapping with the audience its bad boy talk with a delirious audience hanging on to every word.
“I am going to do everything in my power tonight to get arrested and if someone is going to get arrested tonight then it might as well be me”
The Fixer, Move It On Over, One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer tear up the house in a take no prisoners approach by this American Band.
Like many white boy blues players George found the blues through listening to what his early heroes the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Peter Green were listening to and exploring this historical Aladdin’s Cave blues guitar wizardry all the way along Highway 61.
To get a feel for George Thorogood’s music imagine you’re making a Terminator movie and Arnie arrives into the roughest bar in town on a mission from the future naked as the day he was born.
He throws back a treble Southern Comfort and heads over to a psychopathic biker shaving himself with the flame of lighter in the corner. He tells the badass dude he wants his clothes, his customised Harley Davison and his motorcycle boots. “You forgot to say please” the Hells Angel replies as he stubs out his cigarette into Arnie’s chest, followed by a bout of physical convincing before Arnie’s heads back out to the mean streets fully clothed in the doomed bikers possessions.
Outside leaning against a parking meter beside the Harley is a voluptuous blonde scantily clad homeless hooker, falling out of Rolling Stoned tongue logo top.
She’s nineteen years old with ways like a baby child, as Muddy Waters would have said, eyes as blue as the deepest blues.
She doesn’t know where she’s goin and you don’t want to know where she’s been.
She makes Arnie an offer he can’t refuse, in return for a ride out of town on the back of the bike she will rub him down with sweet scented oils every night after his daily battles to save the planet.
As the two of them roar out of town at dawn into a badass future an appropriate and tailor-made piece of music erupts and it can only be Bad To The Bone by George Thorogood.
This classic piece of slide is an Open G power chord rotating assault on the 3rd and 5th fret moving it up to the 12fret for the solo that’s got a primitive early match play of Big Bad Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker meets Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed vibe.It’s that old perfection of simplicity that George brings to his music and its been that way ever since George first say the light, attending a John Hammond gig and the place lighting up like the church in the Blues Brothers. That was the turning point for a life of high volume white knuckled slide guitar playing just looking for the next gig.
George has been the hottest ticket in Dublin for me ever since I witnessed his trailblazing acrobatic action packed guitar style including reversed duck hopping stage manoeuvres in the afternoon sun in front of 82,000 fans supporting The Rolling Stones in Slane in 1982 and I was standing in the middle of Wembley Stadium for the legendary 1985 Live Aid show when George’s performance of Madison Blues with his special guest Albert Collin’s blues master of the Telecaster was beamed from the Philadelphia stage by satellite link up on to the huge screens on either side of the Wembley stage and around the globe into the largest TV audience ever on the planet.
George Thorogood & The Destroyers is an act that needs to be experienced live to get the full impact with Lonesome George himself shifting between the mean, moody and magnificent on his good time southern fried blues rocking formula and The Destroyers stunning hot tight and punchy contributions on bass, drums and horns stuffed with personality.
George Thorogood’s gig was packed to the gunnels with relentless fast, furious, slow and sublime excitement and guaranteed satisfied smiles on every face walking out of the Olympia Theatre on to Dame St after a series of encores that left the audience exhausted with new songs like Hello Josephine leaving indelible imprints on their first outing.
Mick Kenny aka MTW
