George Thorogood: 50 states in 50 days in a Checker cab | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

GEORGE THOROGOOD has never pretended to be anything flash. “I’m a Chevy Nova in a world of Rolls Royces,” he once said.

The Nova has done a lot of miles. The band counts more than 8,000 live shows and more than 15 million albums sold. The RIAA has certified two of their albums platinum and six gold. Goldmine magazine called them “The All-American rock & roll party band”, and the Musicians Hall of Fame liked the line enough to quote it when it brought him in this year.

Then there’s Bad to the Bone, the song most people know him by, whether or not they know his name.

Early life and training

Thorogood was born on 24 February 1950 in Wilmington, Delaware, and he still calls it his hometown. He went to Brandywine High School, graduating in 1968. A librarian there, he has said, told him to be himself.

Music wasn’t the first plan. He played semi-professional baseball, and he’s still a New York Mets fan. What changed things was seeing the blues performer John Hammond in New York in 1970. After that it was the guitar.

Career chapters

1. 1973Formed the Delaware Destroyers in Wilmington
2. 1977Debut album on Rounder Records
3. 1978the album Move It On Over reached the US top 40
4. 1981Opened for the Rolling Stones, played 50 states in 50 days, signed with EMI
5. 1982Bad to the Bone
6. 1985Live Aid, JFK Stadium, Philadelphia
7. 1995Live and The Baddest of George Thorogood & The Destroyers certified platinum
8. 2026Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum

A dorm, a drummer and no electric guitar 1973

The band came together in Wilmington in 1973, first as the Delaware Destroyers. Their drummer, Jeff Simon, booked the first show, in a University of Delaware dormitory. Thorogood still didn’t own an electric guitar.

At first it was two guitars and drums: Thorogood, Simon and guitarist Ron Smith. That trio cut the first album in 1976. Bassist Billy Blough joined a few months later, and his bass was added to the tapes before the record came out. Saxophonist Hank Carter joined in 1980.

Rounder Records 1977 to 1978

The self-titled debut came out on Rounder Records in 1977. It sold more than 100,000 copies, which made it the label’s best seller at the time. On it was One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer, his take on a John Lee Hooker song.

A year later Move It On Over reached the US top 40. The title track is a Hank Williams, Who’s Who number 28 in · Ultimate Classic Country Reunion (story coming soon) song, and the album went gold in July 1980.

The Stones, a Checker cab and 50 states 1981

In 1981 the Destroyers opened for the Rolling Stones on their US tour, with Keith Richards, Who’s Who number 31 on guitar and Mick Jagger, Who’s Who number 19 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon) singing. The dates included Candlestick Park in San Francisco and a show in New Orleans. Promoter Bill Graham wanted them for more.

They couldn’t do it, because they’d already booked something stranger. The 50/50 tour was 50 states in 50 days. It started in Hawaii, went to Alaska next, and the band got around in a converted Checker cab.

The same year, Thorogood signed with EMI.

Bad to the Bone 1982

The album Bad to the Bone came out in 1982 and stayed on Billboard’s album chart for about a year. The title song became the one he’s known for.

Live Aid 1985

On 13 July 1985 the Destroyers played Live Aid at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. They’d been booked the night before, reportedly after Tears for Fears pulled out, and flew in from San Francisco. Bo Diddley, Who’s Who number 40, joined them for Who Do You Love?, and Albert Collins came out for Madison Blues.

There was no rehearsal. “You don’t rehearse for something like that,” Thorogood told Guitar Player. They played, and they left.

The long road 1986 to 2025

The gold records kept coming, with Maverick and then Born to Be Bad in 1988. In 1995 the 1986 album Live and The Baddest of George Thorogood & The Destroyers both went platinum. Greatest Hits: 30 Years of Rock went gold in 2005, and by 2019 the band was out on the Good to Be Bad: 45 Years of Rock tour.

He married Marla in July 1985. She died of ovarian cancer in 2019, after 34 years of marriage. Their daughter, Rio, has performed with her dad. In 2020 Thorogood set up the Marla Thorogood Memorial Fund for Ovarian Cancer Research. The T.J. Martell Foundation runs it, and it funds Dr Ronald Alvarez’s lab at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.

The band lost a long-time member in 2021. Saxophonist Hank Carter, who played with them for 23 years, died on 14 September, aged 71.

In April 2023 Thorogood cancelled 18 shows in the US and Canada. The band said he’d been diagnosed with “a very serious medical condition” that needed surgery, and they aimed to be back on stage on 14 July in Jefferson, Wisconsin. They made it: the Destroyers headlined the Jefferson County Fair that night.

Craft, sound and style

Thorogood sings and plays slide, and plenty of his best-known songs started out as somebody else’s. Hank Williams, Who’s Who number 28 in · Ultimate Classic Country Reunion (story coming soon) wrote Move It On Over. John Lee Hooker is behind One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer. Who Do You Love? was a Bo Diddley, Who’s Who number 40 song long before Live Aid, and Diddley, Who’s Who number 40 walked out to play it with him.

His idea of where the music belongs is simple. “The Destroyers are at their best when we play for the people,” he said this year.

He also has a theory about why the band has lasted. “Maybe we have survived because we don’t fit in,” he told Knight-Ridder.

The ES-125

His guitar is a Gibson ES-125, the hollow-body single cutaway with P-90 pickups. All About Jazz writer C. Michael Bailey says he played ES-125 single cutaways and nothing else, and when Premier Guitar filmed his rig in March 2026 the main guitar was still a vintage ES-125 TDC. He got the first one for a practical reason. “I got my first 125 because our drummer booked a gig,” he told Mixdown in 2025. He didn’t own an electric guitar.

In 2026 Epiphone made a signature version, the ES-125 “White Fang” Outfit, with P-90 PRO pickups and Wilkinson Deluxe tuners. His backup on that tour was a black ES-125 he calls “Paint It Black”, the same guitar apart from the finish.

How the slide started

Brian Jones was the first slide player he saw. He tried it along to Robert Johnson, Who’s Who number 45 records, then “heard Elmore James and that was it,” he told Mixdown. Hound Dog Taylor taught him the rest. Taylor “had bar room boogie down to a science”, Thorogood told Juice in 2011, and he calls him “a mentor of mine, so to speak”. In the same interview he called himself “not really a very advanced musician” and said he was very heavy into Jimmy Reed while he was learning.

He plays slide in open G and open D, plus standard tuning for the rest. In 2026 his strings were GHS, .012 to .054 for standard and .015 to .056 for the open tunings, and his slides were lengths of copper pipe that his tech, Rev Jones, cuts and tapes up for him.

Bailey credits him with taking the electric slide of Elmore James and Hound Dog Taylor back to rock audiences, and with turning Hank Williams’s, Who’s Who number 28 in · Ultimate Classic Country Reunion (story coming soon) Move It On Over into a slide rocker. Thorogood’s own view is that the rough edges are the point. The unorthodox style “sets us apart”, he told OnMilwaukee, and he named Keith Richards, Who’s Who number 31, John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddley, Who’s Who number 40 as players who had it.

The rig today

The 2026 rig that Premier Guitar filmed runs into Electro-Harmonix 22 Caliber power amps, which are no longer made, and Mesa/Boogie 1x12 cabinets. A Voodoo Lab PX-8 Plus switches the pedals: an MXR Boost/Line Driver, an Empress ParaEQ, a DigiTech FreqOut, and Boss BF-3, TR-2 and DD-5 pedals. Thorogood’s own description of his live amp, in 2025, was a tech-built “mystery mutt”, a “combination of about 1000 other amps”. Nobody has documented what he used in the 1970s and 1980s, so none of this is the sound of the early records.

Stories people still tell

1. The Checker cab.

   Fifty states in fifty days in 1981, starting in Hawaii and then Alaska, with the band in a converted taxi.

2. Booked for Live Aid overnight.

   One phone call, one flight from San Francisco, and no rehearsal.

3. Faces in the crowd.

   Thorogood says Mick Jagger, Who’s Who number 19 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon) once joined him on stage at a later show, and that Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15, came to see him play. Both stories are his own.

Legacy

Thorogood isn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 2019 he told Ultimate Classic Rock that the way audiences react, and the respect he gets from artists who are in it, is his hall of fame.

This year another one came calling. The Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum announced its class of 2026 on 6 February. Thorogood was in it with Dolly Parton, Who’s Who number 11 in · Ultimate Classic Country Reunion (story coming soon), Keith Urban, Who’s Who number 13 in · Ultimate Aussie Reunion - Part 2 (story coming soon), Michael McDonald, Leland Sklar, Dann Huff, John Boylan and the late Nicky Hopkins. At the ceremony in April, at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville, Dweezil Zappa presented. The band opened with Move It On Over and closed with Who Do You Love and Bad to the Bone.

On 12 June 2026 Craft Recordings put out The Baddest Show on Earth: Greatest Hits Live, with recordings from 1978 to 2024.