The Bad to the Bone singer-guitarist, who will play March 26 in the Lifestyle Communities Pavilion, is descended from Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker and British blues-rock guitarists. He picked four albums' worth of music by three musicians and one "essential song":

The Complete Recordings (boxed set), Robert Johnson: "If you don't listen to that, that's like saying, 'I like acting, but I don't care for On the Waterfront.' . . . (Johnson) is what it's all based on."

The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions , Howlin' Wolf with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr and Ian Stewart: "It's essential only for the fact that you've got one of the highest-profile bluesmen of all time with some of the greatest rock musicians in the world. It's a fantastic record."

Live at the Regal , B.B. King: "To talk about essential blues, somewhere along the line you've got to mention B.B. King. I'm not even that big a fan of his style, but he's as essential to blues as Johnny Cash is to country."

Something Inside Me (song), Elmore James: "It's got to be the greatest blues song I've ever heard. I've never heard anybody sing blues like Elmore James. It's chilling to listen to that man's vocals."

The Bad to the Bone singer-guitarist, who will play March 26 in the Lifestyle Communities Pavilion, is descended from Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker and British blues-rock guitarists. He picked four albums' worth of music by three musicians and one "essential song":

The Complete Recordings (boxed set), Robert Johnson: "If you don't listen to that, that's like saying, 'I like acting, but I don't care for On the Waterfront.' . . . (Johnson) is what it's all based on."

The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions , Howlin' Wolf with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr and Ian Stewart: "It's essential only for the fact that you've got one of the highest-profile bluesmen of all time with some of the greatest rock musicians in the world. It's a fantastic record."

Live at the Regal , B.B. King: "To talk about essential blues, somewhere along the line you've got to mention B.B. King. I'm not even that big a fan of his style, but he's as essential to blues as Johnny Cash is to country."

Something Inside Me (song), Elmore James: "It's got to be the greatest blues song I've ever heard. I've never heard anybody sing blues like Elmore James. It's chilling to listen to that man's vocals."

By MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER, Times Music Columnist
08/14/2008

It's so easy, bordering on lazy, to play the "Bad to the Bone" angle when doing an article about George Thorogood. Sure, it was a big hit, and to this day is even bigger as part of the pop culture lexicon, appearing on shirts, license plates and as tattoos for guys usually named Bud or Spike.

But there was a moment of confusion when Thorogood confessed to Rock Music Menu from the outset that he was doing "Baaad" this week.

Bad meaning good or bad meaning bad?

"No! It's an expression, 'Bad to the Bone,' I'm doin' bad!" Thorogood howled. "You get it? It's kind of like a moniker, like a thing you do."

Lesson learned. And if anyone is still allowed to reference "Bad to the Bone," it's the man who coined it, or at least is responsible for the enduring popularity of the phrase.

More than three decades in, the Delaware native and his Destroyers are still tearing up the road, hitting the Mann Music Center tonight with Chicago blues master Buddy Guy. "Buddy is such an incredible entertainer and performer. I have to really pick it up a notch, raise the bar a little bit," Thorogood said. "Playing with Buddy Guy is like a combination of B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix put together. Following that every night, you have to give the people something really special, because that's what they came to see: two dynamite live acts."

Guy is one of the few remaining blues legends, with the likes of Robert Lockwood Jr. and Henry Townsend passing in 2006. Hitting closer to home was the June death of Bo Diddley, whose song "Who Do You Love?" Thorogood covered.

He later featured the guitarist in the video for "Bad to the Bone," which lifted its signature riff in part from the Diddley composed "I'm a Man."

"I like all those effects he used when he started," Thorogood said. "He was pretty much ahead of his time, the way Jimi Hendrix blew everybody's mind in 1967; Bo Diddley was doing that in 1953 with the reverb and the tremolo, and flipping all over the stage and playing the guitar between his legs and all that stuff."

"What really got to me when he passed away. ... I loved the guy; we were partners, we were pals and we got along well. Every time I'd see him, if I hadn't see him in awhile, I'd walk in and say, 'Hiya Bo,' and he'd lean back and give me a suspicious look with those big thick glasses and go, 'Are you crazy?!' That's how he greeted me all the time. He was like that -- a lot of laughs, a fun guy."

Thorogood, at 58, is done trying to carry that old-school blues torch, saying he has, "completed the course." "I did my share," he said. "Now I just go out there and play the fan favorites."

It's a shame, because there isn't really anyone left to carry the blues forward. Sure, guys like John Mayer, Jack White and Jonny Lang can play the riffs, but they don't have the musical pedigree.

"Maybe one or two of them have seen John Lee Hooker play because he didn't pass away until 2001, and he was active right up until his death," Thorogood said. "But a lot of the heavy dudes, Muddy Waters, Hound Dog Taylor and Howlin' Wolf, if a kid is 22, you were 3 years old when they died!

It's not your fault, but we have firsthand experience. It's a limited experience, but firsthand experience nonetheless." "They can learn it off the record, but Jeff (Simon, Destroyers' drummer) and I actually played with Muddy Waters. We opened for him and for Howlin' Wolf and met him and saw him perform. We're the last band to do that, 'cause they all passed away right after we got to know them."

And while Thorogood might just be doing the fan favorites live, he's still got some rocking to put down on wax. The word has slipped that next year, he'll be putting out an album of all blues covers, duplicating the feat of his 30-year-old sophomore classic, "Move It On Over." "The world's not ready for my originals," Thorogood laughed. "Only in small doses."

That might be for the best, as rarely has someone been able to take either a blues classic or a an obscure old record and stamp it with bristling swagger and attitude like Lonesome George can.

"I think I grabbed the maybe one or two left that no one is aware of yet, or that didn't appear on an old Yardbirds record," he said. "There probably might be one or two you've heard before, then there will be some you never heard of, and some you'll probably never want to hear again."

One subject unlikely to be covered, literally, is the time-honored drinking song, which Thorogood has been noted as the master of, despite the fact that they make up only three numbers in his catalog.

"I kinda steer away from that," he said. "Unless the song is really good, but even then; I did 'I Drink Alone,' 'If You Don't Start Drinkin' (I'm Gonna Leave),' 'One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,' which isn't really about drinking, it's about a guy who can't pay his rent."

"I've covered that subject. It was never a dominating idea in my repertoire to begin with; it just happened that way. People will say, 'I got this great song about a real bad guy in a bar,' and I go, 'I think the world has enough songs like that.'"

By Molly Gilmore | For The Olympian • Published July 24, 2008

Although he's known as a blues singer and guitarist, George Thorogood also is something of a comedian.

"I can't believe it's really me," said Thorogood, who will play Friday at Little Creek Casino near Shelton.

You're funny.

"Funny and sexy never go out of style," he said. "I got one of them covered. Only Suzanne Pleshette had both."

Now you're dating yourself.

"I would never ask myself out on a date," he riffed.

Ba dum bum!

Along with his musical success - his 2004 greatest-hits album was named Billboard's blues record of the year - Thorogood has comic credibility.

"I met Sinbad," he said. "Who knows more about funny than Sinbad? He told me I was funny and he was serious as a heart attack.

"I said, 'I meant for it to be funny. That's what I do,' the guitarist said. "How do you take 'Get a Haircut' seriously? 'I Drink Alone' - that is funny."

There is a certain association between Thorogood and songs about alcohol. But he said it's not deserved.

"How many songs do you think I've sung about drinking?" he asked. "Three. Only three and we've made 125 songs. That's less than 3 percent. Those are the ones America chose as their favorites. I've done love ballads, I've done songs about cars, I've done heartbreak songs. But they don't want to hear that; they want to hear 'One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer,' so I play them that.

"If John Wayne did Shakespeare, no one would come to the theater. They want to see him do Westerns," he said.

Thorogood's fans want more of the same as well. His biography quotes him as saying: "My biggest thrill is when somebody says to a friend, 'I've got George's new CD and it's just like the last one.' "

Critics seem to agree with that. "Thorogood's music was always loud, simple, and direct - his riffs and licks were taken straight out of '50s Chicago blues and rock and roll - but his formulaic approach helped him gain a rather large audience in the '80s, when his albums regularly went gold," Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote for All Music Guide.

Such statements don't bother Thorogood, who compares himself to a used-car dealer (and the likes of Bob Dylan to a Rolls Royce dealer).

"If I could play a little bit lousier, I'd have been the king of punk," he said. "They said, 'You play too good to be in a punk band.' I said, 'How about Led Zeppelin?' They said, 'You're not that good.' I was right in between."

George Thorogood, scheduled to play a sold-out show at the Tulalip Amphitheatre tonight, may seem like an unlikely purveyor of wisdom.

But during a recent interview with The Herald, the personable rocker most famous for singing "Bad to the Bone" offered insights on life, music and baseball that were hardly boneheaded.

Here are highlights.

On rock 'n' roll: Just to set the record straight, this is where it came from. These are the two guys. Chuck Berry invented rock 'n' roll. Bo Diddley invented rock. Not rock 'n' roll. Rock.

On playing blues rock: Rock isn't anything but blues guitar on steroids.

On retiring: You can't take yourself out of the lineup when you're 30 when you've got guys who are playing that are 38.

On the Northwest: I just think that you've got to get Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii to leave the Union and start its own country, the Great Western Republic. We'd have Whoopi Goldberg as president, and vice president would be Denis Leary. And instead of the White House, it'd be the Gold House.

On former Seattle Mariners and current Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella: Piniella belongs in baseball like Chuck Berry belongs in music. See what I'm saying? Piniella is baseball.

On the advantages of playing rock 'n' roll rather than baseball: (Rock 'n' roll is) the only business in the world where you can make $100 grand a year and be a has-been. Your fame and your fortune and your thing is very fleeting in the baseball world.

On critics: I don't care if you talk bad about me or talk good about me, just don't leave me out of the conversation.

On music: Remember, rock 'n' roll never sleeps. It just passes out.

June 19, 2008 , 1:10 PM ET

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Elvin Bishop gets a hand from B.B. King, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, James Cotton, George Thorogood, Kim Wilson and Tommy Castro on his new album, "The Blues Roll On." The set is due Sept. 23 via Delta Groove/Eclecto Groove Music.

Trucks and Haynes guest on Bishop's vintage '70s hit "Struttin' My Stuff." Elsewhere, Bishop takes on Junior Wells' "Come on in This House," Hound Dog Taylor's "Send You Back to Oklahoma" and "Yonders Wall" from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

Among the original songs on the album, which was recorded in Jacksonville, Fla., Clarksdale, Miss., and a cruise ship, are "Oklahoma," which Bishop handles solo.

"The Blues Roll On" is the follow-up to 2005's "Gettin' My Groove Back," which reached No. 9 on Billboard's Top Blues Albums chart.

LOS ANGELES -- Top celebrities in film, television, music, and sports will come together at Dodger Stadium this Saturday, June 21, to play in the 50th annual Hollywood Stars Game. The celebrity softball game will begin shortly after the conclusion of the Los Angeles Dodgers-Cleveland Indians game that day, which starts at 12:55 p.m. Approximately 40 celebrities will comprise the two teams, led by honorary captains Russell Martin and James Loney.

The full roster of stars scheduled to appear in the game includes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (NBA Hall of Famer), Jon Lovitz ("Saturday Night Live"), James Denton ("Desperate Housewives"), David Arquette ("Scream" trilogy), Sean Astin ("Lord of the Rings," "Rudy"), James Van Der Beek ("Dawson's Creek," "Varsity Blues"), Adam Carolla ("The Adam Carolla Show"), Tom Arnold ("True Lies," "Roseanne"), Camryn Manheim ("The Practice," "Ghost Whisperer"), Cristian de la Fuente ("Dancing with the Stars," "In Plain Sight"), Garry Marshall ("Happy Days" creator, "Pretty Woman" director), George Thorogood (George Thorogood and the Destroyers), Carlos Mencia ("Mind of Mencia"), Kendra Wilkinson ("The Girls Next Door"), Zac Levi ("Chuck"), Neal McDonough ("Band of Brothers"), Yvonne Strahovski ("Chuck"), Tobin Bell ("Saw" movies), Wallace Langham ("CSI"), Kenny Johnson ("Saving Grace"), Bailey Chase ("Saving Grace"), Michael Rosenbaum ("Smallville"), Kevin Frazier ("Entertainment Tonight"), Chris Rose ("Best Damn Sports Show Period"), Mike Bunin ("My Boys"), D.B. Sweeney ("Eight Men Out," "The Cutting Edge"), Patricia Kara ("Deal or No Deal"), David Berman ("CSI"), Jon Wellner ("CSI"), Samm Levine ("Freaks and Geeks"), Josh Gomez ("Chuck"), Vida Guerra ("Livin' The Low Life"), Peter Ishkhans ("Peter Perfect"), Adam Sessler ("X-Play"), Morgan Webb ("X-Play), Tony Todd ("One Tree Hill"), Kristin Holt ("American Idol," "Cheat"), Layla Kayleigh ("America's Best Dance Crew," "Attack of the Show"), Osvaldo Rios (""El Juramento"), and Yasmin Deliz ("Vivo," "The Chicas Project").

Popular on-air personalities from E! Entertainment, including E! News' Jason Kennedy and Ashlan Gorse and The Daily 10's Catt Sadler and Ben Lyons, will announce the celebrity players as they come to bat, offer play-by-play commentary and conduct on the spot interviews throughout the game, giving fans a chance to hear from their favorite stars. The game will also feature special performances by the Blue Man Group.

All fans with tickets to the Dodgers-Indians game will be invited to stay for the Hollywood Stars Game as well, including the opportunity to watch from Dodger Stadium's outfield grass and warning track. Additional auction winners will take part in pre-game and in-game festivities, with proceeds benefiting the Dodgers Dream Foundation. Those fans will act as an honorary photographer, an honorary coach, or an official Hollywood Stars batkid. Other auction winners will read the celebrity team lineups or take the field with a celebrity at the start of the game and receive their autograph.

Legend shaped rock and roll, rocker says
DEAN LISK, METRO HALIFAX
June 05, 2008 05:00

Knowing his friend was in ailing health, George Thorogood had been thinking about Bo Diddley’s death for some time.

“He was bedridden, right. You are never prepared but you know it is going to happen,” said Thorogood. “I just didn’t think that the state of his body could handle a stroke and a heart attack and be able to bounce back.”

Diddley, a rock ’n’ roll pioneer and guitar-playing inspiration, died of heart failure on Monday at the age of 79. He had been in ill health for a number of months.

“I guess I was as close to him as any person could be,” said Thorogood, who covered Diddley’s song Who Do I Love, and had the legend appear in his Bad To The Bone music video.

“We had a great relationship, let’s put it that way,” added Thorogood on a break from his current Canadian tour with The Destroyers. “We always lead with a Chuck Berry-type song to get the band loose, and we follow with a Bo Diddley song.”

Thorogood said he starts his shows this way because both artists pretty much created rock and roll with their blues backgrounds.

“As great as some lead singers are, and drums and saxes, guitars will always be the number one dude when it comes to rock and roll,” he said.

It is essential to listen to both men, added the musician, if you want to get a grasp on rock and roll and what the music is all about. They represent a lineage that stretches back to some of the best blues musicians of the last century — and continues into rock today.

“Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley got John Lennon and Keith Richards’ attention, who are the two highest profile rock musicians ever, right up there with Hendrix.”

If you don’t take the time to listen to the blues, you’ll never get a real understanding or appreciation of rock, he said.

“It is like an actor who never heard of Tennessee Williams,” he said. “Or a director who says, ‘I don’t know who Cecil B. DeMille is.’”

According to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, the influence that Bo Diddley’s records have had is immeasurable, but that’s not the most amazing part of his legacy. “But how heavy is it that a person has a beat named after him?” he asks. Indeed, the “Bo Diddley Beat” has left an indelible mark on the rock landscape, and according to Gibbons it will be immortal. “You can play Bo Diddley for three year olds who can’t speak and yet they start gyrating,” he says. I think we must be wired to respond to it and he just happened to tap into it and deliver it in such a masterful way. And it still works.”

George Thorogood would agree, as one of his biggest hits was a cover of Diddley’s “Who Do You Love.” Thorogood also counted Diddley as a friend. “When I first met him he was kind of standoffish. Once we got going we had a very wonderful relationship,” Thorogood says. “He was very moved by the fact that I was so into his music and I seemed to have a grip on it. I did a concert with him in Australia in 2005, and he played before I did. As he was coming up he stairs I said goodbye to him, he hugged me and grabbed my hand and he whispered, ‘I’m done, George. It’s yours now.’”

Buddy Guy was never close to Diddley, but he was an admirer. “I say he was one of the best guys that ever played the music,” says Guy. “I’m a very religious man and I think we all was put here for a reason. And when Bo came along and came up with that beat he was at the right time at the right place. You gotta give credit where credit is due. He is one that should never be forgotten.”

Guitarist remembers his friend and influence

Jun 3, 2008
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George Thorogood remembered Bo Diddley, his friend and influence who died of heart failure today (June 2).

The singer/guitarist, who covered Diddley's 'Who Do You Love' and name-checks him in one of his songs, told NME.COM that he was turned on to Diddley by The Rolling Stones.

“I first heard Bo Diddley in 1966," said Thorogood. "I knew The Rolling Stones were big on this guy and I got a copy of Bo Diddley’s '16 All-Time Greatest Hits' and flipped over it, and played it constantly."

Thorogood said that he still performs his cover of 'Who Do You Love', as well as 'Ride On Josephine', which was heavily influenced by the 'Bo Diddley beat'.

"I first met him in 1979, and as years went on we got closer and closer," he said. "It’s an honour to be associated with his great music. I just had ‘Hand Jive’ on last night. It goes, ’A doctor, a lawyer and an indian chief/They all dig that Diddley beat.’ That says it all.”

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Bo Diddley, the rock 'n' roll originator with the rectangular guitar whose signature beat influenced musicians from Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen, has died. He was 79.

Diddley died at his home in Archer, Florida, early today, according to his publicist, Susan Clary. The cause was heart failure. In May 2007, he suffered a stroke during a performance in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

He scored only a few hits in more than 40 years of recording, yet Diddley's impact on the development of rock 'n' roll places him in a pantheon with Chuck Berry and Little Richard. The maracas-fueled sound he introduced in 1955 on the song ``Bo Diddley'' evolved into what Rolling Stone magazine called ``the most plagiarized rhythm of the 20th century.''

The beat -- bomp a-bomp a-bomp bomp bomp -- became the driving force on songs such as Holly's ``Not Fade Away'' (1957), which the Stones recorded and the Grateful Dead used in live shows for years; Johnny Otis's ``Willie and the Hand Jive'' (1958); the Strangeloves' ``I Want Candy''(1965); The Who's ``Magic Bus'' (1968); the Stooges' ``1969'' (1969), Springsteen's ``She's the One'' (1975); and U2's ``Desire'' (1988).

The Stones' version of ``Not Fade Away'' in 1964 became their first top-10 hit in the U.K. and first U.S. release. In its early days, the band often opened its shows with the number.

``We did it with a Bo Diddley beat, which at the time was very avant garde for a white band to be playing Bo Diddley's stuff,'' said Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. ``It was a very popular rhythm for us in clubs.''

Guitar Sound

The distorted tremolo sound Diddley achieved on his guitar, which was souped up with electronic gadgets, expanded the instrument's range and influenced a generation of musicians such as Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds -- which made Diddley's ``I'm a Man'' one of its show-stoppers -- Keith Richards of the Stones, Jimi Hendrix and a legion of 1960s fuzz-tone garage rockers.

Diddley's ego was legendary. Who else but Bo Diddley would name his first recording after himself? His boasting and sexual bravado on songs like ``I'm a Man'' presaged American rap music by decades. Diddley, who spent years complaining that he had been overlooked by the public and the media, remained bitter about all the attention given to Elvis Presley.

``Elvis was not the first,'' Diddley told Neil Strauss of Rolling Stone magazine in 2005. ``I was the first son-of-a-gun out there. Me and Chuck Berry. And I'm very sick of the lie. You know, we're over that black-and-white crap, and that was all the reason Elvis got the appreciation that he did. I'm the dude that he copied, and I'm not even mentioned.''

Born in Mississippi

The man who would become Bo Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Mississippi. His mother, who was about 15, asked her first cousin, Gussie McDaniel, to raise the child. Diddley never knew his father.

After Gussie McDaniel moved her family to Chicago during the Great Depression in 1935, she changed the child's last name to Bates McDaniel. Ellas McDaniel attended public school, where he learned how to box. At one point, he dreamed of becoming a prizefighter.

Like B.B. King and other great blues and rhythm-and-blues artists, Diddley's first exposure to music came from church, in this case the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side. He learned to play the violin and the trombone. At age 12, Diddley took up the guitar after hearing John Lee Hooker's 1949 rhythm-and-blues hit, ``Boogie Chillen.''

``Diddley claimed that playing the violin influenced his muted-string, choke-neck style of rhythm -- an early forerunner of funk that can be heard on songs like `Pretty Thing,''' the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame says in its official Bo Diddley biography.

Origin of Name

Diddley formed a band called the Hipsters, which played on street corners before landing a regular spot at a South Side juke joint called the 708 Club. He electrified his guitar using old radio parts and other gadgets, which created the famous vibrating tone. He gave bandmate Jerome Green maracas that he jerry-built from the floating rubber balls found inside toilets, and black- eyed peas. Diddley's thick black glasses completed the look.

The derivation of his stage name is the subject of debate. Some say it came from his days as a boxer; others say it's based on the one-string folk instrument called the diddley bow. Chess Records found that another Bo Diddley had been performing in Chicago in 1935. There are about a dozen versions of the story.

``I would love to know where the sucker came from,'' Diddley said in a 1995 interview, when asked about the name.

First Release

In 1955, Diddley signed with Checkers, a subsidiary of Chess, the label that featured Berry.

``Bo Diddley and I were signed to Chess records at the same time,'' Berry said today in a statement. ``He was a great artist and will be missed.''

Diddley's debut single was the two-sided ``Bo Diddley'' backed with ``I'm a Man.'' The A side featured the nursery school rhyme-like verse ``Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, have you heard?'' while the B side had Diddley boasting ``All you pretty women, stand in line, I can make love to you baby, in an hour's time.''

The beat used on the A side, now known as the Bo Diddley beat, has been traced to West African drumming, the rhumba, the novelty rhythm ``shave and haircut -- two bits'' and a 1950s body-slapping street craze among black teenagers called the hambone.

The record, which topped the R&B charts for two weeks, is cited as one of the cornerstones of rock music and one of the most influential two-sided singles ever. A string of groundbreaking songs that combined rhythm-and-blues and rock 'n' roll followed, including ``Road Runner;'' ``Pretty Thing;'' ``Mona,'' also covered by the Stones; ``Who Do You Love?'' and ``You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover.''

TV Appearance

His appearance on the Ed Sullivan's ``Toast of the Town'' on CBS in 1955 is now regarded as one of the first rock 'n' roll performances on television.

A novelty song, ``Say Man,'' which featured verbal sparring between Diddley and Green, became a crossover hit in 1959.

In 1963, he toured the U.K., playing with the Stones, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers. A teenage Robert Plant, who would become the singer and co-songwriter for Led Zeppelin, attended one of the shows.

``Although the Stones were great, they were really crap compared with Diddley,'' Plant said in a 1990 interview with Q magazine. ``All his rhythms were so sexual, just oozing, even in a 20-minute spot.''

British Invasion

After the Beatles led the British invasion, Diddley's popularity waned, though he continued to tour relentlessly for the next four decades. In 1966, he released ``The Originator,'' an album where he staked his claim as one of rock 'n' roll's founding fathers. In 1967, after moving to California, Diddley made his debut at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, bringing his electrifying sound to the Summer of Love crowd.

Even though rock music changed, Diddley's influence never subsided. The Clash, the seminal British punk band, asked Diddley to open for the group on its first major U.S. tour in 1979. Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Joe Strummer called Diddley his hero.

In 1982, Diddley was introduced to the MTV generation through the video of ``Bad to the Bone'' by George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Thorogood and Diddley play a game of pool while billiards legend Willie Mosconi looks on. In the end, Thorogood wins when he flicks his cigar ash, making the eight ball fall into the pocket. Three years later, the two artists appeared together at the Live Aid benefit concert in Philadelphia.

In 1987, Diddley was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame at the Cleveland museum's second annual ceremony. The members of ZZ Top were his presenters. Two years later he appeared in a Nike commercial, telling baseball and football star Bo Jackson, ``Bo, You Don't Know Diddley.''

Speaking Out

Diddley continued to speak out against what he called the exploitation of early rock 'n' rollers, including himself, by record companies, promoters and music publishers.

He was married four times, most recently in 1992 to Sylvia Paiz, according to the Internet Movie Database Web site. Three prior marriages ended in divorce. He also had four children.

He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards in Los Angeles in 1996. The same year he released ``A Man Amongst Men,'' his first on a major label in years. It featured Richards and Ron Wood of the Stones. He also was honored with a lifetime Grammy Award.

``Age ain't nothing but a number,'' Diddley told the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2006, when he was 77. He said that disc pain in back had forced him to play while seated. The stage strutting and karate kicks were no more. ``But, he said, ``I'm just as dangerous sitting down.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Schoifet in New York at mschoifet@bloomberg.net.

Erin Harde , Special to The Leader-Post
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2008

It may surprise George Thorogood fans that the b-b-b-b-bad to the bone singer does not, in fact, appreciate or condone audience members getting completely loaded at his shows.

The self-described "boogie blues master" who, with his band The Destroyers, released such hits as "I Drink Alone" and the perennial barroom favourite "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" says his catalogue has a lot more to offer than just the alcohol-infused radio favourites.

"I don't want to play for a bunch of drunks," says Thorogood.

"It's like writing a book and someone puking during the third chapter and passing out before the book is halfway done. You work for the live stage act and put songs together and want people to see the show."

Over the years, his audiences have become more respectful, particularly the younger generation.

"Every year, it gets more enjoyable because I get older, the band gets better, a lot of people in the audience get younger and look at me different," he says. "It's not just a bunch of roaring drunks just cutting loose and using me as an excuse to get drunk."

Thorogood audiences today are more diverse than 20 years ago. Young people show up with their parents and sometimes grandparents.

"I prefer people under 20 and people over 60 because once they get older, they think 'this could be it -- I'm gonna have a good time tonight.' People under 20 have yet to form an opinion about anything. It's us people in between who are (expletives)," he laughs.

Now 58, Thorogood rightly deserves a little respect. With dozens of albums to his credit, hit songs like "Gear Jammer," "Get A Haircut," "Move It On Over," and "Bad To The Bone" and former tour mates that range from the Rolling Stones to Howlin' Wolf, Thorogood has become a blues rock legend in his own right, though it's just now that Thorogood says The Destroyers are hitting their stride.

"There's much more satisfaction in it. When you're building the house, when you're almost completed, you enjoy putting the final touches on it as opposed to when you get started," he says. "Building any kind of business or any kind of career is painstaking. It has been for me. Things didn't just explode for me like an Elvis Presley. It's been an ongoing process. Some people call it a labour of love, I just call it a labour."

The work has paid off for Thorogood as he continues to see fans fighting for tickets -- the Casino Regina show sold out in less than an hour. Thorogood coyly avoids naming any tunes from the set list.

"I met Joe DiMaggio and he told me one thing. He said 'George, you only owe your fans one thing,' and I said, 'What's that?' and he said, 'Your best.' "

The best of which album or era, Thorogood won't say, but he promises not to disappoint.

"I'm a boogie blues master with a lot of energy who, with all due respect to Dennis Leary, is probably the most obnoxious man in show business, in which I have that field completely to my own," says Thorogood. "I will not disappoint in that fashion. Ever."