About halfway through Monday's standing-room-only homecoming for Delaware's most famous rock export, George Thorogood stopped the show to talk to an overzealous fan loudly shouting song requests.
"Listen friend, it took us 35 years to get up here," Thorogood said with a smile, looking around The Grand, a Wilmington theater he visited as a teenager. "I'm going to enjoy every sweet second of it."
The Brandywine Hundred native, best known for his 1982 hit "Bad to the Bone," led a hometown crowd through a nearly two-hour retrospective of his career, serving up an ear-ringing set that never let up.
Thorogood himself freely jokes about his lack of range; he sticks to a meat-and-potatoes blues-based rock. On Monday night, he replaced subtlety with a high-energy stage show that had him sticking out his tongue, prowling the edge of the stage and striking Mick Jagger-esque poses with hand on hip. (At 59, it's probably time to retire the suggestive pelvic thrusts, which were repeated throughout the night.) And while there were plenty of monotonous moments during the concert, his first in Delaware since 2003, it really didn't matter. No one was there for nuance or elegance. Thorogood calls his group, the Destroyers, the best bar band in the world for a reason. The goal was to deliver a good time to his fellow Delawareans, many of whom had more than just one bourbon, scotch and beer prior to the show at one of the additional bars The Grand opened just for the night.
Before starting his 1993 song "Get a Haircut" with its lines, "Get a haircut and get a real job/Clean your act up and don't be a slob," Thorogood said sarcastically, "I'd like to do something now for the more sophisticated rock fans, this being the Grand Opera House for sophisticated people."
The song had been dedicated earlier this tour to Thorogood's gym instructor at Brandywine High School. (After performing the song in Boston, Thorogood bluntly dropped a four-letter word to make his feelings clear about his old teacher, with whom he apparently didn't see eye-to-eye.) On this night, he steered clear of showing any hard feelings toward his old school, where he spent four years in the late '60s as a long-haired outcast.
The night's most touching moment came during the second encore when Thorogood paid homage to Garry Cogdell, a veteran Delaware bluesman who encouraged a young Thorogood when he didn't have many supporters.
Cogdell and his band, the Complainers, opened the show at Thorogood's invitation and Cogdell sat in on the night's final songs: Van Morrison's "Gloria" and Elmore James' "Madison Blues," which Thorogood recorded 32 years ago for his eponymous debut.
"It is an untold pleasure to say I got to share this stage with a longtime friend, a man who means a lot to me, Mr. Garry Cogdell," said Thorogood, later pushing Cogdell to the front of the stage to take the night's final guitar solo.
Thorogood and Cogdell weren't the only Delawareans on stage. Thorogood was backed by Newark's Billy Blough on bass and fellow Naamans Road native Jeff Simon on drums, both of whom have been Destroyers since the '70s. Guitarists Jim Suhler and saxophonist Buddy Leach rounded out the five-piece.
In addition to Thorogood's blues standbys like Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" he dabbled in country with "Cocaine Blues," which he dedicated to Johnny and June Carter Cash. His trademark rock version of Hank Williams' "Move It On Over," highlighted the song's similarities to "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets.
The fan-pleasing "Bad to the Bone" was one of only three Thorogood-penned songs in the 15-song set. A sprawling, 10-minute version of John Lee Hooker's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" was the show's centerpiece with Thorogood twice mentioning his band's original name, the Delaware Destroyers, much to the delight of the crowd, mostly made up of boozy baby boomers who clapped, danced and sang along throughout the show.
For those who were locked out of the sold-out concert, the guitar slinger hinted that he had found a new hometown venue. (His past two Delaware shows were held at the now closed Kahunaville, on Wilmington's Riverfront.) "This is the first time we had the pleasure of coming to the Grand Opera House," he said, "and we hope it's the start of a long, beautiful relationship."
