INQUIRER GEORGE THOROGOOD

LONESOME GEORGE TALKS ROOTS, HIS FIRST GUITAR AND THE WONDERS OF THE ES-125

- Joe Matera

Boom, boom…

The first person who really got me into the guitar was John Lee Hooker. I’d been fooling around with his music for a while, so he was the first of many who’d go on to influence me.

I got my first real six-string…

It was a Segovia guitar given to me as a Christmas present when I was 15. I later traded it in for a Framus bass. There was a band up the street, and so I went to audition as the singer for the band. I wasn’t the greatest singer, I just knew a lot of words to a lot of songs and so they wanted me in the band, but they already had two guitar players. And because I’d only been playing guitar for about three days, I didn’t know how to play it well enough. So they said, “All we need is a bass player.” So I switched over to bass for a while.

The first song I mastered…