Do you really know George Thorogood
Whenever we try to meet any of these celebrities we never know for sure what will happen, there is never a guarantee. When myself, Doc and his son took a trip to meet musician George Thorogood we sure didn’t expect what was about to unfold to happen. Thorogood is known for his hit song “Bad to the Bone” and this was by all means a bad experience on this particular venture.
We figured our best bet was to attempt to see George before his concert as he was arriving to the venue. We found exactly the spot to wait at and surprisingly nobody else was there beyond the three of us. It was probably an hour or so of waiting before we see Thorogood and another person walking down a pathway and we asked if he could take the time to sign a few items. Immediately the other person, whom we later found at was his manager, says no to our request and continues walking George into the venue. Doc shouted out, “Nice way to treat your fans” before we were about to head out disappointed on this little adventure. However, the manager comes walking back to us right right in Doc’s face saying “Do you really know him?” to which he replies “You’re funny, everybody funny too” as Doc thought the manager was joking around and that line happened to be a lyric in one of Thorogood’s songs.
The manager continues to say “Do you really know him?” while tapping on Doc’s chest repeatedly, “If you really knew him you’d know he didn’t get paid on this album” the manager shouts while pointing to one of the records. “This is a knock off record, he didn’t get paid for this one!”
“How about the other records, can’t we get those signed?” Doc says. Clearly it wasn’t going to happen as the manager was very irritated, all the meanwhile I’m sitting back basically watching this show in front of me. Doc’s son has his digital camera out and had been rolling on the video feature during this whole debacle. The manager finally notices this and just snatches the camera out of his hands, “How do I erase this?” he says as he frantically starts pushing random buttons and fiddles with it for several minutes. Doc’s son demands his camera back and hands it over before storming off. The three of us are simply dumbfounded at all this and begin heading back to the car.
Doc’s son realizes after examining his camera that it no longer is function properly, which makes matters even worse. Once we make our way over to the parking lot Doc sees a car driving by with the manager at the wheel, “You broke my son’s camera” he shouted within close distance. The car comes screeching to a halt and the manager gets out and continues to yell at us and not owning up to the whole camera mishap. Shortly after he gets back in his car, speeds off, and we make the journey home. The interesting part during our ride back is that Doc’s son was able to retrieve the video file from the camera after all, despite it still not functioning completely up to par.
Doc couldn’t let this go and decided to call up the venue and explain the situation. He mentioned that we were originally going to buy three tickets to the show, but that we changed our minds based on the encounter earlier. As soon as they heard they potentially lost a few sales, they apologized for the experience and said they would get in touch with Thorogood’s people. Within a short while Doc gets a phone call from someone in response to the call apologetic about the whole ordeal. Doc asked for them to replace his son’s camera and at first they were unwilling to do so, until he mentioned we had video proof of the incident. Once they knew that tidbit of information, their attitude changed and asked what it would take to rectify everything. They ended up paying to replace the digital camera and saying that next time George is in town they would invite us backstage to meet Thorogood and have our items signed.
It was about a year or so until Thorogood came back to town and unfortunately I was not able to go because it was close to Thanksgiving and I was visiting family for a few days during the holiday. Doc and his son made their way to the concert where they did indeed receive VIP treatment with free tickets and the opportunity to meet George.
