1982 Rock Hit With Iconic Guitar Riff Became a Timeless Anthem
In 1982, music icons George Thorogood and the Destroyers released a blues-rock anthem that would go on to become one of the industry's most recognizable epics.
The band released "Bad to the Bone" on August 9, 1982 as the title track of their fifth studio album. Peaking at No. 27 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, the song enjoyed some commercial success upon its initial release. Years after it first came out, the song was introduced to a wider audience after it was featured in prominent movies and television shows such as 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, starring Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and 1998's The Parent Trap, starringLindsay Lohan.
A huge hit on MTV, the legendary music video features Thorogood playing a game of pool against rock and roll superstar Bo Diddley.
"I first heard Bo Diddley in 1966," Thorogood told NME in 2008. "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."
In addition to introducing Thorogood to Diddley's music, The Rolling Stones were an inspiration to Thorogood when releasing his own work. "Bad to the Bone" was the first song that he had ever written, and it was during his 1981 tour with British rock band when he was spurred on to create his own original music.
"I did those gigs with the Stones," Thorogood recalled, per Classic Rock. "And I noticed that every time they went into the opening of 'Start Me Up'-it's a very brief opening, and there's a pause-the response from the audience was just over-the-top."
"So I said to myself: ‘Georgie, you gotta come up with a song, kid,'" he continued. "'You gotta write something that gets that response when you go into it.'"
It paid off, as "Bad to the Bone" has one of the most recognizable riffs in music history. The signature guitar lick is based on "stop-time" techniques, call-and-response blues traditions, and uses open G tuning.
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This story was originally published June 6, 2026 at 11:36 AM.