Pat Travers is a Canadian rock guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter born April 12, 1954 in Toronto, Ontario, who built a devoted following in the late 1970s and early 1980s through a series of hard-driving blues rock albums that showcased his powerful guitar style and an underrated ability to craft melodic hard rock hooks. Travers began his career in Canada before relocating to London in the mid-1970s, where he assembled the Pat Travers Band and signed with Polydor Records, releasing a series of albums that blended hard rock, blues, and progressive influences.
His commercial peak came with the live album Go for What You Know (1979), which captured the raw energy of his touring band — featuring the formidable rhythm section of Pat Thrall on guitar, Mars Akbar on bass, and Tommy Aldridge on drums — and produced the FM rock staple Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights), a cover of the Louis Jordan blues classic that became his signature song and a staple of classic rock radio. Heat in the Street (1978) and Crash and Burn (1980) are considered the finest studio documents of his peak period, showcasing a guitarist of genuine blues feeling and rock power who deserved a wider audience than he ultimately received.
Travers navigated the commercial shifts of the 1980s and 1990s with varying success before returning to a more stripped-down blues rock approach that suited his strengths perfectly. He has remained an active touring and recording artist for five decades, releasing a consistent stream of albums for a fanbase that has never lost faith in his abilities. His influence on subsequent hard rock and blues rock guitarists is acknowledged throughout the genre, and his best work from the late 1970s stands as some of the most honest and powerful guitar-driven rock of that era.
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