Latest news with #PeterWolf
Forbes
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Peter Wolf Goes From Rock Star To Author With Magical Memoir
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 11: Singer Peter Wolf, founding member of the classic rock band J. ... More Geils Band, performs onstage during the Jim Irsay Collection Exhibit and Concert at Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on January 11, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by) Painter, successful radio DJ, solo artist, lead singer of the chart-topping J. Geils Band Peter Wolf has led an extraordinary life that he's now turned into a magical memoir, Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters and Goddesses. As the extended title suggests, the book is structured around the fascinating people Wolf has encountered in his life, from Bob Dylan to ex-wife, actress Faye Dunaway. As a successful rock star/frontman of the '70s and '80s many of Wolf's encounters are expected – Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones, Van Morrisson. What makes the book such a joyful surprise are the unique stories Wolf shares – meeting first lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a schoolkid, his tenure living with future Hollywood icon David Lynch. I spoke with Wolf about how the book and its unique structure came to be. Steve Baltin: It is a process to write a book. Peter Wolf: It is quite an undertaking. Baltin: At what point in the process of this, and the book is wonderful, did you know that you were going to be able to see it through? Wolf: Well, that was thanks to the ladies that I dedicated the book to, the O 'Connor sisters, Grace and her sister Nora, who really were fundamental in acting as editor in chief in the sense of, "All right, you got one story, or one chapter finished, where's the next one and where's the next one? Come on, come on, come on." And so it was that collaborative push that helped me move along because I like to work in collaboration. Not that this was an as told to or a written-by book, it was written by me, and they helped organize it and made very valid suggestions and things like that. And the impetus of not procrastinating came from them. Baltin: You say it started with like one chapter and then another. It flows very well given the fact that the different people that you meet almost makes it read like a short story collection. It's like when you're writing songs, and then eventually you put the sequence into an album. Was there a point where you started to realize that this format would work for you, that you could tie together meeting Eleanor Roosevelt and your experiences with Dylan? Wolf: That's a really good question. What happened was I had seen a photograph, and I'm not comparing this in any way, of William Faulkner. I forget which exact book it was, it'll come to me. And he was in his study, and on the wall, he had these cards all printed up with the different characters. I think it was As I Lay Dying. And he had all the different characters and some ideas about the plot, and they were all pasted on little index cards on his wall. I thought that would be a really good idea because they do that on TV shows and movies, scenes and stuff. So, I started writing out all the chapters I thought I might do because I had been thinking about this book for over a decade. And actually, I had made an outline maybe 20 years ago and with some of the stories I thought I would tell. But when I finally started, I then decided to write these index cards and then Grace and Nora, both helped me move them around because at first Steve, I wasn't going to do any chronological order. When I started out, the two things I thought I was not going to write about were my marriage and the J. Geils band. Because I considered this book to be just chapters containing short stories and each chapter would be contained to itself. Meaning if you read the Alfred Hitchcock chapter or the Bob Dylan chapter, you can pick up the book and read any chapter and it didn't necessarily interfere with any timeline. But then the editor insisted that there might be some timeline and my agent, Andrew Wiley, who's a very notable agent, suggested if you eliminate the J. Geils band or your marriage, people will be disappointed because they will be curious about that. Now, if you choose not to do it as a formal memoir, you still should include those in the chapter. So, I finally did. Once I got to the Faye chapters one rolled into another, because I enjoyed writing about it. Then with the Geils, a lot of music memoirs go into so much detail about the band and the inter-conflicts and what guitar they bought and this and that and the trip over to Japan and this happened and that happened. I find that not to be too interesting unless I'm really interested in the band or the artist or musician. So, my dealings with J. Geils Band run throughout the chapters, but I kept one chapter for J Geils about what I thought most people were curious about was that after 17 and a half years, and once we achieved our biggest popularity the band breaks up and people, I realized, didn't know why. So, I thought it would be of interest for me to write that out and the same was true of my relationship with Faye so that all started coming about. Once I had all the different cards that were written at different periods like Eleanor, which might have been written after Bob Dylan. So, I had to frame it in some kind of timeline. That's the order that you see in the book itself. Baltin: That's interesting on a lot of levels because it's funny. You have the Dylan chapter. You talk briefly about hanging out backstage at the Stones Coliseum show with Keith Richards. I'm going to be honest, there were a couple places where I felt like his memoir was a little dry because it was so technical. So, it's interesting that you say that, to me, the most memorable chapter in this book and the one that gutted me was the Edie chapter. Was that difficult to write? Wolf: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the sadness that encompasses and the great loss and that sense of like, what if that never happened? What would it be? Because we had a great bond. Then the other side of that there was something uplifting about realizing what an amazing relationship it was and how to this day it still stays with me. So, the song that I quote, "The Wind," which was our song, is a haunting song and when I listen to it today it has what the magic of music can do which is bring you right back to a certain incident or a moment and so it has its pros and cons. I think generally it was melancholy, but it also had the idea to re-engage and think about the relationship; the person she made me, it was an uplifting one rather than a morose one. Baltin: When you do a memoir, you're thinking of things from a whole different perspective. You're 50, 60 years older than you were so you have a whole different perspective on it. So, were there things that emerged in the writing of the book in general that really surprised you? Balin: I don't think so because just they stayed with me and as I said I had an outline written so long. I think what surprised me is the surprise that people got when they realized the arc of the book, how many people I encountered. To me it's something I lived through. So, meeting Eleanor Roosevelt or Tennessee Williams was something that happened. It wasn't a surprise, and so it didn't strike me as that weird. Baltin: When you look back on it, you're a musician. It makes sense that you met Dylan, Stones, Springsteen, whoever. But that you would be at a school thing with Eleanor Roosevelt, or being a kid seeing Louis Armstrong well before you became a musician, do you appreciate that was just surreal in a wonderful way to have these experiences? Wolf: No, thinking about my dad taking me to see Louis Armstrong meant so much to me. I revere him so much because as time goes on, his importance becomes even greater and more acknowledged. That's for sure. Baltin: I'm taking it that you mean Louis, but I imagine that's also the case with your dad. Wolf: Oh yeah. Similar to the Edie chapter, that was a bit of a sweet thing, realizing how indebted I was to him. Him being such a gentle person, how much he shaped me and offered me in such a kind, generous way without being dictatorial or anything. He loved Louis Armstrong. So, he assumed I would love it and there was certain art that he loved, and he would just share it with me. Some things he turned me on to took me 25, 30 30 years before I even could understand why he liked it. For instance, the painter Miro, who's an abstract painter from Spain that moved to France, he loved Miro and called her the Miro mobilist. I didn't understand it until much later then it kind of hit me over the head. He was a great opera fan. And I certainly didn't enjoy opera when I was growing up. I was a rock 'n' roller. But now I can hear certain arias and parts of operas that he used to play and know how magnificent they are. So, yeah, his influence still penetrates me.
Washington Post
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Rock forgot one of its wildest front men. He's got a story to tell.
BOSTON More than 20 years ago, Peter Wolf, the former front man of the J. Geils Band, drove across town to see his buddy David Bieber, a local media figure known for his equally nocturnal habits. It was past midnight when they hopped into Wolf's car, and he put on a song he had just finished for his next record. A wash of gritty guitars gave way to that voice, raspy and melodic, delivering the opening lines of 'Nothing but the Wheel.'
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Peter Wolf on Faye Dunaway, David Lynch and Bob Dylan: ‘My mission was to be an observer'
During the peak of the pandemic, when many musicians spent their time writing songs, Peter Wolf did nothing but read. During that prolonged period of isolation and uncertainty, he comforted himself by devouring shelves full of books, including memoirs penned by other musicians. 'After a while all those memoirs started to seem the same,' he said. 'And I came to the realization that, unless you were a huge fan of that musician, the details of their story wouldn't seem particularly captivating.' Such thoughts had a major impact on Wolf when he was approached to tell his own story. As a result, his new book, titled Waiting on the Moon, threads the outlines of a memoir – highlighted by his years fronting the hit group J Geils Band – through a host of colorful anecdotes about what he describes as the 'artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses' he met along the way. One such goddess happened to be Faye Dunaway, to whom he was married for five tumultuous years in the 70s. Initially, Wolf was so reluctant to include any details of his personal story that he didn't even want to mention his band, which topped the charts in the 80s with songs like Freeze-Frame and Centerfold, or his marriage to one of Hollywood's biggest and most controversial stars. It took the combined force of his editor and agent to throw cold water in his face. 'They told me it would seem odd if I left those things out,' he said. 'It would only wind up bringing more attention to them.' The balance Wolf eventually struck makes much of his book read less like the work of a memoirist than that of a raconteur, eager to revel in the quirks of the characters in his orbit. 'In writing the book I found that people reveal themselves best in the little details,' he said. 'That's where you see what they're really like.' The more unexpected the detail, the better – like discovering upon meeting Fred Astaire that he was utterly entranced by the dancers on Soul Train. Or observing that Aretha Franklin, with whom Wolf cut a duet in the 80s, would only speak to him in a British accent due to her love at the time of the delicious bitchery of Joan Collins on Dynasty. The book begins as conventional memoirs must, with Wolf's childhood. But unlike the legion of rockers who rebelled against their square parents, Wolf echoed their love of the arts as well as their countercultural politics. During his childhood, his parents' leftist affiliations were pronounced enough to put them under surveillance by the US government. 'When we got a TV, which was a really exciting thing for a kid in the 50s, it wasn't for entertainment,' he said. 'It was so my parents could watch the McCarthy hearings.' As a child, Wolf was so hyper-active his mother used to tie a leash around him to stop him from running wild. 'I remember how horrified the neighbors were by that,' he said with a laugh. His parents encouraged his interests in both music and painting, which soon attracted interesting company. As a teen, Wolf took his paintings to Washington Square Park, where he wound up meeting Edward Hopper, who would stop by to chat. 'Here was this great artist,' Wolf said, 'but at the time he was considered passé because it was the age of the abstract impressionists.' Wolf's parallel obsession with music led him to early shows by Bob Dylan soon after he arrived in the Village in the early 60s. The visionary scope of Dylan's work convinced Wolf that this wasn't just a great artist but a seer. He was so convinced that one day he cornered Dylan with a demand to know 'what is truth?' The question elicited from Dylan a pitched screed about the unknowability of all things, which Wolf recounts in two burning pages in the book. 'I think I got what I deserved,' the author said with a laugh. To develop his painting skills, Wolf attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where his first roommate turned out to be a young David Lynch, who also aspired to an art career. 'There was no talk of cinema whatsoever then,' Wolf said. 'We were truly the odd couple. David came from the preppie world and was into the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons while I was this debauched person from Greenwich Village who listened to Thelonious Monk.' Despite Lynch's buttoned-up demeanor, elements of his future feel for surrealism poked through one day when he was brushing his teeth. Unfortunately, Lynch had failed to notice that a dead cockroach had become entangled on the brush, resulting in a rash of insect remains strewn across his teeth. During his time in Boston, Wolf began to perform with an R&B band called the Hallucinations, who opened shows for idols of his like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. Wolf and Waters became especially close. 'Muddy came from a totally different culture, but here he was sitting on my futon telling me that as a young man he sang the songs of [country legend] Gene Autry,' he said. 'To me, that was mind-blowing.' Besides Howlin' Wolf's genius, Peter Wolf was drawn to his determination to sustain a career with little financial reward. 'He stayed in these cheap hotels with yellow window shades and beds that sagged like you see in noir films,' he said. 'But he still kept going.' Wolf was with Waters that horrible night in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, a night that also happened to be the blues legend's birthday. 'While Muddy was blowing out his candles, sirens blared in the background,' Wolf said. 'The whole country was on edge.' By that time, Wolf had begun working as a DJ at WBCN, which became the city's best champion for cutting-edge music. In that capacity, he began to receive a steady stream of anonymous notes that begged him to 'play more Van Morrison'. Only after befriending the Irish singer a while later did he discover that the notes were written by Morrison's girlfriend and sometimes by the man himself. 'He signed them Mongo Bongo,' Wolf said. 'I still have them.' That was during a fraught time in Morrison's life when he was hiding out in Boston to escape a rash of legal issues with his record company in New York. 'Van had absolutely no money and was feeling so lost,' Wolf said. 'I provided a shelter for him.' At the same time, Morrison was developing the revolutionary sound of Astral Weeks, an album that would become a gamechanger not just for him but for music itself. As much affection as Wolf brings to his descriptions of Morrison, he also captures the famously difficult side of him, replete with random outbursts and last-minute refusals to go on stage. Rather than label him difficult, however, Wolf sees him as 'moody'. 'Van doesn't deal with bullshit,' he said. The tolerance Wolf had for such things would come in handy when he met his future wife, Faye Dunaway, another artist known for her fast-moving moods. A mutual friend introduced them after a J Geils show in 1972. By that time, she'd become a gigantic star, having broken through five years earlier with her role in Bonnie and Clyde. By contrast, Wolf's band then drew a cultish crowd. As stark as the power imbalance was between them, Wolf recalled the 70s as an era 'when all movie stars wanted to be rockers, and all rockers wanted to be movie stars'. Moreover, Dunaway was a huge Otis Redding fan and she adored hanging out with the band and crew, regardless of their sometimes ratty circumstances. It helped that she could drink them all under the table. 'She really was two people,' Wolf said. 'There was Dorothy Faye [her birth name], who was this sweet southern girl, and Faye Dunaway, this very cultured actress.' The book chronicles her moods without judgment but, in a new documentary about the star, she herself ponders on camera the possibility that she might be bipolar. 'That term didn't exist when we were married,' Wolf said. 'But when people are graced with an artistic gift, there are things that come along with that. Maybe I just have a gift for being able to deal with those things.' However, even he could reach a breaking point, like the moment during the filming of Chinatown in 1974 when Dunaway and co-star Jack Nicholson met to talk about the film, with Wolf in tow. At one point, the movie stars excused themselves to go upstairs for what Wolf eventually realized was an impromptu assignation. Though that made him far from happy at the time, he now advises readers to consider 'the era in which this was happening. The climate was ripe for that.' Soon after, the ensuing blow-up the two reconciled and, out of nowhere, Dunaway proposed to him. As exciting as their subsequent marriage was, it was far from stable. Several years into it Dunaway left him for photographer Terry O'Neill. Meanwhile, Wolf's band continued to coast commercially, despite the mountain of critical respect they'd amassed. The songs J Geils cut in the 70s, captured most searingly on their live album Full House, forged an entirely new brand of R&B, fired by hard rock power and delivered at the speed of a runaway train. However, their contract with Atlantic Records was so onerous that profits were nearly impossible to realize. Their turnaround didn't occur until they moved to EMI Records in the early 80s, resulting in a No 1 album for Freeze-Frame. With that win came an invitation to open a Stones tour that also featured the first stadium appearances by a young Prince. Shockingly, the purple one often got booed off the stage. 'I wasn't a racial thing,' Wolf said. 'It was just that seeing Prince sing songs like Jerk U Off in a trenchcoat was just too outlandish for the generic AOR rock fan of the day.' Though J Geils went down well with that crowd, their success caused most of the band members to want to lean further into the slick, synth-driven sound that gave them hits. By contrast, Wolf wanted to use their new exposure to lead the audience back to their core R&B sound. At an impasse, the band unceremoniously fired him in 1983. In the years since, Wolf has released eight solo albums, all of which finely balance his root R&B style with more mature and poignant lyrics. (He's in the process of recording a new solo album now.) He brought that same mature perspective to his book. If the anecdotes he offers along the way often outweigh the personal details he reveals, the end result makes a powerful point: sometimes the story of who we are can best be told by the things we love. 'The work of all those people I've admired so much has defined a lot of my life,' Wolf said. 'Because I was lucky enough to spend so many private moments with them, my mission was to be an observer and to share all that I got to see.' Waiting on the Moon is out on 11 March
