Peter Wolf on His Friendships With Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters & Van Morrison, Signing With EMI: ‘It All Happened by Accident’

Peter Wolf, known champion arsenic the frontman for J. Geils Band, which ascended to No. 1 connected the Billboard Hot 100 successful 1982 with the irresistible “Centerfold,” made a vocation retired of being astatine the close spot astatine the close time. Growing up successful New York City, attending assemblage successful Boston and becoming ensconced successful the worlds of euphony and art, Wolf was introduced to an unthinkable formed of luminaries figures — and earned much than capable anecdotes to capable a book. 

“It each happened by accident,” Wolf tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast of the friendships that filled his beingness and marque his memoir, Waiting connected the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses, a lively, fascinating publication that lone tangentially discusses his vocation arsenic a signaling and touring artist. 

Van Morrison, already a hitmaker with 1967’s “Brown Eyed Girl” erstwhile helium met Wolf, looms ample successful Waiting connected the Moon. Wolf met Morrison portion the J. Geils set was rehearsing successful a Boston club. Morrison moved to Boston successful 1967 and rehabilitated his vocation by playing successful section clubs up of signaling his classical 1968 album, Astral Weeks. 

“We’re rehearsing, and Van Morrison happens to travel into this club. I didn’t cognize it was Van Morrison. He didn’t cognize I was a DJ that helium was listening to each night. And by that coincidence, we became friends, and [that’s] benignant of however I met truthful galore of the antithetic radical successful the book.”

Wolf has a knack for making friends, moving successful fascinating societal circles and uncovering himself successful hard-to-believe situations. He was assemblage roommates with movie manager David Lynch, befriended blues greats Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, met playwright Tennessee Williams, partied with The Rolling Stones, hung retired with Bob Dylan and erstwhile attended a meal enactment thrown by personage cook Julia Child.

Waiting connected the Moon contains fewer details astir the J. Geils Band, putting the long-running set successful the inheritance portion focusing connected the radical who Wolf encountered. “I didn’t privation it to beryllium astir me,” helium explains. “I wanted it to beryllium astir them, and [I] tried to seizure the quality of the euphony satellite astatine that time. And truthful Muddy would play the Apollo successful 1 portion of the chapter, and past he’s playing a jazz nine successful different portion of the chapter. And past he’s playing, for the archetypal time, a coffeehouse. So that gives the scholar a humanities consciousness of the euphony satellite astatine the clip of galore of these stories.”

Wolf grew up successful the Bronx and attended precocious schoolhouse successful Harlem, 10 blocks northbound of the Apollo Theater, providing him with a invaluable acquisition for a beingness successful music. “Every Wednesday I would spell to the Apollo and spot an amateur show, and past the full Apollo review,” helium recalls. “And truthful I saw each important psyche creator — almost, not each — but I saw everybody from the Motown Revue, James Brown, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson [and] Dinah Washington. I saw John Coltrane there.”

It was performer and songwriter Don Covay, who penned Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools,” who taught Wolf that an assemblage is similar a religion congregation, and the artist’s relation is simply a curate who rouses radical from the pews. 

“And that’s wherefore I deliberation I always, ever [was] attracted to the Stones and artists that truly were capable to link with the audience. And Van Morrison, who doesn’t truly determination overmuch — neither did Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland oregon a batch of the psyche greats — but helium was capable to someway transfix the assemblage and determination them successful a antithetic benignant of way, not needfully dancing and jumping from near to right, but someway creating this precise magical moment.”

Even 1 of the astir pivotal moments successful Wolf’s vocation came by accident. When the J. Geils Band fulfilled its declaration with Atlantic Records, Wolf met with each president of a large grounds statement successful the U.S. — and was turned down by them all. He was near “feeling beauteous defeated” and ended up astatine the Palm successful Los Angeles. As luck would person it, a young grounds enforcement — and immense instrumentality of the J. Geils Band — named Jim Mazza noticed Wolf and struck up a conversation. Mazza was helping motorboat EMI Records and jumped astatine the accidental to motion the band.

EMI enactment Wolf and the J. Geils Band connected a caller trajectory. After failing to interruption done astatine vigor astatine Atlantic, the rubric way from 1980’s Love Stinks went into the apical 40 of the Hot 100. The 1981 medium Freeze-Frame topped the Billboard 200, and the azygous “Centerfold” spent six weeks atop the Hot 100. Like s...