Legendary rock musician and frontman Peter Wolf joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about discovering obscure songs, “warming up” to The Beatles, his new memoir “Waiting on the Moon” and much more on a special bonus episode of “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Wolf found international fame in the early 1980s as lead singer of the J. Geils Band, the group behind such hits as “Centerfold,” “Freeze Frame” and “Love Stinks.” As he told Womack, his father, mother and older sister all played instruments, and thanks to them he experienced what he called “the two great early music impacts on his life”: accompanying his father to a rehearsal by famed Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini and tagging along on his sister’s date to an Alan Freed rock ‘n’ roll revue which featured such stars as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Buddy Holly.
As a teenager, Wolf was an Everly Brothers fan, and he entered (and lost) a local talent contest singing “Bye Bye Love” with some neighborhood friends. A few years later, he started taking his music more seriously and formed a popular Boston area band with fellow art college students. By the time The Beatles hit America, Wolf claims to have already heard them by religiously listening to a late-night radio show that played their Vee-Jay records prior to their famed “Ed Sullivan Show” appearance in 1964.
“It took me a while to warm up to The Beatles,” he explained to Womack. “I wasn’t part of the initial Beatlemania.” For his money, the first song that had made him run out and buy a record was Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” And as it turned out, he would be on tour with Peter Frampton (who was a previous guest on Everything Fab Four) in 1977 – along with the same crew that often traveled with Elvis – when they received the news of Presley’s death.
These types of stories would lead to Wolf writing his memoir, “Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters and Goddesses” (out now), which had been years in the making. “I was a big reader,” he said. “And I’ve read a lot of musicians’ memoirs that came from the same template.” Noting that people would often tell him that he should write a book because of his unique style of storytelling, he decided to do just that – offering nuanced glimpses into his many collaborations and connections throughout his life and career – including crossing paths with all four Beatles. In fact, he’d met them all except for Ringo Starr up until the 2015 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where Paul McCartney was in attendance to induct Starr and incidentally ended up teaching Wolf the origin of a well-known phrase.
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And when it comes to what he believes makes rock music great, Wolf says it’s a combination of both songwriting and being able to truly honor other’s songs with cover versions – which he says both J. Geils Band and The Beatles did well. “They covered obscure songs to pay homage to the original artists – like tributes, because they loved the records. ‘Mr. Moonlight’, which Lennon sang so beautifully, is undeniably great. And the original is pretty d**n good.”
Listen to the entire conversation with Peter Wolf on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple, Google or wherever you’re listening. “Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of The Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His latest book is the authorized biography of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, “Living The Beatles Legend,” out now.
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