takin' a walkJoin @thebuzzknight for this episode with the legendary musician Peter Wolf. He is the former frontman with The J Geils Band and also has a solo career with his band the midnight travelers. Peter has a new memoir "Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Grifters, and Goddesses" which takes us through his colorful life, his musical passions, his time as a disc jockey at WBCN in Boston and his many encounters with the legends of a generation. You'll love his colorful storytelling and the behind the scenes look at a music legend.
Taking a Walk.
I mean after we got married, Faye Dunaway and I got married. I remember Greg Allman and Scher got married for about five minutes, but Fey and I had five six years of a really incredible period and it was based the marriage was based on we each supported each other in our careers.
Well, I'm pleased to welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast. One of the great human beings in the universe. He stands tall as one of music's greatest frontmen ever. Peter Wolf, former lead singer of the Jay Guiles Band, amazing solo artist, painter, former DJ. He can add author now to his resume. His tremendous memoir is called Waiting on the Moon, and now he can also add to that list New York Times bestseller Pete, welcome to Take out a Walk.
Well, thank you for having me buzz and the introduction. Thank you for the plaudet's and kudos. At first, I don't know whom you might have been speaking about until I heard my name.
We're going to talk about drifters and grifters and goddesses. But I do have to ask you our signature taking a Walk question, since it is the name of the podcast. If you could take a walk with someone Pete living or dead, who would it be and where would you take that walk with him?
Well, living or dead makes a big ocean. There's so many historical figures, so many important artist writers, you know, you go from Homer to Shakespeare, interesting figures, mysterious figures.
You know.
As far as musicians, there's Beethoven and artists, there's just so many that I can think of one that comes to mind. And if I was able to meet with van Go and let him know that he's what as success he became and how important he became to so many people. But in thinking about people, I would probably say my wish would be to be able to take a walk with my father. And the reason for that is he was such an influence on my life, as I stay in the book, and he was so artistically aware that there are things that he turned me on too, musically and artistically as far as painting and things that took me years years after he passed to really appreciate what it was about certain classical music. Of course, I was not sophisticated enough to appreciate certain movements and pieces that he just thought was the Bee's knees and certain painters and artists that he loved, even contemporary you know, like Metro, the abstract Spanish abstract expressionist, and so many different things he knew about. He was such a brilliant man. So I think walking with him and discussing a new some of the things that I appreciate that I learned through him. And I know that there is a wealth of other things he could turn me on too, So I would say my father would be out of all the people I could meet, would be the first on my list.
Ah, that's so great, and that's I appreciate you you sharing that for sure. You know, one of the songs, one of the many songs that rings through my head when I, you know, was reading the book, was your great song from your solo work. There's a lot of good ones gone, you know, and your.
Father is certainly one of them.
But there's there's a lot of them in the book who aren't with us anymore?
Right, Yeah, you know two things.
It's funny because Peter Girlnick, who is a great writer who's did all those great books on Elvis Presley. You know, anyone's interested in Elvis Presley, Peter Girlnick's book, Last Train of Memphis and Careless Love are the definitive biographies of Elvis.
And he did one on Sam.
Cooke and the great producer Sam Phillips, and he said to me, you know, Pete, you've been talking about this book for overt fifteen years since then, you know, and you better have finished it soon because everybody you'll want, who you'll want to read it, they'll be dead if you don't hear it. And there was some truth to that, because a lot of people had passed since the time I started it, which took about two years from now. And yeah, so that's one thing and an important thing, and also lots of good ones. Gone was a song that I wrote with Will Jennings, who I write about in the book. He was a song collaborator, and Will was a great songwriter, and he wrote songs like Tears from heaven By with Eric Clapton, all the Stevie Winwood songs, High Love, and songs that wont Academy awards, you know. Went beneath the Wings and I found out that John Lee Hooker past, who was an old friend, and there's a chapter in the book about my relationship with John Lee.
And I remember mentioning with Will.
We worked together out of this home in Santa Barbara, and I remember mentioning, mentioning, you know, John Lee passed and uh, I said, man, is sure a lot of good ones gone? And he smiled and said, that's it. He gave me a pad. He took a pad, and uh, thanks to him. Uh we got uh that song.
It's it's it's one of my many favorites.
And it does nail it in terms of the the beauty of the storytelling here in your your great book, did your your proximity living so close to the Apollo Theater, did it kind of begin the backbone of your your sort of musical thirst and.
And your your passion for great performance?
Well, well it did.
But first I have to say that I followed my sister who was going out on a date and the date was to the several of the Alan Freed Cavalcade of Stars. So at the age of ten, this was one show and I had to research it because I couldn't quite believe it. And maybe it was a combination of two shows of Alan Fried's Cavalcade of Stars. And at ten years old, I got to see Chuck Berry Jerry Lee Lewis, little Richard. I saw Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, Bow Didley, the Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, Buddy Holly, Joanne Campbell, the blonde Bombshell, and coming out in the coffin in the middle of the stage with stage lights all dark, and all of a sudden, the coffin lid slowly open and out came screaming Jay Hawkins, uh Pound, you know, prancing around the stage singing. I put a spell on you. And I think seeing all those great first generation rock artists just blew.
My head off.
And that was a memory I'll never forget because each artist had a dynamic h and an individual stage presence. You know, Chuck Berry did the Chuck walk, Jerry Lee Lewis kicked the piano. Richard you know, you know, just was the Richard boy. You know, he was just a powerhouse. And Buddy Hollying, you know, needs no description. So it was just amazing. There was doop bands, Chantelle's singing maybe you.
Know, and they were all young.
Everyone was young, and I was ten, and I had an amazing impact. Now I didn't live in Harlem, but my high school was in Harlem, and so my high school it was the High School of Music and Art, and it was on one hundred and thirty fifth Street, and the Apollo is on one hundred and twenty fifth Street. So i'd walk across, you know, and downtown and every Wednesday night or Wednesday late, you know, in the evening, late in the afternoon, I'd go see. Wednesday they had a movie, The Amateur Night, and then the entire Apollo Review. So I got to see so many legendary artists such as Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Arretha Franklin, Diane Washington. I got to see John Coltrane, Ray Charles and Betty Carter. I mean, the list is just you know, enormous. In the Drifters and just so many artists. And as Don Kove explains to me in the book that in this chapter he said, you know, Pete, all of us artists, meaning Sam Cooke and Salomon Burke and Wilson Pickett and Joe tex and Benny king Ritha, we all came out of the church and we felt ourselves as the minister, and the audience was the congregation, and the job of the artist was to get the congregation you know, moving and get them the spirit of the music. And he said if you didn't do that, you failed, and that the audience expected it expected to be, you know, spiritually moved.
And it was that.
Lesson that, you know, as a performer, that I took with me because when I was ten, I didn't realize, you know, I just I was just so excited. But it was at the Apollo I could see the way Jackie Wilson would manipulate an audience or you know, different artists, you know, James would, you know, non stop pageantry and you know, the down on the knees with the cape and the whole the whole nine yards. So and also the great comedians at the follow Moms Maybley and pig Meat Martin here come to judge, and uh so Flip Wilson and so many different great comedians.
So it was a.
As far as but former and as far as learning the craft, the Apollo was my college, my college and musical knowledge.
I'd say.
And you got to roam pretty free through through the streets of New York. You're it's fair to say, Pete, your parents gave you a very long leash while you were able to go take in music, explore what was happening, just take the vibe in and it contributed to your amazingly diverse, you know, passion for all different styles of music. I mean, you were in the village one time next year at the Apollo. I mean, it was just it was an endless stream of great inspiration, right.
Oh yeah. And you know.
I always had a wanderlust. I was always a very active kid, and so my parents were aware of that. Also New York it was a different time. So as a kid of you know, twelve or even younger, sometimes I'd get on the subway and just go all the way down to Coney Island, meeing a couple of guys. We just say, let's go to Coney Island, and you know, you get you get on the train in the Bronx and the last stop was Coney Island and you'd walk all around and had all the ferris wheel and a parachute jump and uh and I would go off by myself.
You know.
Places I really loved to hang out was forty Second Street. Now I'm a twelve year old kid, and there was all the penny arcades and the shooting galleries and all the Hubitt's Flee Circus, which was sort of like Ripley's Believe it or not, it was this amazing museum of magic and hustlers, and Broadway was filled with all, you know, these little shops and totally different than it is now. And then, of course once I got down to Greenwich Village, I was a little bit older. There was all the great folk music and all the little clubs that really didn't in the coffee houses that you really didn't have to pay to get into.
You could drop money and a hat.
If you chose to, and you could get a you know, a kind of soft drink or something and sit there for hours. And also they had great jazz clubs like the Village Vanguard and a five spot, and I would just stand out and I'd hear one week I could hear Felonious Monk, and the next week I could hear Charles Mingus and it was just non stop. So between the folk music, you know where you would hear people like the Green Briar Boys, or you know, Bob Dylan in a small club, Dave van Ronk and all these jazz greats, and sort of later on there would be some rock clubs where you'd catch you know, some of the the young rascals or you know, the beginnings of bands like Mountain and Leslie West and people like that. So there was I remember seeing the Doors when they first came to a club in New York. So it was a cornucopia of delights. It was all available and economically it was feasible, so you could spend you know, days upon days, a venture upon a venture, and some of it I tried to capture in the book.
You did it so brilliantly and the stories, I mean, there's so many favorites, the interactions from the beginning that you had with with Bob Dylan, observing his performance and then being able to have some choice interactions that are just incredible. When you were writing the book, had you kept notes of things all along in your life, a journal or whatever, or because there's a lot of stuff that you go back into and you painted in brilliantly colorful detail.
Well, I never kept journal. I mean I would keep like, you know, a calendar would say, you know, dentists two o'clock, you know, meeting over you know so and so, record stational call this person or you know, but basically about twenty years ago, I sat down and I was thinking about a book, and I wrote out a outline, which I printed out and put in a loose leaf folder, and it pretty much starts from the early memories chronological to all the way up to what then was the present. I kept referring to it, and if I thought of something, I would add to it. But I didn't really do anything with it until I started about, you know, two years ago, and I found the book the notes, and I just marked off the ones I thought would be interesting to start with. And that's how I started about five or six vignettes, because I did not want The book is composed of really short stories. Each chapter is its own short story. So there's about thirty five chapters of thirty four chapters, I'm not sure, but if you say, like interested in sly Stone, you can read about sly Stone, or you can read about some there's some early periods of my life in there, or if you're into Louis Armstrong or Julia Childs So or Tennessee Williams So, they're all you know.
Listed there in the chapters.
But you could just pick up the book, read a six page chapter and put it back down and not have to worry about any time aspect, because each chapter should have its own, if I'm successful, should have its own beginning, middle, and end. And that's how I attempted to write it. And the two things that I said to myself that I wasn't going to do was I wasn't going to write about my marriage, and I wasn't going to write about the Jay Giles band. And I just wanted to make a book of short stories of my adventures of the people that I admired that I were privileged enough to get to know and just try to not kiss and tell, but tried to demonstrate and show what they were like as as artists, as you know, interacting with them, you know what that personalities were like because I read so many books. Uh and so, oh yeah, we played with you know Bo Diddley, Well we played you know, uh, well what was Bo Diddley like? Was he friendly? Was he unfriendly? Or you know, if he played with Chuck Berry, what was he like? Or if you met, you know, a certain famous person and had some.
Quality time, well what were they like?
And a lot of books would just say oh and so I didn't want it to be just a list of famous people that wasn't my attention because there's a lot of people that I write about in the book that nobody would really know about unless reading the book. So once I started writing The Little Brown, my publishing company and my agent Andrew Wiley, both said, you know, Pete, I think people are curious about the Guile's Band and curious about your marriage.
And I said, well, it's not one of those books.
And my agent said, well, why don't you try just writing a bit about each and see how that goes. And once I started writing about my marriage, one chapter led to another because I realized my marriage with Faye, who was then a very world famous actress and at the height of her career when we met. I realized what an amazing time we had together because it was at a period when there was really no rock and rollers and actors that were married. And I'm sure they were, but you know, I mean after we got married, Faye Dunaway and I got married. I remember Greg Allman and Cher got married for about five minutes, but Fay and I had five six years of a really incredible period and it was based the marriage was based on we each supported each other in our careers. Her career was you know, paramount and important to me, and my career was paramount and important to her. And she would fly to you know, to meet the band on the road, and I'd fly out to see her on a movie set. And so once I realized, you know, how rich my marriage was and how many adventures we both shared, I felt that they were right, that it needed, it was part of the narrative. And for the Guyles band, I read so many books by musicians that you know, go into so much detail about you know, the band and this and that, and which is fine if you're really interested in that artist or that band, and I didn't want to do that sort of cookie cutter type musician memoir. So I did a chapter on the band which basically, in a very edited way, talked about the beginning of it, you know, the middle of it, and I explained my version, which I you know, stand by, why it ended. And so those were the two issues that came later on.
We'll be right back with more of that Taking a While podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk podcast.
Your time at WBCN in Boston is chronicled in the book so well, and it's you just.
You know, once again, paint some great pictures. There was what was going on.
I know you did a fair amount of interviews while you were working at BCN. I guess the first was rash On Roland Kirk actually that you that you interviewed. Who were some of the other folks you remember that while you were on BCN that were interviews, whether they be memorable or not what you thought they would be.
Well, there was Van Morrison, there was Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck with Ronnie Wood when they first blew into town under the Jeff Beck group. There was Pete Townsend. I had Carla Thomas who was the R and B great. There was Muddy Waters, there was John Lee Hooker. There was so many different artists that James Cotton, Muddy Waters, lou Reid I.
Had we talked with.
And the wildest thing about it all My show was on at midnight and it was it was an all night show, which I loved because Simon and Somniac and it was the Wolf of Goop of Mama Tooth for show making your knees freeze. You know, Glad, that's Blad Everston. You's got to come out because that was rock and roll is all about welcome the OJ's little Ladies of the Night to kid from Alabama, keeping it all, hit all the ships out of sea, doing it too, and getting right through it. We're going to have some fun until the midnight sun and you know, give me a call and let me know way out there, y'all and stuff like that. And I would just go and play and take phone calls. And it was like a dream come true for me because I love radio.
I grew up with radio.
Radio was so important to me growing up that being a DJ was, you know again, like almost everything in the book. The people that I talk about Tennessee Williams, Juliet Childs, even Faye my marriage to Fay, were all people that I met just by you know, by circumstances, you know, serperendipity. It wasn't uh It's like I was standing in a record store and I heard this voice behind the curtain turned out to be Bob Dylan. You know, it's not like, you know, hey, he I pursued because I was so interested in his you know, music. But so many people I just met by just you know, luck of the drawer. And as these interviews came up, what happened was my Radioces show. Since it started at midnight and that era, everything in Boston closed down. TV stations went off midnight. All the stores and restaurants were closed, and the only thing open was all night diners, you know the Hayes, Bickford's, or you know Waldorf's coffee shops, and so a lot of musicians that came to town. I was the only thing on the air really that was of any interest to most musicians or people. So I got to get the Krem dollar krem and you know people who you know, Freddie Hubbard from the Art Blakey Jazz Band, and oh, just all sorts of people that rolled into town that you know, I invited up to the station because people were just unwinding and it was great.
Well, first of all, I can die and go to if there is a heaven for you just doing your PCN opening wrap there, That's the first thing I have to say. The smile on my face hopefully comes through. But the second part to that is, would you mind telling the story how you were getting male to play more?
Van Morrison? I love that.
Oh well, when I was on the show, there was this artist Ordsley Beardsley and he, you know, did these very distinctive drawings that somebody made postcards of and uh, I would start receiving these postcards and it's very feminine handwriting. You know, love your show, listen to it all the time? Can you please play John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson and Van Morrison And they would come once sometimes twice a week, and they always try to play a Van Morrison song. And uh, because I was such a fan in the group them and that that, and at that time he had Brown Eyed Girl come out, but he hadn't started really started as major solo career as we know it. Then when I got this postcard on a beard you know, same artist on the other side, and it had this wild kind of handwriting, Hey, Mongo bongo man, you know, play more John Lee Hooker, more Hooker. And so I was at this club which became eventually became the Boston Tea Party, and that was a venue where we used to practice. My first band of all art students. We got together and I think nineteen sixty four, and we were called the Hallucinations and.
We would rehearse in them.
One day, this young guy came into the club, and he came up to me and, you know, with this strange kind of accent, Yeah, he can find the manager, that convent manager. I said, well, I don't know if the manager's here, I'll search around for him. And I couldn't find the manager. So we got to talking and I asked him, you know, uh what kind of music he played?
And he told me he just moved to town.
And we were waiting for the manager I knew would be coming back in about an hour or so. So we were just having a rap and he was asking me about other clubs, and I mentioned some other clubs that, you know, he might want to check out. Then he was telling me about, you know, what things he liked in Boston. He said one of the things he really liked was listening to this wolf, you know, late at night. I said really, he said, oh yeah, he said, you know I love his show. I said, well, I'm the Wolf of Goofer. He said what, I go, yeah, and he goes now and I said, what do you mean though? He said, now he's black guy. He said old black guy. I said no, I says me, And I went through the rap the Wolf Google Mama, and he couldn't believe, and he said, well, hey man, you know, thank you so much for playing my records. I said, your records and he said, yeah, I'm Van Morrison. And I said, You've got to be kidding me, because you know, I really don't know what you know. Van looked like I've seen pictures, but you know. And so that started the beginning of a friendship that still goes on to this day.
I love it. That's so great.
And I have to ask you though, the interaction with Sly Stone, and in particular the brilliant quote the cherries swimming in buttermilk, I believe was the quote when you looked at him, looked at his eyes. That was That was a pivotal meeting in some regards for you, wasn't it.
Well.
I was such a huge fan and Sly was at the height of his career and he.
Was so influential.
I mean, along with James Brown, those two gentlemen created what we know is funk and so many bands that came after, you know, even Philly Sound when you hear the Temptations, you know, Papa was a rolling stone. So much of the arrangements and things were really due to Sly's influence. On the music scene, and then of course James Brown, and between the two of them, you know, one could say they were the roots of funk music and their impact was enormous. James obviously came first and affected Sly, but Sly developed another kind of funk that the Jackson five. And you know, everybody tried to emulate so many R and B artists especially, and even rock bands, you know, like Rare Earth and things like that. And so meeting him, which is a quite an amazing encounter. We were in a recording studio and I had to go to use the men's room take a break, and with the guys band we're recording our second record. I go running down the hallway and open up the men's room door and they're sitting on the floor with three men, all dressed in suits and ties in one corner and on the other corner was sly Stone. And I didn't realize, and I said, oh, and you know, I was about to leave, so I didn't want to interrupt whatever was going on.
So said, no, man, come on in, do your thing.
And apparently they were having a marketing meet in the bathroom on the floor, and that's the beginning of a wild story. That's you know, I go into greater length in the book, but I think what you're talking about is witnessing the decline of Sly and seeing him where he was playing arenas and you know, one of the leading stars of the Woodstock Festival and you know, so influential and so revered, ending up at the small, little funky club of maybe one hundred people at most in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I just happened to be walking by and seeing that he was going to appear that night. And it was a surreal moment and a very heartbreaking moment for me to see someone who had achieved so much that could you know, the depths of the fall could be so great that it really really shook me up and scared me. And I remember sitting in the club, as I described in the book, that I just sat there kind of stunned.
You know.
The bartender was lifting up all the chairs and I knew I had to leave. But that was a very sobering moment for me, an unforgettable one. And I remember, as I wrote it, it brought back that whole feeling of what one can gain out of notoriety or fame and what one can lose and how easily one can lose notoriety and fame. And it's not just the money aspect of it, but it's the freedom that fame gives you to be able to continue on your own terms. At least for me, that's what it means, and that's why I worked so hard on this book. Was hopefully, you know, to widen the audience because you know, so many people, you know, they know the Jay Giles band through MTV and through all the years of records, but Peter Wolf, you know, a lot of people think I'm Jay Giles, or they assume, you know, I'm the front guy, so I must be Jay Giles, which was very confusing. And so the purpose for writing this book was to widen the audience and maybe get to interest people that I normally wouldn't because I have a CD, you know, recording that's ready to almost about eighty percent finished, and I knew if I released it, like almost all of the recordings, it would just you know, get lost in the ether, and you know, ten days or so it'd be out there, but it would just be.
In that ocean.
Because there's no real record stores, there's no record day releases. There's no one particular radio station that has the power to influence. There's such a large, large ocean out there that it's hard to focus even what's going on with films or you know, with television, with all the different Netflix series and all the different episodes, and hey, are you watching this episode and you're watching that, or you know, in the time of say like the Sopranos came, it was like the only game in town. And now there's so many different series and episodes of things, it's so easy for things to get lost. I decided to hold off on finishing the record and just put all my energies into the book.
Well, the book is fabulous, and I'm glad you brought up the Midnight Travelers.
So this will be the ninth album.
Right, I believe so.
Yeah, So you can't wait for that, and I'm sure you'll be out playing live when that.
Comes out as well.
But it's such a treasure too to be able to speak with you, Pete talking about this this great book. I recommend it to everybody.
It is. It is a great read.
It's so fun, appealing and just such a walk through music history. And I'm grateful that you took the time to come on taking a walk and talk about waiting on the moon and your amazing career.
Peter Wilfo, I'm so thrilled to have you on.
Well, thank you, Buzz. You know we're both old, you know radio. When I say old, I don't mean necessary age. But we we spent many, many years in the world of radio.
I know you have.
But let me ask you, if not anyone that you're related to, but if you had a choice of taking a walk with anyone or dead, who would it be and where would you walk to?
I'd say Bob Dylan comes to mind, fresh off of reading so much of the great stories you told, and it would have to be a walk through through the village. And I know it would probably be ironic because he'd probably look and go, this is not the same village I remember from from that period, because as you know, it's so has changed, right. But oh, but it would be uh. I'd love even if it was a walk around the corner with.
Him, to have a walk with Bob.
Well, there you go. Well you answered it a lot easier than I did.
Well, it's a hard one. I know.
It's the living or dead aspect, you know, living uh, it's still a still a wide ocean.
Dead really gives you anything, you know, you know, because.
They asked that question to writers, you know, I know in the New York Times book review section is a part where they ask writers, you know, if you can meet a writer living in a you know, dead or have a dinner party with three people you know, who might it be? And it's really interesting to see who people pick. I'd always go for the mysterious ones, the ones where history doesn't quite fill in all the blanks.
Yes, got it? Well, I know.
I'll put you high up there on the list because I love being with you and I look forward to the next time.
Well we have we our next get together, Our next walk is going to go to a restaurant that has a nice fine wine list, and we have a bottle to open and two glasses to fill. Amen, So that's where we're going to go walking, Buzz. So I'll take a walk with Buzz, have some fine wine, have a good time and do it up and do it do it nice, oh man, and all like sugar and spice. So this is woof of goof of mama tuf. Thank you Buzz for having me as your guest. I was honored to walk with you and go through so much of sharing bits and pieces of my life.
Thank you, my friend.
Later later, and if.
It's in you, it's got to come out. Take it easy, but take it.
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