Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses

Peter Wolf is best known as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band. 

Even though he left the band more than 40 years ago and has had a solo career since 1984, some people still think he’s J. Geils instead of Peter Wolf because he led the band in songs like “Love Stinks,” “Freeze Frame” and “Centerfold.” J. Geils, or John Geils, was the band’s guitarist. 

As a solo artist, Wolf recorded songs such as “Lights Out” and “Come as You Are.” Now, he’s penned a memoir, “Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses.”

Wolf writes an enjoyably readable book even for readers who have no idea he was the J. Geils Band singer for 16 years and can barely recall his solo hits. 

He has a way with words that feels more like you are sitting with him enjoying a glass of wine or a few cold beers as he tells one fascinating story after another from his life.

Born and raised in the Bronx, he planned and studied to become a fine artist rather than a rock & roll singer, but music kept inserting its way into his life as Wolf (born Peter Blankfield) kept inserting himself into the lives of famed musicians. 

A teenage Wolf got to know Bob Dylan. Wolf writes of gulping Dylan’s glasses of wine as the legend kept turning away to speak with someone else.

He offered his apartment as a place for Muddy Waters and his band to rest before playing a gig at a nearby club. They became good friends.

Wolf’s memoir is filled with his encounters, as the subtitle notes, with numerous “artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses,” some more famous than others.

He writes of time spent with Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker, Merle Haggard, Andy Warhol, David Lynch, John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Tennessee Williams, the Rolling Stones. He also writes of encounters with Aretha Franklin, Martin Scorsese, Sly Stone, Peter Sellers, Alfred Hitchcock, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc.

He dives deep into his tumultuous relationship and five-year marriage to Faye Dunaway at the height of her movie career in the 1970s. 

Though mentioned throughout the book, Wolf spends surprisingly little time detailing the rise, success and fall of his 16-year career as lead singer for the J. Geils Band and most of the band’s behind-the-scenes story is saved for a short chapter near the end of the book. 

But it’s all well and good. Peter Wolf has led an extraordinary life and he spins many wonderful tales from his 79 years of living. So don’t keep “Waiting on the Moon” waiting. 

 

From a Buick 8: Stephen King

An odd-looking Buick pulls up to a gas station in the late 1970s. The driver tells the attendant to fill her up as he appears to run to the restroom at the side of the gas station.

The driver never returns. He’s never seen again.

A Pennsylvania State Patrol Trooper impounds the vehicle. Troopers quickly notice the Buick is not like any other vehicle on the road. It has an odd number of porthole windows. The day had been rainy, the roads muddy, but not a splash of mud on the chassis or the tires; the windshield was dry. No antenna. The steering wheel was large enough for a bus. No license plates or inspection stickers. 

Troopers park the Buick in a shed at their PSP headquarters. Soon, they discover the Buick isn’t really a car but something that is supposed to look like a car. Fireworks appear to spark from the Buick. A trooper disappears. The Buick ejects things from its trunk. More people seem to vanish into the Buick.

The PSP Troopers opt to not report the Buick to the state. Instead, they closely watch the Buick for years … as its driver is never found and years pass with no answers.

Stephen King wrote “From a Buick 8” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

The book revolves around members of the PSP Troopers telling the Buick story to a teenager whose father was one of the troopers who monitored the vehicle in the impound shed. The teen’s father was killed during a highway traffic stop.

Moving between the now of the storytellers and the past of their story, Stephen King does what Stephen King does: Writes a compelling story that keeps readers interested; terrifies readers more with the realistic aspects of the story – a teen losing his father – than with the seemingly supernatural origins of the Buick; and inspires readers to wonder about the mysteries of our world and worlds beyond ours.