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

by Wolf, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780316571708
• ISBN10: 0316571709
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780316571722
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-03-11
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• More Book Details

Summary

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In the tradition of classic collections of observations and musings such as Christopher Isherwood’s I Am a Camera and Truman Capote’s The Dogs Bark, Waiting on the Moon is a treasure trove of vignettes from a legendary musical figure whose career spans more than six decades and is still going strong.
 
Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of “fellow travelers” whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf’s studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.
 
After Wolf joined the J. Geils Band as their front man and his musical fame grew, he rubbed shoulders with other notables who left significant impressions on him, including members of the Rolling Stones, Sly Stone, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, and Van Morrison. Wolf’s marriage to Faye Dunaway is presented in a clear yet balanced and nuanced light.
 
Told with gentle humor and often heart-rending poignancy, the word portraits in Waiting on the Moon provide a revealing glimpse of artists, writers, actors, and musicians as they work—the creative forces that drive them to achievement; the demons they battle; the patterns of their human relationships. They are meant to inspire not only empathy but also admiration. Like Isherwood, Wolf remains “a camera with its shutter open.”
 

Author Biography

Peter Wolf is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist of the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1983 and as a solo artist. Born and raised in the Bronx, his talent as a painter earned him a grant to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. While a student there, his musical career began. From 1970 to 1983 the J. Geils Band released 13 influential albums, topped the pop single charts with “Freeze Frame,” “Love Stinks,” and “Centerfold,” and earned a reputation as one of rock’s most exciting live acts, thanks in large part to Wolf’s flamboyant and hyperactive stage presence. Wolf went solo with his 1984 record Lights Out. He is based in Boston.