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LOVE STINKS!

Peter Wolf

7:30 p.m. Friday, September 5, 2025

University at Albany 

Main Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center

1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222 See map.

Peter Wolf made his mark as lead singer of The J. Geils Band, widely regarded as the #1 “party band” of the early 1980s — known for many Top 40 hits including “Freeze Frame,” “Must of Got Lost,” “Centerfold,” and “Love Stinks.”
 

He’s also the author of the current New York Times bestseller, Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses (2025), a memoir of his eventful life, musical career, marriage to Faye Dunaway, and encounters with Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, David Lynch, and many others. Elvis Costello said, “This is the book I’ve been hoping Peter would write since we walked the streets of Paris together, back in the 20th Century. [It’s] a true account of his life, love and music told with unique humor and rare humility.”

Major support for The Creative Life is provided by the University at Albany Foundation.

Peter Wolf, Photo credit Tim Palmer

(Photo credit Tim Palmer)

from the publisher:

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, Peter Wolf's 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.” - Read more

Peter Wolf's Waiting on the Moon

from Bob Dylan:

“Sometime back Pete gave me a biography of the painter Chaim Soutine said he was the Jimmy Reed of the art world but I already knew that. Soutine is nowhere in this memoir nor is Jimmy Reed but there’s plenty of other folks who are. This book reads like a fast train and you’ll get a glimpse of everyone passing by through the windows. Characters that have crossed Pete’s path who he’s known up close and personal. A diverse crowd, one you wouldn’t think belong in the same book: Marilyn Monroe with a scarf on her head sitting next to him in a movie theater, Muddy Waters, Faye Dunaway, David Lynch the filmmaker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jagger -- Tennessee Williams, Merle Haggard. They all play an important part in Pete’s life, come alive in more ways than one. As you’ll see Pete’s been on quite a journey. But before it all began, he had hopes to become a great painter, but then out of nowhere early on he went in another direction and never came back. This memoir has been a long time coming and it’s Pete’s great painting.”

from Bruce Springsteen:

"Arriving home from my 114th tour date, Peter's book has kept me wonderful company. As the eastern sun rises through my airplane window, the warmth of its rays reminds me of the love of life and living so beautifully expressed in his writing."

The Washington Post:

"He’s a master storyteller…Waiting on the Moon is not just another celebrity confessional...it reads like a dream dinner party." 

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Produced by the New York State Writers Institute in collaboration with WAMC Northeast Public Radio, The Creative Life series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation with WAMC’s “Roundtable” host Joe Donahue about creative inspiration, craft, and career.

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