During the peak of the pandemic, when many musicians spent their time writing songs, Peter Wolf did nothing but read. During that prolonged period of isolation and uncertainty, he comforted himself by devouring shelves full of books, including memoirs penned by other musicians. “After a while all those memoirs started to seem the same,” he said. “And I came to the realization that, unless you were a huge fan of that musician, the details of their story wouldn’t seem particularly captivating.”
Such thoughts had a major impact on Wolf when he was approached to tell his own story. As a result, his new book, titled Waiting on the Moon, threads the outlines of a memoir – highlighted by his years fronting the hit group J Geils Band – through a host of colorful anecdotes about what he describes as the “artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses” he met along the way.