Musician and Singer Peter Wolf.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 06, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010601np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Peter Wolf
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

DEAN OLSHER, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dean Olsher, Cultural Correspondent at NPR, sitting in for Terry Gross.

If you mention the name Peter Wolf to people who know of him you're likely to get two responses: well, he was in the J. Geils Band, right? And, he was married to Faye Dunaway wasn't he?

For 17 years, from the late 1960's to the early '80's, the Boston-based Geils Band performed its own take on the blues and R&B. Wolf became known for his wild antics onstage. His marriage to Faye Dunaway came apart after several years, so did his association with the J. Geils Band -- not long after the band had finally achieved worldwide fame with the album "Freeze Frame."

Now, after more than 15 years on his own, Wolf's new album "Fool's Parade" is earning praise from critics. I'll talk with Peter Wolf after this review from FRESH AIR's rock critic Ken Tucker, who chose "Fool's Parade" as one of his ten best albums of 1998.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- MUSICIAN-SINGER PETER WOLF PERFORMING)

I woke up
Such a lonely feeling
Got so high
Had to tear me from the ceiling

And it's too late
My whole soul is reeling
It's a long way back again

KEN TUCKER, ROCK CRITIC: If you told me that one of my favorite CD's of the year would be one from Peter Wolf, I'd have laughed in your face. Peter Wolf? The J. Geils Band guy? "Centrefold?" "Freeze Frame?" I mean, I always liked the guy's scratchy voice and hipster attitude, but, you know, what's he done for me lately? Like, the past ten years.

The first time I put on Wolf's new album "Fool's Parade," though, I listened to it all the way through. Then I played it all the way through again right away. The music was a shock. Fresh and swaggering, yet deeply rooted in the rhythm and blues history to which Wolf and the Geils Band had always paid homage.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- MUSICIAN-SINGER PETER WOLF PERFORMING "IF YOU WANNA BE WITH SOMEBODY")

Lonely room
Nifty thing (ph)
(unintelligible)
Running through my head

Broken heart
Need some healing time
Got to get you
Off of my mind

You want to be with somebody
You want to be with somebody
If you want to be with somebody
You never (unintelligible)

TUCKER: Like Bonnie Raitt, Tina Turner and Roy Orbison did when they were supposedly past their prime; Wolf, now 52, has used "Fool's Parade" to seize upon long experience and middle age to give his music a new urgency.

Songs like "Long Way Back Again" and "If You Wanna be With Somebody" are melancholy without being self-pitying. His cover of "I'd Rather be (Blind, Crippled, and Crazy)" by the neglected R&B balladeer Ov Wright is blue-eyed soul at its bluest. It features an arrangement emphasizing horns and keyboards, but achieves the sort of atmosphere that Memphis producer Willie Mitchell used to get with singers like Wright and Al Green.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- MUSICIAN-SINGER PETER WOLF PERFORMING "I'D RATHER BE (BLIND, CRIPPLED, AND CRAZY)")

I've been stepped on
Over and over again
I've been standing by baby
When I knew I could win

But I'm tired
Of you messing up my mind
You do your thing
Let me do mine

I'd rather be blind
Crippled and crazy
Some way don't you know baby
Don't you break my heart

All over again
I tell you baby
I gave you my heart

TUCKER: "Fool's Parade" has been out about a month now, and I guess it's commercially doomed. The music is too rough hewn to be added onto radio play lists that include either Celine Dione or rapper Jay Z. It's most logical precedent is, in a way, Raitt's 1989 "Nick of Time." That is an album that distills the greatest strengths of a long-established performer, updating the sound just enough to make the music revelatory.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- MUSICIAN-SINGER PETER WOLF AND SINGER ADA DYER PERFORMING)

So good to see you
In the slow morning light
Where ever you are
Everything is all right

I watch the sunshine
Tangle up in your hair
And it's pleasing to me
You've got (unintelligible)

Don't give a damn
About the plans that they've made
I've got a feeling
That we'll be here all day

It's amazing to me
I can stay here til (unintelligible)
And it's pleasing to me

TUCKER: That's Wolf crooning smoothly with back up singer Ada Dyer. I think if you ever had any fondness for Peter Wolf and the Geils Band and you'd heard "Fool's Paradise" you'd buy it and tell your friends about it. And that a year from now Wolf would be loping home with an armful of Grammys. Fat chance, huh? Come on, give me some hope.

OLSHER: Ken Tucker is critic at large for "Entertainment Weekly."

Peter Wolf is my guest today on FRESH AIR. In the liner notes for Wolf's new album Peter Guralnick wrote, "This is real soul music delivered, neither as formal imitation nor as ironic commentary, but full of the emotion that invested the records and shows that served as Peter's inspiration and initiation."

Wolf chose to record "Fool's Paradise" in the old style: live in a small studio on vintage equipment to capture an intimate feel like the soul records of the '60's.

PETER WOLF, MUSICIAN AND SINGER: Well, for me the way this record started, I had always grew up being first generation rock and roller. Growing up with the impact of Elvis Presley and Little Richard, and groups like The Orioles and The Ravens. Having an older sister who was a dancer in the Alan Freed Big Beat Show, I got to go see a lot of the great early rock and roll pageantries.

My dad was in light opera in Vaudeville, so I got to catch a lot of the end of that great era. And I sort of synthesized a lot of that music, and as time moved on and as technology moved on, the ways of making records changed. And when I was -- before starting this "Fool's Parade" project I started finding myself going back to mainly a lot of the music from Memphis.

And by that -- the records from Sun, the Sam Phillips records, there were great recordings of Howlin' Wolf, the recordings of Virginia Parker, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash. And also, later, Stax and recordings of Otis Redding. And then Muscle Shoals was a great impact, and I was listening to a record by Arthur Alexander and it just -- the warmth of those recordings and the approach of those recordings.

And basically they were very intimate, they were good songs done in a small room, done in a very intimate atmosphere using great old warm tube equipment that was the standard equipment of the time -- great players. And you got a certain feeling from that that I felt had been lost in many contemporary records.

And so for myself, I really wanted to get back to that approach and that's how I, sort of, proceeded as the blue print for "Fool's Parade."

OLSHER: So, on the one hand you have this sound that you're going after, and on the other hand you have lyrics that seem to me to have an awful lot to do with taking stock of your life, looking back. In some cases regretting disappointments. In other cases moving on.

One of the songs that I'm thinking of is "Turnin' Pages," and I wanted to listen to just a little bit of it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER-MUSICIAN PETER WOLF PERFORMING "TURNIN' PAGES")

Yeah all right
I need a lift
Time to believe what's true
I don't know what's going on

Some days I'm still
Some days I'm like a rolling stone
No easy riding for sure
(unintelligible)

I can't take it
I'm thinking back
To so many faces
My heart

My love's turning pages
I can't go back
To all the old places
My life's moving on

Turning pages

WOLF: In gathering songs for this record, I tried to choose and stay in a direction where there was a certain amount of intimacy that dealt with a lot of what was going on in my life. The trials and tribulations in a previous album -- I had this song called "Long Line," and the lyrics, if I can remember them:

"Here I am baby
Right back where
I've been
I've been tossed around

Kicked around
On the outside
Looking in
Every mountain has its valley

Every valley has its climb
I got these weird blues from trying
Cause it's a long long line"

And what I meant was that there's a lineage as I, a young kid growing up in the Bronx, taking the subway down to Times Square Records and hearing young doo-wop groups: Dion & The Belmonts, Frankie Lymon & Teenagers, The Schoolboys, great New York doo-wop groups.

Hearing these bands and then going to art school, coming up to Boston to study painting and hearing that Muddy Waters was in town and I'm 17-years-old and I'm, you know, helping Muddy Waters carry his equipment and his amplifiers. And end up becoming his unofficial valet while he was in the New England area.

And then putting together a band, eventually, much later on -- when I was about 18-19, and ending up playing with people like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker -- Mose Allison. And so there was this long line, this lineage, that these artists -- these great artists like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker -- they received when they grew up in Mississippi and they brought it up with them up north.

Then they went across to England and inspired people like the Rolling Stones and many different bands -- the Beatles were inspired -- and came back here and inspired people like myself. And I think that's -- well, I knew Peter as a writer -- Peter Guralnick, who you mentioned earlier, has devoted most of his life to capturing that tradition.

OLSHER: I'm talking today with singer Peter Wolf. We'll be back in a moment.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

OLSHER: My guest is Peter Wolf. His new album is "Fool's Parade."

You know, you refer to yourself as a first generation rock and roller. And I'm thinking about the fact that rock and roll is really conceived as music for youth. And now you have people in your generation in their 50s still making rock and roll. And I was really struck by a remark of yours in "Billboard" magazine in 1996 where you said, "There's a part of rock and roll that's pure adolescence, but it's not only that. I've gotten rid of that albatross. I don't feel like I'm a gerbil in a cage anymore."

And you're known as a very wild performer, and I'm wondering if you weren't, in some ways, saying through your songs and to me right now that you're trying to grow up.

WOLF: Well, I think I was always trying to grow up and I think we're all trying to learn. And as a musician and as an artist we're all trying to have growth. I just think one grows up -- certain things become important.

And when I was going to high school -- I went to the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan which was on 135th Street, and it was right -- about 10 blocks away from the Apollo Theater. So, I would go -- before going home to the Bronx and taking the subway back to the Bronx I would stop off at the Apollo every Wednesday. And I did that for about four years.

And I got to see amateur show -- an entire revue -- and then the entire, what they call "show time-start time." And I got to see people like Dinah Washington and all the great Stax revues, and Jimmy Weatherspoon and Jackie Wilson, and Billy Stewart. Some of America's greatest -- the world's greatest -- poets and entertainers. And all of the great comedians -- Pig Meat Martin and Moms Mabley, and young Flip Wilson.

And the presentation and the origins of soul music at that time had this great impact on me because there was a tremendous treatment of the stage. The stage was considered a very religious, sacred place. And there was a communion between the performer and the audience, and it was the performers obligation to stir up, almost like a gospel preacher, his audience which was his congregation.

And there was this communion between the audience, and when Jackie Wilson would get down on his knees and start singing some love song the women went crazy. Or when James Brown hit the stage and said, "We're gonna let the good times roll. We're gonna shake it up." Or Ray Charles -- there was this energy and this magnificent passion that happened; that once, as a young kid, affected me. To this day, I think about some of those moments and they're so profound to me.

OLSHER: You know, I'm really struck listening to you talk about these people who are important to you, and it is a parade of incredible names. Not only as influences, but also people who are part of your life. And when you read your biography, if you forget for a moment the part about having an IQ of 70, it's sounds like Forrest Gump to me.

I mean, you have encountered all of these incredible people, and this cast of characters includes Norman Rockwell and Bob Dylan and David Lynch and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Van Morrison and, of course, J. Geils and Faye Dunaway.

And I'm wondering if it's as amazing to you as it is to someone like me imagining what it must have been like to have -- I mean, Norman Rockwell?

WOLF: Yeah, that was a funny story. When I was very young, when I was about two and a half, I feverishly started drawing. And I became an impassioned drawer, and as a matter of fact we lived in this tenement building. And my apartment was very much like the "Honeymooners" apartment -- with Jackie Gleason.

My parents slept in a convertible couch, my sister and I shared a bedroom. It was crammed with junk and furniture. My mother collected antiques and we had two cats, a dog, parakeet in this hovel. This, you know, small little apartment. And my dad was out of work a lot because he -- it was hard getting jobs.

My mom was a left-wing activist and she had a hard time getting work in the '50s. We grew up -- at one point my dad -- as Tanglewood started -- we went up to -- my dad found some work up there. Bernstein was working up there. And we took a drive to Sturbridge (ph).

OLSHER: What kind of work did he do?

WOLF: He sang. He was a Vaudevillian. He sang. He did light opera. He left home when he was 14 to join the Shubert Theatre (ph). He was with the Shuberts when they had their own trains, and he was the chorus boy, they called it at that time, in performances and productions like "The Student Prince" and "Merry Widow."

OLSHER: So you go up there to Tanglewood which is known -- which is in the town of Stockbridge which is known not only for Tanglewood but also as the home of a very famous American painter.

WOLF: Right. And it was Stockbridge. That's right. And my dad would drive into some small little town, it was outside of Lenox, I remember, and he parks the car and says he has to do some shopping but he wanted to take me up to someone to visit.

And we went up the stairs -- the steps -- and there was this gentleman. We knocked on the door and he had this art studio. And my father said, you know, my son loves to draw and paint and would you mind -- I have some errands to do -- would you mind if he sat here and watched you work?

And the gentleman said, no, it would be fine. What's your name? I said, Peter. And he said, well, I have a son named Peter just your age too, and he loves to draw and paint and blah, blah, blah. And he gave me a sheet of paper and he was painting away.

This happened quite a few times, my dad would drop me off and I would stay in this man's studio and talk to him and ask him certain things. And it turned out to be Norman Rockwell, and I, obviously -- I was four or five, I had no idea who he was. Just that he was a very sweet man and really took an interest and he was very engaging. So, I have my dad to thank for that.

OLSHER: And then you went on to study painting in Boston.

WOLF: I studied painting. Well, I studied -- I went to the High School of Music and Art which was a very tough academic school. It was one of -- there were three or four of what they called "specialized high schools" in New York in the public systems. One was the Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant which was another science school. And the High School of Music and Art.

And that's when I first ran into someone that were called these "cool cats," who would go on down to the Village and we were all like 14, 15. We were going to see these different jazz and bee-bop players and that's when I first caught up with Charlie Mingus and Thelonious Monk would play at the Five Spot and they would switch off different weeks.

And I got to see them, and they, sort of, kind of, blew my mind. It was about this point, about 14 or 15, I moved out of my house in the Bronx and I and two friends took over one of their fathers studios in Manhattan. And I lived there and finished up high school.

OLSHER: You finished high school. You go to Boston to the Boston Museum.

WOLF: No, I didn't actually finished high school. I never graduated. I failed gym a couple of times and I thought maybe going to summer school for gym just wasn't worth it. It wasn't, kind of, seen in my cue cards so I ended up doing what a lot of ladies and gents of my age did, which was sort of hitch hike around America through seek and find adventure and sanctuary throughout -- there would always seem to be this great romantic sense that there was some wonderment out there in the hinterlands.

And I ended up going towards the Midwest. Friends of mine were in Chicago and Wisconsin -- there were these great folks societies. And people like Ray Glover and Dylan and the Greenbrier Boys, and the University of Wisconsin was the foundation for a lot of great folk music, and I stayed out there for a while.

And then I ended up at the University of Chicago as an art student, but I never -- people thought I was enrolled in the school and I was just using their art classes. I never really was a student. And I was sleeping in the dorms.

OLSHER: So you posed as student so you could use the facilities.

WOLF: Right.

OLSHER: Yeah. Yeah.

WOLF: And I did that in many places. The great place was in Brandeis. I showed up so frequently that they ended up giving me the keys and made me the monitor of the art building.

LAUGHTER

OLSHER: This is very much like Forrest Gump. Peter Wolf's new album is "Fool's Parade." He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Dean Olsher, and this is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

OLSHER: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dean Olsher.

We're talking today with singer and songwriter Peter Wolf who, after 17 years with the J. Geils Band, started a solo career in the mid-1980s. His new CD is called "Fool's Parade." It's the culmination of a most interesting life.

Throughout the 1960s and '70s he was in the middle of a music and art scene that included Van Morrison, David Lynch, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf -- no relation -- and Faye Dunaway to whom he was married for several years. It was a very busy life.

WOLF: I think what has a great play in here is I'm inflicted with this disease called insomnia. And so that is what sort of has, I think, played a great part in my adventures or nocturnal ramblings or my wanderlust. And, you know, there's something really wonderful that happens at 1:30 , 2:00 in the morning. You know, between those hours and dawn that, for me, is very special.

I don't know, it's sort of like what people think goes on when there's a full moon. There's a sort of chemical change that happens to me and I can listen to music better. I enjoy walking out better. Cigarettes seem to taste better.

OLSHER: When your name is Wolf, I guess it makes sense.

WOLF: There you go.

OLSHER: Yeah. When you were in Boston -- at that time you were living with David Lynch, the filmmaker. He was your roommate.

WOLF: Yes, he was.

OLSHER: This was long before he went on to make "Blue Velvet." And he kicked you out, right?

WOLF: Well, we had a problem with -- it was a very small apartment. We were living in a bunk bed. I didn't have any money. I was always kind of late with the rent which drove David crazy, and he and I had -- we were the complete antithesis as far as music tastes and painting.

He was into high abstract expressionism, and I was very, sort of, engulfed with the school of the German expressionists, and I was studying Bechmann (ph) and Kushner and George Gross who were some of my favorite honors -- still are.

And we would have these passionate arguments about these theories and then when music had to play, he loved a lot of the more kind of contemporary standard stuff that was happening at the time. And I was putting on these, you know, crazy things, you know, Thelonious Monk and Blind Reverend Gary Davis.

And he just thought I was just a little bit too crazy because he'd be trying to get to sleep at one o'clock and I was just revving up. And I think we were just so confined in a small little -- it was just this one little tiny room, sort of like a little prison cell. One day he said, man, you're just too crazy. And you owe me all this money. I think it would be best if you move out.

And I was sort of heartbroken and I didn't know where to stay, and I was searching around for a place to stay. And many, many, many, many years later David had gone on and he was making movies and doing -- building up quite a reputation for himself, and I was doing a video for this song called "Come As You Are," and it was done on the set of Universal.

And it was a video that was based on a previous choreographed -- I think Berkeley did it and it was where -- you started -- the main character in the scene just starts jumping through this entire little small town. And he's continually jumping and it required many, many, many hours of just jumping which is very hard to do. I didn't realize it until we started shooting this thing.

And the director of photography was Fred Elmes, I believe his name was, who shot all of "Eraserhead" for David and "Blue Velvet." He mentioned he was going to have dinner with David and I hadn't seen David in a couple of decades. So I wrote him a little note and I got him this book I thought he might like, "City of Nets" by Otto Frederick, which was a great book about the decline of the Hollywood movie system.

And David wrote back this little note saying, hey, great to hear from you, you know, congratulations on everything, blah, blah, blah. P.S. by the way, you still owe me $38 for rent.

LAUGHTER

OLSHER: It's got to be a little bit of a jolt to hear from the maker of "Eraserhead" that you're too crazy. You know what I mean?

WOLF: Well, I kind of took it as a compliment.

LAUGHTER

OLSHER: Now, when you were in Boston then, in those days, you became a radio DJ.

WOLF: Yes, I became the "Wolf of Goofamommatwofa." (ph) The all night radio show. "Welcoming the lilies, and the night kids from Alabama, and all the ships at sea. Do tune in. Get right through. Got to come out. Give us a call. Don't you stall. Gonna have some fun until the midnight sun. This is Wolf of Goofamommatwofa."

And I would play things like, you know, Van Morrison and Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan and Hank Williams and Jackie Wilson and Screaming Jay Hawkins and Thelonious Monk and the Velvet Underground. It was just, you know, it was a ball.

OLSHER: Back in the days when radio was not run by consultants and focus groups.

WOLF: Exactly. The DJ was the program director. I was actually the program director and the music director, because how that station came about was a funny story. The fellow that put it together was living on the floor of my apartment. It's a kind of long episodic story, but he asked me to -- he asked me if I wanted to do a show, and so I did that.

I did it for a year or two and at that point the J. Geils Band was just starting up, and eventually it just became difficult to kind of keep two things going as the Geils Band started to travel. But I loved it because, you know, I took phone calls and it was a real link with that strange nocturnal world.

And when musicians would come into town, you know, I think back at the people I interviewed and I want to take a gun to my head when I think I didn't let the tape roll. Because I had interviewed Van Morrison, and Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker, Carla Thomas, Howlin' Wolf, Mose Allison, Freddie Hubbard, Led Zeppelin in their first -- when they first came in. Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, and I just can't think of all the people that came through there.

And, you know, they'd just drop by the station and we'd just talk and play records and, you know, ask them to pick records -- Bobby Blue Bland. It was pretty amazing.

OLSHER: And you did this all in this persona that you had.

WOLF: Well, I did it as the Wolf of Goofamommatwofa because, I guess, I've always considered myself a painter. So as I started getting into music there was this other personality that came out. And then as I got into radio I also based it on many of the great disc jockeys that I grew up with in New York.

And that's another thing that gets lost a lot as people write about the history of rock and roll. The incredible importance of radio. And by that I mean these great artists that were DJs. The DJs were supreme. They were these incredible characters. These incredible personalities.

They were so seductive and they captivated you day -- hour after hour -- and they had impeccable taste and they played great music and they all had these great gimmicks and characters. I remember growing up we had this big huge radio because this was before transistors, and I'd listen to Alan Freed during the early evening and then I would listen to Jocko's Rocket Ship Machine (ph). It was Jocko Henderson (ph).

You know, it was "Oo-bop-pa-do. How do you do? Time right now is 11:15 and you're listening to Jocko and his Rocket Machine. Za-bop-ba-day. Zo-bo-po-do."

And he'd go on like that throughout the night and rhyme, and, you know, play great music. And, you know, "We're blasting off 10, 9, 8, 7, this is gonna to send you up to heaven. Here they are, The Cadillacs with `Speedo.'"

And after him was the Magnificent Montague. And he had songs for lovers. And this was about midnight. And my sister, of course, was, Peter, turn that radio down. I had the radio under the covers, and he'd go, "Ladies, if your man is giving you the blues I want you to put that radio right down you know where, and let the Magnificent satisfy you."

And after he went off the air I would turn the dial and Symphony Sid would be live from Birdland and he'd be playing, you know, this incredible, you know, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and Horace Silver, and Bobby Timmons.

And, you know, I was just soaking up all this great music. And he would interview all these different people, and it would be live from Birdland. And Pee Wee Marquette, who was the young announcer, you know, "Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to Birdland. Right now, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Jazz capital of the world."

And these great disc jockeys supplied this incredible amount of knowledge, and inspired thousands and thousands of young kids. You know, we would go off the next day -- go off and run to record stores. And I think that's what Peter was talking about in the liner notes, is that we were very passionate and I guess some of us still are.

I consider myself a fan. I go see a lot of new bands all the time and I really respect those who that have sort of link, you know, new bands that seem to be carrying on. And to me it's very promising. Though I think the state of radio is a disastrous state. It's -- the radio I'm talking about doesn't really exist anymore.

OLSHER: My guest is singer-songwriter Peter Wolf. We'll be back after a short break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

OLSHER: I'm speaking with Peter Wolf about his career in music and in radio. In the 1970s he was a late-night DJ on WBCN in Boston.

So you come up at this very special time where you're on the radio -- you're not only a fan but you get to do this thing on the radio where you are making available to listeners this incredible variety of music that you're interested in. And you do it in a persona that is not your own, and I wonder though if that's something that you carry on as a songwriter. And I'm thinking in particular of a song like "Ride Lonesome, Ride Hard." In fact, lets just listen to a little bit of this song.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- MUSICIAN-SINGER PETER WOLF PERFORMING "RIDE LONESOME, RIDE HARD")

I used to treat the world
Like it was made for me
I took the love I found
Like it was all for free

I'm here to tell you
There's a price to pay
On the lost highway
Ride lonesome ride hard

Ride lonesome ride home
You'll meet someone you love
So bad you want to die
So you open up your heart

Oh she'll bleed you dry
Only one way
Will be left for you
Rock bottom and blue

Ride lonesome ride hard
Ride lonesome ride hard

OLSHER: Now, when you write something like this are you thinking, as a character -- a narrator, say, in a story -- or are we hearing you speaking in your own voice?

WOLF: Well, "Ride Lonesome, Ride Hard" was -- it was a title I had with me for awhile. And there was this, sort of, road that just represented some sort of wandering and some sort of, you know, when you're working as a musician on the road there's this kind of, you know, you get into this activity that's unlike anything else because you travel from one city to another, and move in at night, you go from sound check to performance to hotel.

And with the J. Geils Band we were together for 17 and a half years with the same personnel, and we traveled endlessly. We, you know, went from doing little stops down South and playing, you know, Fayetteville, North Carolina and Greensboro the next night. You know, not realizing it, but year after year after year after year we were just emulating a lot of the great artists that came before us. Unconsciously. Just by the act of surviving.

And "Ride Lonesome" really wasn't a character. It was me because, you know, it's sort of this -- the things that you have to leave behind when you're out on the road. "This could be you and me crying on the avenue with nothing but our loneliness. And crimes that we cannot confess and you got to ride lonesome, ride hard."

Because at the end of the day, in those wee hours -- not to sound corny -- but you're there, you know, me, myself, and I. And that's kind of what that song is about. There's a certain bravado, I think, that you might be talking about as a performer as with the Geils Band that I took on, and it was a certain kind of thing that I tried to emulate from many other great soul and R&B shows.

Things like in a Geils song, must have got lost where, "Peter let down your long hair (unintelligible)." And then introducing a song came out of that whole tradition that I learned at the Apollo.

OLSHER: You spent 17 years with the J. Geils Band and you have said openly that you were thrown out in 1983. Creative differences is a euphemism that comes up a lot in these kinds of situations, and it came up here with you. And I wonder what happened?

WOLF: Well, it was creative differences. It really wasn't about money or this. And I think when we made a record that finally got into the top of the charts, shall we say, that's when all of these difficulties really started emerging.

OLSHER: You used the phrase once, "group psychosis."

WOLF: Yeah. The decision of how we should move forward, what should the next approach be? It got difficult. And it caused a sort of fracture that started as a small thing and just started growing and became very cancerous, and ended up where the majority of the band thought it would be best maybe they'd go their way and I would do best to go my way.

And I remember, not to do any disservice to the Geils Band, but I remember at one point going to the movie "Spinal Tap" and sitting in the theater and everybody is laughing. And I'm, sort of, in the back of the theater totally sullen because this wasn't a joke. This was a documentary.

OLSHER: Ouch.

WOLF: It wasn't about Stonehenges and small Stonehenges. It wasn't that trivial. But many of the passions and the dramas that happen in a band were captured so brilliantly by Rob Reiner. And they became very paralytic. And, for me, it's unfortunate because no one really wins.

Because a great band may come along so rarely, and I really think the Geils Band was a great band. We were like the Brooklyn Bums, you know, the Brooklyn Dodgers. We sort of -- we were like this bar band. We came out, we fought against all odds, our musicianship -- we just had this great passion and I think what audiences responded to was that they could tell we were giving every ounce of credibility we could muster up. And if we were exhausted we'd still -- I mean, I'm very proud to say in 17 and a half years there might be only one show that I felt we didn't give our entire all.

You know, we'd just build up our audiences year after year after year after year; we just pounded away. And I'm proud of that. I look back at it, and I think of it with a great fondness. And this, also, it's a bittersweet kind of thing. It was a part of my life for an awful long time.

OLSHER: Peter Wolf, thank you very much.

WOLF: Well, thank you.

OLSHER: Singer and songwriter Peter Wolf.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

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Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC
Guest: Peter Wolf
High: Musician and singer Peter Wolf. He's the former lead singer with the J. Geils Band which he was with for 17 years. He's been a solo artist for a while. On his latest CD, "Fool's Parade," he's incorporated the Memphis sound.
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Culture; Lifestyle; Profile; Peter Wolf

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Peter Wolf

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 06, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010602NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Maureen Corrigan
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

DEAN OLSHER, HOST: Pamela Neville-Sington's biography of Fanny Trollope subtitled, "The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman," was published in Great Britain in 1997. It was picked as one of the best books of that year by the "Sunday Times of London" and "The Guardian."

Its just been published in this country and book critic Maureen Corrigan is glad Fanny's story has finally arrived.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BOOK CRITIC: A biography of a Anthony Trollope's mother? I wouldn't blame you if were to think that we're certainly scraping the bottom of the literary discard bin this week. But hold that cynicism. After reading Pamela Neville-Sington's new biography, I'm persuaded that Fanny Trollope is indeed a forgotten treasure.

An early Victorian domestic writing dynamo who combined the housewife wit of an Erma Bombeck with the crusading zeal of a Harriet Beecher Stowe. At the height of her fame, Fanny was the talk of Europe and America, and intimidated by a young rival named Charles Dickens.

But in 1887, 12 years after her death, Fanny's resentful, fellow novelist son Anthony slandered his mother's talents in his autobiography. And her books have pretty much been out of print ever since. I'd be surprised if Neville-Sington's absorbing biography didn't usher in some sort of Fanny Trollope revival.

She's a natural. A ready made postmenopausal feminist icon. A woman who didn't begin writing until the age of 53. And then proceeded to churn out, on average, two books a year. The sales of which supported her husband and five children, including that snake Anthony.

And judging from the excerpts of her 41 books that Neville-Sington cites throughout this biography, Fanny could really write too. Before my newfound Fanny fervor gets out of hand I've got to point out one drawback to her story, and consequently to the early chapters of Neville-Sington's biography.

Because Fanny was a late bloomer, the first 40 or so years of her life were somewhat humdrum. Born in 1788 into a Rector's family, the intellectual Fanny languished on the marriage market until the overripe age of 30 when she married Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister.

The marriage began as a love match, but Thomas' temperament was soured by constant migraines and financial setbacks. Fanny, meanwhile, had become friends with a charismatic female radical thinker named Frances Wright. Motivated by idealism and by a desire to escape Thomas' company, the then 48-year-old Fanny herded her three youngest children onto a ship and sailed off to America to a utopian community that Frances Wright had founded in Tennessee.

This is the point at which Fanny's story really begins to pick up. Wright's utopian committee turned out to be a hell hole, so the disillusioned Fanny whisked her children off to Cincinnati where she built a proto-Disney style, combination department store and theater. It went bust.

By the time Fanny returned to England nearly four years later, the Trollope's were destitute. That's when Fanny put her nose to the grindstone and wrote her first book. A travel log called "The Domestic Manners of the Americans."

Neville-Sington's says Fanny's book was a success because it uniquely viewed America from the bottom-up. Fanny focused on the situation of ordinary people: slaves and women. Here, for instance, is her rye description of a day in the life of a well off woman in Philadelphia who eagerly awaits her husband's nightly return to relieve her own socially imposed tedium.

"He comes home, shakes hands with her, spits and dines. The conversation is not much and 10 minutes suffices for the dinner. He goes off to his club and so ends her day."

Fanny wrote more travel logs, a Gothic novel, comic novels, social reform novels and what Neville-Sington says was the first serialized sequel ever to be published. Fanny got up every morning at four to work and wrote through the lingering depths of her husband, three of her adult children and four grandchildren.

She finally died in 1863 at the age of 84. Anthony may have been the more gifted novelist, but as Neville-Sington says, he lifted some of his signature plots and characters from his mother's work. Long before Harold Bloom coined the term "anxiety of influence," to refer to the fear of male writers that they'll never surpass the work of their literary forefathers, Anthony Trollope was trying to banish the specter of his formidable mother.

For over a hundred years he succeeded, but Neville-Sington's illuminating biography heralds the return of the repressed.

OLSHER: Maureen Corrigan teaches Literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman" by Pamela Neville-Sington.

I'm Dean Olsher.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC
Guest: Maureen Corrigan
High: Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman," a biography of the mother of novelist Anthony Trollope.
Spec: Entertainment; Lifestyle; Culture; Media; Fanny Trollope; Anthony Trollope; Maureen Corrigan

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Maureen Corrigan
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.