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

by Peter Wolf Narrated by Peter Wolf

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A collection of anecdotes spanning the career of Peter Wolf and his storied run-ins with an eclectic cast of characters. It's a veritable meet-and-greet of superstardom.

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.”

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

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.”—Bob Dylan

"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."—Bruce Springsteen

“This is the book I’ve been hoping Peter would write since we walked the streets of Paris together, back in the 20th Century. A true account of his life, love and music told with unique humor and rare humility.”—Elvis Costello

"Nobody, and I mean nobody, has had more close encounters with interesting people than Pete. As if being in one of the most exciting rock ‘n’ roll bands in history wasn’t enough? Who else gets driven home by Peter Sellers? Has Muddy Waters sleep on his floor? Has Alfred Hitchcock trying to get him drunk? Has Bob Dylan give him his pants? And commiserates on the subject of love with Tennessee Williams? You want to read this book."—Steven Van Zandt

“Peter is a terrific writer. It’s great to get his unique take being around some of the most fascinating music and cultural figures of our time.  I especially love his recounting his time with Muddy Waters, John Lee and Van Morrison. Captures them as only an insider with soul could. Love his book as much as I love his music…Couldn’t put it down!”—Bonnie Raitt

“Waiting on the Moon is the page-turner of the decade.  It’s as if my three favorite memoirs—The Kid Stays in the Picture, Running With Scissors, and Permanent Midnight—all got together and made a big, healthy, hilariously fucked-up kid who somehow managed to outdo them all.”—Peter Farrelly, Academy Award winning director and writer

"Waiting on the Moon is a five-star memoir, and Peter Wolf is a solid gold storyteller. His eye for detail is exquisite, I felt like I was living these stories alongside him. A rarity in a rock star memoir, Wolf does not center himself, he lets the players in his extraordinary life take centerstage and shine. I loved every single minute."—Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of None of This Is True

“Elegant, eloquent vignettes from a star-studded life . . . Recollections of a rock ’n’ roll life, charmingly related.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Wolf has written the kind of memoir you wish everyone who was ever tempted to write one would—keeping only the great stories and leaving out all the dull stuff in between. These memorable vignettes are really prose poems…This is a beautifully written, funny, very wise, and very moving true-life advent."—Lloyd Schwartz, poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic

"Indelible, surreal, intimate encounters...with a murderers’ row of complicated geniuses...in the best possible way."—The New Yorker

"It's a music memoir like no other. . . every chapter has wild revelations and head-spinning tales, told with a painter's eye, a poet's wit, and a rock & roll sage's heart. . . You don't even have to know his music to connect with Waiting on the Moon, because Wolf is a born storyteller, whether onstage or on the page."—Rolling Stone

"Remarkable. . . Wolf's often hilarious descriptions of his adventures. . . make Waiting on the Moon a riveting read."—American Songwriter

“A powerful meditation…unforgettable, often moving stories…Wolf reminds us why we love music in the first place.”

—Salon

“Breezy, boozy and illuminating.”—Wall Street Journal

“Fascinating and good-humored.”—Billboard

"Regales readers not only with tales from the rock ‘n’ roll trenches, but also encounters with Alfred Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams, Julia Child, and Martin Scorsese, to name a few."
 —Boston Globe

“He’s a storyteller with a heaping helping of fame himself…he’s also got an eye for detail and nuance.”
 —The Forward

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

"A fascinating new book...the end result makes a powerful point: sometimes the story of who we are can best be told by the things we love."—The Guardian

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2024-12-13
Elegant, eloquent vignettes from a star-studded life.

“David [Lee Roth] and I were lead singers, each to varying degrees demanding, difficult, obsessive, paranoid, neurotic, and competitive. Ironically, both he and I would end up being kicked out of our bands, but for very different reasons.” A kid from the Bronx whose dad was also a talented vocalist, Wolf is best known as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1983, but he also had a solo career and studied painting in Boston before he was a musician. He was married to actress Faye Dunaway during the peak of her career; among many interesting photos is a poolside shot titledThe Morning After: the two of them with her Oscar, scattered newspapers, and a copy ofLove in the Ruins by Walker Percy. The chapters focus on a wide variety of cultural figures with whom Wolf has crossed paths: musical greats from Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker to Van Morrison and Mick Jagger, but also Eleanor Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Lowell, Julia Child, Tennessee Williams, and more. Describing Bob Dylan playing “A Hard Rain a-Gonna Fall” for the first time in a nearly empty New York club: “In one seismic moment, he had brought us into new and unexplored terrain, just as Picasso helped radically reshape the landscape of modern painting withLes Demoiselles d’Avignon.” On setting up a recording session with Merle Haggard: “I could not have prepared a bank heist with greater attention to detail.” During an anxiety-filled afternoon audience with Hitchcock at his home, hoping for a soundtrack commission, the master repeatedly offers his guest something to drink. Sensing “that this was his way of checking to see if I was one of those hard-drinking, drugged-out, unreliable rock-and-rollers,” Wolf sticks to tea. Nothing comes of the meeting. Only years later does he learn that Hitchcock’s wife “strictly frowned upon his drinking alone at home in the afternoon. However, he could indulge if he was with a guest.”

Recollections of a rock ’n’ roll life, charmingly related.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192186916
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	03/11/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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