Music

Wolf talked about painting, his upcoming record, a possible next book, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — and his honorary degree from MassArt.

Some 60-plus years ago, a Bronx kid named Peter Blankfield decided he didn’t need a high school degree. At his graduation ceremony, in lieu of a diploma, he was handed a manila envelope and told to attend summer school.  

“I had once endured this torment and swore to myself that I’d never go through it again,” Peter Wolf wrote in his 2025 memoir, “Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses.”

Instead, he found a part-time job. After he saw Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination on TV, he started painting with a “fervor,” and eventually, began a college-hopping odyssey around the country, “pretending to be enrolled as an art student.”

“I sought out old high school friends who attended the colleges, slept on their dorm-room floors, ate in the student cafeterias, and, most important, attended the art classes and gained access to the schools’ art supplies,” he wrote.

The “real bonanza, Brandeis University in Massachusetts … had recently built a new art center, and I showed up so frequently… that the visiting instructor put me in charge of the keys to the painting studios and the fully stocked supply cabinets.”

He hopped some more. Chicago. Rhode Island. 

Eventually, “just for the hell of it, [I] applied to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. I borrowed the $18 application fee, lied, and said I was a high school graduate.”

He got in. 

He arrived in Boston in the mid-60s with just enough money for one night at the YMCA. The second night, he slept on the banks of the Charles River. The third night, he met fellow student David Lynch. 

Wolf and the soon-to-be “Twin Peaks” director shared a one-room apartment on Hemenway Street. Wolf eventually left college to form and front the now-legendary J. Geils Band. 

Now, 60-some years later, Wolf finally has a real diploma. 

He was awarded an honorary doctorate this week from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), which held its commencement Thursday at Leader Bank Pavilion.

“I still can’t quite believe it. Drifting from college to college to pretend I was an art student, and now getting a doctorate from an art college, is pretty ironic,” Wolf told me in a phone interview this week from his home outside Boston. “It’s an honor.”

“Waiting on the Moon” contains so many colorful stories: It’s a memoir that doesn’t want to be. An all-killer-no-filler collection of wild tales, with Wolf as the Forrest Gump figure, both bearing witness and taking part in the action. 

There was that time he stole Bob Dylan’s wine. Smoked hash with Peter Sellers. Ate lamb chops with poet Robert Lowell. Drank his first Irish Guinness with Mick Jagger. He married Faye Dunaway. Marilyn Monroe once handed him M&Ms.

In fact, that Brandeis section? It ends with him drinking on the campus lawn, hearing a guitar, following it to its source, and meeting soon-to-be Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau. Because of course it does. 

With a diploma finally in his hand, Dr. Wolf isn’t slowing down. His plans include a new album and possibly another book or two. Ahead, he details how that diploma feels, old Boston days, painting, and more.

So I love that this has all come full circle. How did you find out you were getting a MassArt degree?

I got a call from a representative of the school saying, “We’d be honored if you’d accept a doctorate from MassArt if you’d be able to attend our commencement.” I responded, “I’m honored to be asked.” Being a painter all my life, it came as quite an honor and surprise.

You told me you always wanted to be a painter. 

Definitely. Growing up I was dyslexic, people didn’t know what it was. Drawing and painting became an outlet for me. My father was a very good artist, and I think that influenced me. 

After college-hopping, you ended up at the Museum School. 

Yes, that’s where David Lynch and I were roommates. He left school to go into film; I left school to go into music. But we both continued to paint. David had many shows of his paintings in New York and LA. And I basically just paint, paint, paint.

Music came by accident?

Music came by accident at a party in a loft of art students in Brookline Village. A couple of them had a band, and they were playing in the corner. They couldn’t remember the words of a song — I remembered them. We were all drinking jug wine, and I got up to the microphone, just started singing. That was it: The start of my musical career.

My first band — we were all art students — was The Hallucinations. Our first actual date was backing up bluesman John Lee Hooker and the great singing group, The Shirelles. We played a lot with the Velvet Underground.

Wow. And how did you go from that band to J. Geils?

Well, some of the art students wanted to get back to just painting. We were starting to get so busy that music was becoming more predominant. It became 24/7 — there were so many colleges in New England. They’d hire out bands for their parties and entertainment. Between just Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine schools, we’d constantly be working. And clubs — there were so many clubs in Boston back in those days that have disappeared.

I can’t believe J. Geils isn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Well, people say that.

[laughs]

We were nominated five times, I guess that’s something. But no, never been inducted. It’s funny because the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame called me, and I inducted Jackie Wilson; I inducted the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; I inducted Jesse Stone. But we never made it.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. 

The bride waiting at the altar. Or the groom still waiting at the altar, I guess. [laughs]

[laughs] There you go. Get that Dylan reference in. And it’s interesting, he’s another musician that paints.

And welds.

Pretty well, too.

I guess it’s another way of kind of keeping the creative energies going, one feeds the other. It’s funny how many musicians came out of art — David Bowie, David Byrne, John Lennon, Keith Richards. There’s so many musicians that you know started off first studying painting and then got into music.

It seems like the same creative energy pumping from the same artery, but using different muscles.

True. Like certain filmmakers love to write the screenplays, and then shoot the movie. Two different entities, still both creative endeavors.

You told me once that you paint to relax. Do you have a studio? What inspires you? 

I have a studio, and on the wall I tack up paintings that I find inspirational from other artists. The school of painting that I’m most influenced by would be the German Expressionists, the painters in Germany before and after the First World War. Many fled Germany as Hitler came to power, and they were a group that had a really unique approach to color. Very emotional paintings.

That’s the school that I’m most endeared to, and there’s a great collection of German expressionist painters at the Harvard Museum. Another thing I might note for your readers: the Harvard Museum is free.

Good to know. And in your book, you had a few stories involving painters. You mention Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol. You’re like a Forrest Gump figure.

“I think of it as a collection of short stories that happened to be my life, but more about the people I was so privileged to get to meet. Many were painters and artists, like Norman Rockwell, and Brice Marden. I helped Edwin Dickinson, who was a painter and part of BU. Many of the artists I studied with worked with some great artists, like, were assistants to Picasso and Matisse, so I got to be in rarefied air, shall we say.

Wow. 

There was a group called the Boston Expressionists, and I had several as teachers. Henry Schwartz was a pretty well-known painter. Hyman Bloom was another. So art was always — and still is — something that I keep a close watch on.

Has anyone approached you about a film adaptation? Each vignette in “Moon” could be a different episode.

Lauren, I appreciate that. There are cinematic aspects to it, I agree. But, no not as of yet. And there’s a lot I left out.

You left things out?

Oh, quite a lot.

Oh my God. You had so much in. Enough for another book?

Possibly. But I’m actually working on fiction right now. I’m enjoying it, but I’m not sure exactly where it’s going. I’ve read interviews with writers — some say they write an outline of the whole story, and some say they just come up with an interesting beginning, and don’t know where it’s going to lead. I’m the latter.

Right, there’s plotters and pantsers, like writing by the seat of their pants. So you’re a pantser.

Oh! I never heard that term. Well, I’m a pantser.

[laughs] Is there an overall idea? Is it historical fiction? Mystery? 

Right now it’s two people encountering each other, and it leads into something somewhat mysterious. They both try to figure each other out, it leads into one trying to discover as much as they can about the other, and vice versa.

This sounds interesting. How far into it are you?

Several chapters in. And one doesn’t know: Do you condense it and make it a short story? Keep going? Right now I’m just seeing where it leads. I’m enjoying that process.

So fiction — that’s another muscle. And the Midnight Travelers have been touring pretty extensively.

We just finished a run throughout New England and the Midwest about two weeks ago. We’ll probably start up in October. Maybe some dates in August. 

I’ve seen some fan drawings online. Seems like you guys have a cult following. 

Yeah, people come all the way from Maine to Detroit. There’s also a group called the Wolf Pack who come to every show and have their own T-shirts. It’s great to see them, and they’re always very respectful. So it’s: “Where’s the Wolf Pack?” And 20, 30 people raise their hands.

[laughs] I love that.

Yeah, that’s very meaningful. 

What else are you working on?

I’m finishing up a record, which is about 80 percent done. All the recording’s done, it’s just adding a couple of what we call “spices” to it. So that’s in the works. 

Wow, you’re really busy. So I love that you came here for college, and now could live anywhere you wanted, but you stay. What do you love about this area?

I hitchhiked all over, from college to college, and ended up here as a college drifter. There was something about it that kept me. It was school, then painting, then music. And Boston was so different from other cities. It had a unique identity of its own, the different neighborhoods — the North End and Beacon Hill and Southie. And Cambridge. It had a lot to offer. And I like the people. I guess at this point I’d consider myself a Bostonian. 

[laughs] I’d say so. MassArt degree feels so fitting. 

I still can’t quite believe it. It means a lot to me. It’ll be nice to be known as Dr. Peter Wolf.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Lauren Daley

Lauren Daley is a longtime culture journalist. As a regular contributor to Boston.com, she interviews A-list musicians, actors, authors and other major artists.

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