#Peter Wolf

[theballadofmickandkeith]

[musicmags]

[greensparty]

RIP David Lynch 1946-2025

This year only just begun but boy does this one hurt! Visionary of film, TV, art, and music David Lynch has died at 78. The news was announced via Lynch's Facebook page (is it is, in fact, not true - I'll be taking this down). Last year it was announced that he was homebound, but open to directing remotely.

Lynch in the red room

I discovered his work around 1990 when Twin Peaks became a national phenomenon and I discovered a lot of his other work. He was truly an artist in every sense of the word. He often felt that he said so much with his work that it was hard to talk about it in interviews afterwards as the film was the final statement. In 2015, I had a screening at PhilaMOCA near where he lived during his time in Philly and they had a mural of him outside.

Eraserhead mural outside PhilaMOCA in Philadelphia

In the mid-60s, Lynch actually did a year in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where his roommate was actually Pete Wolf, pre-J. Geils Band. Imagine the conversations the two of them must've had!?! He eventually made his way to art school in Philadelphia. To say that environment had an impact on his work would be an understatement. I have a copy of The Short Films of David Lynch compilation, which contains a lot of his early short films made between 1967 and 1974. Even then, he was developing a unique visual style. But he truly announced himself with his feature film debut 1977's Eraserhead. It became a huge cult film, playing midnight screenings for years to come. It also influenced musicians like The Pixies and Talking Heads. I picked up a bootleg circa 2000 that was dubbed from a Japanese laserdisc, so much of my viewing experience with it is with subtitles. I lent that to a number of friends in college too. Now it is available from Criterion, but at the time, it was quite a find to score a copy and not have to go to Harvard Square at midnight to see it. I can’t even say I fully get or understand this film, but one thing is clear: you can’t turn away from it!

Isabella Rossellini being directed by Lynch on Blue Velvet

In the 80s, he got bigger canvases and directed Elephant Man and the adaptation of Dune. The later tends to get a bad wrap because of the amount he had to pack into one movie, whereas Denis Vileneuve had the luxury of splitting it into two movies. But credit where it's due, Lynch tried to make a three hour film and the studio cut it down, but the final film had its moments. Around this time, Lynch was actually offered the chance to direct Return of the Jedi and declined. Can you imagine that? But in 1986, his magnum opus was Blue Velvet released. It is almost like a greatest hits of Lynch elements: film noir, femme fatale, surrealism, gruesome imagery set against pleasant imagery, and excellent use of music. It’s a combination of a great story and screenplay combined with Lynch’s trademark bizarre style (”want to see the chicken walk?”). But the entire cast is pitch perfect and Lynch pushed the envelope further than 99% of most directors in the 80s. This is one of my 15 favorite films of all time. In 2021, I returned to movie theaters for the first time in over a year and I saw Blue Velvet at Coolidge Corner Theatre. A very special occasion with a very special movie!

me at the Twin Peaks’ red room set at the 2019 Rock and Shock. 

Lynch collaborated with Mark Frost to create TV's Twin Peaks (ABC 1990-1991), one of the greatest and edgiest network TV shows ever.  The constant theme in Blue Velvet of there being more than meets the eye in the seemingly perfect suburban community is something he expanded on with Twin Peaks. The series became a cultural phenomenon. Everyone wanted to know “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” in 1990. I, myself, did not actually start watching the series until the fall, and then I caught up on all the episodes I missed and I was hooked. I remember reading the books they came out with like the Laura Palmer Diaries. The series came to a bizarre end in June 1991. After the series ended, Lynch did a prequel movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Fans of the series were frustrated that this prequel, about the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life, didn’t tie up any loose ends. It more or less was a movie made up the pieces that came into play from the series and from the book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. But that doesn’t mean it was bad, by any means. A lot of fans either didn’t get it or didn’t care now that they knew who the killer Bob was from the series. I dug it. It had all of Lynch’s trademark surrealism and a great performance from Sheryl Lee. In 2017, Lynch and much of the cast reunited for the Showtime limited series Twin Peaks. The series got even weirder and more bizarre when it went to cable. I named it one of my Top 10 TV Shows of the 2010s.

Bill Pullman and Lynch on Lost Highway

He brought his style to the 1990 road movie Wild at Heart, which was awesome! In 1997, he returned to film noir with Lost Highway. When this was released, I was recuperating from illness and when I felt well enough I went into NYC and saw this at the Chelsea Cinema. The story of this seemingly normal couple played by Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette whose lives are shaken when a mysterious VHS tape of their house shows up one day. Things get weirder when a mystery man played by Robert Blake (with no eyebrows I might add) approaches Pullman at a party and says he is at their house right now. From there it delves knee-deep into Lynchian surrealism and modern film noir. It features a killer score from Trent Reznor too. It is definitely out there and not for everyone. But the more people I talk to over the years have hailed this as one of Lynch’s best. Then Lynch did a complete left turn with The Straight Story, a G-rated simple film about a man traveling across country on a tractor. A beautiful film that's unlike any others of his.

Naomi Watts and Lynch on Mulholland Drive

In the 00s, Lynch turned his attention to the dark side of Hollywood with another noir Mulholland Drive. Even more than the movie itself, I recall seeing it at the movies with a friend and his friend and afterwards us talking over drinks trying to make sense of what we just saw. Great movie, but tons of Lynch WTFery! Today, it is hailed as one of the greatest of this century. In 2006, he continued the themes of Hollywood's dark side with the underrated Inland Empire. He also broke the internet with his daily weather reports, where he read the day's weather in his unique voice.

Lynch as John Ford in The Fabelmans

Lynch's acting also deserves a mention. He did small parts in his own films, notably as FBI Chief Gordon Cole on Twin Peaks. In 2017, I interviewed John Carroll Lynch (no relation) about casting David Lynch in his directorial film Lucky and he said "It was entirely his love of Harry Dean Stanton." He also stole the entire film in Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, where Lynch played director John Ford. That John Ford scene is one of the greatest movie scenes with a filmmaker ever and Lynch brought it!

There have been a number of documentaries exploring the various interpretations and theories of Lynch's work including Blue Velvet Revisited and Lynch/Oz.

Lynch cover stories in EW and Rolling Stone

For me, he was one of the first directors that influenced me. As a teen, I gleaned over books, articles and interviews about him. It was one of the first times, I noticed that a director was on the cover of magazines, not just the cast. But more than that, it was his body of work. There was pure WTFery in his movies and it seemed like there was no story and it was a bunch of crazy stuff, but his movies were very well constructed, they were just structured in such a way to have some crazy out-there surrealism within those stories.

He was nominated for Oscars for directing Elephant Man (also nominated for writing), Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, but he only won an Honorary Award in 2020. Putting him in that club of directors like Hitchcock and Kubrick who also never won Oscars for directing. Lynch also recorded music (some were his own soundtracks) and his art work was exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world.

The obit from Variety can be read here!

[randomrichards]

STEVIE VAN ZANDT: DISCIPLE

The bandana man

Rose to fame with Bruce Springsteen

Becomes activist

[jedivoodoochile]

Keith Richards, Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen y Peter Wolf.

[musicman69love]

Nobody brought the house down like The J.Geils Band out of the Boston area. Hot rockin blues fronted by Peter Wolf and the legendary Magic Dick on the lickin stick (harmonica)  I saw em in 72 at the San Diego Sports area, still one of the best concerts I have ever seen.  J.Geils, the founder, died in 2017..

[nervoussystemmusicreverence]

Frank Zappa - Five-Five-Five

Artist

Frank Zappa

Composer

Frank Zappa

Produced

Frank Zappa

Credit

Frank Zappa - lead guitar Warren Cuccurullo - rhythm guitar Denny Walley - rhythm guitar Ike Willis - rhythm guitar Tommy Mars - keyboards Peter Wolf - keyboards Ed Mann - percussion Arthur Barrow - bass Vinnie Colaiuta - drums

Released

May 11 1981

Streaming

[krispyweiss]

Robert Fripp is Toyah Willcox’s Angel - and the “Centerfold”

Robert Fripp is Toyah Willcox’s angel.

And Willcox’s angel is the fake centerfold of the real Prog magazine and the real “Centerfold” of the fake King Crimson magazine.

Or something.

Safely ensconced in relatively progressive England, Fripp and Willcox are back with a “Sunday Lunch” episode that might get the former popped in Tennessee and the latter put in the pokey all across the Bible Belt.

And the pronouns - lordy, the pronouns.

Neither J. Giles nor Peter Wolf nor (thankfully) Bill Lee nor Ron DeSantis were in the kitchen as the First Couple of Farce returned from hiatus.

It’s really just too much.

3/26/23

[greensparty]

Remembering Edd Griles and Phil Lesh

Today we lost two entertainers. Here is my combined remembrance:

Remembering Edd Griles 1945-2024

Music video director Edd Griles has died at 78. He directed more than a few gems from the golden age of music videos, including Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", "Time After Time" and (my favorite) "She Bop", Huey Lewis and The News's "Heart of Rock and Roll", "If This is It" and "Stuck with You", Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time", Wrestling All-Stars' "Land of a Thousand Dances", and Peter Wolf's "Oo-ee-diddley-bop" and "Come as You Are", as well as videos by Rainbow, Lee Greenwood, and Sheena Easton among others. Those were some incredible videos I remember seeing on MTV and V66 circa 1984-87. He also produced the very first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984.

Griles on the left with Cyndi Lauper, his long-time collaborator

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

Remembering Phil Lesh 1940-2024

Musician Phil Lesh has died at 84. He was the founding bassist for The Grateful Dead and was in the band from the beginning in 1965 to their end in 1995. I was never a Dead Head, but credit where credit is due, the band had some good songs and built up a cult following that followed them everywhere. He also took part in the post-Grateful Dead iterations including The Other Ones and The Dead.

Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh in the 60s

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

[thecrystalcrux]

Best Songs Ever 811 - 820

Ten more songs for your listening pleasure.Ten more songs on my countdown of the best 1000 songs ever.Hope you’re ready! Here we go! Soul Asylum#820 – Somebody To Shove – 1992 – 2/2 Gary Moore#819 – Shapes Of Things To Come – 1984 – 4/5841 – Always Gonna Love You – 5/5 Baton Rouge#818 – Didn’t I – 1997 – 3/3 The Michael Schenker Group (MSG)#817 – Rock You To The Ground – 1982 – 12/13845 –…

[mitjalovse]

Patti Labelle's career surprises me in a way, cause I see her as a 70's musician. You see, she doesn't really sound like a musician for the 80's despite having some of her biggest hits then. Thus, she reminds me of many veteran musicians who did their most famous work in the period, yet she didn't feel like a sellout thanks to that achievement. One of her peers in that regard might be Michael McDonald and what do you know – the single from Winner In You found her duetting with him. Well, calling this piece a duet is a paradox, since both of them weren't together in a studio to do that, yet this oddly does fit the theme of the song. However, I do wish they would've done more together – should someone call them now for a collaborative LP?

[radiomaxmusic]

Thursday, March 7, 2024 1pm ET: Feature LP: Peter Wolf - Midnight Souvenirs (2010)

Midnight Souvenirs is the seventh solo album by Peter Wolf, released April 6, 2010. It won the award for Album of the Year at the 2010 Boston Music Awards, was No. 27 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 30 Best Albums of 2010. It peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200. The album has sold 42,000 copies in the United States as of March 2016. Eight of the album’s songs were co-written with Will Jennings.…

[doverstar]

there's such a massive history with doctor who and it hit me lately that the sensation of seeing that the companions and doctors you watched in real-time have become the past is a sensation every fan has felt for 60 years. at some point people missed jon pertwee and could remember watching him recently, even though tom baker was on tv as the doctor now and they liked him too. and nowadays we miss rose tyler and martha jones and amy pond and clara oswald and donna noble and tennant and smith and capaldi like those people missed baker when davison took the stage. like people missed ace and wondered if the show would ever come back, and then got excited and still felt it wasn't quite the same when eccleston was announced. like. it feels so recent, like just yesterday rose saw the tardis for the first time, but that was twenty years ago. feels like the doctor just made the speech in 'the rings of akhaten' and that was a decade ago. clara is gone, amy is gone. peter capaldi went from gray to white. and the show is going on and children will think of ncuti gatwa and millie gibson and huge white tardis corridors when they think of doctor who in the future. to them, david tennant is already what tom baker is to us. this story has a huge legacy. when you're watching doctor who, it ironically begins to feel like you're making history just by watching it.

[greensparty]

Talking with Jim Sullivan

In the Boston music scene, Jim Sullivan has been quite a tastemaker for decades. He began writing about music and pop culture for The Boston Globe in 1979 and remained there until 2005. He is still in touch with national and local music today, writing for WBUR's The ARTery. He has been a fly on the wall for so much great music and rubbing elbows with so many rockers over the years. Last year saw the release of his books Backstage & Beyond: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats and Rants Vol. 1 and 2, which were just released in paperback editions and in an E-book all-in-one version with some added chapters not featured in Vol. 1 or 2.

The books are a collection of encounters he has had with a number of musicians over the years notably David Bowie, Lou Reed, The Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Alice Cooper, The Clash, The Police, Talking Heads, and U2. There is also quite an emphasis on Boston rockers The J. Geils Band, The Cars, The Pixies, and of course Aerosmith!

I recently caught up with Mr. Sullivan via phone. We have been connected on social media for a while now and have a ton of mutual friends in common, but we hadn't actually talked until now. When I mentioned that I read his articles in the music section of the Globe as a teen, he said "So I have both influenced and damaged your life". Ha! That's one way of looking at it!

author Jim Sullivan

Me: What's cool about these books is that it's like a compendium of your "greatest hits" in a way.

JS: In a way it is. It sort of expanded and shifted perspective a bit, and certainly if I had talked to an artist over an expansive time, the stories kind of merged together. The other thing I did was put myself a little more in the story to set the scene and what the relationship with me and the other person might've been. And through the inside details that would not have shown up in a newspaper type story.

Me: These books are really a who's who of music history. But is there any musician who you never got to meet or interview that you always wanted to?

JS: I guess my standard answer to that is either Mick [Jagger] or Keith [Richards] back in the day. When the Rolling Stones were creating more new music. I guess they are now as well, so I guess they would be now as well. But when they talked it was with my partner at the Globe, Steve Morse, he kind of did the inside track on them. He would handle anything Stones-wise. Whereas I would handle mostly The Who, The Kinks, Bowie, Roxy Music - a pretty good list, so I wasn't that sorry that Steve took the Stones. But from a personal point of view, it would've been fun to do that.

Me: Let's talk about Aerosmith. I'm a lifelong fan, I've met them, and I've seen them live countless times. You have a chapter on guitarist Joe Perry. You have actually become friends with them, including bassist Tom Hamilton, who you golf with. What's it like to hang out with them, not to do an interview but just to hang out, golf and talk about life?

JS: One of the best hangs we had - Tom and Joe were both there - was at the Hollywood Vampires show in Boston last year. It's funny because I golfed with Alice [Cooper] during the day and then said "Hey, I'll see you tonight" and we had backstage passes (my wife and I) and we went back before the show. Joe was in the band, so he was there, and then Tom showed up and their wives too. It was kind of a family affair. It was nice, we had plenty of time to talk. It was fun, off the record, just talking to Joe and Tom about life itself. Also fun stepping back to watch Joe and Tom interact, which was really quite sweet. They've been together off and on, it's not a steady line (as you well know) from the beginning to now. But to see that that friendship still existed and that easy camaraderie they had there, it was great to just observe. Just realizing that these guys have been through a lot and at the end of the day they've remained friends and just enjoy each other's company. Nice to just kind of watch.

Tom joined our little golf gang a few years ago. He has been a fairly frequent participant. It's fun because Tom is good and bad like the rest of us. He does not come off in any rock star kind of way. He dresses in black, which I tend to as well. But there's no way anyone on the golf course would say "Hey, that's Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith". I mean if somebody does recognize him, he's fine with it, take a picture or something like that. For him it's a good escape, like it is for us. Reality doesn't exist for four or five hours. You get to hammer away at something you sometimes succeed at and often fail at. Tom, like the rest of us, smiles when he gets a good shot and curses like a sailor when he doesn't. [laughs] Joe is kind of interesting too. During the COVID-19 shutdown, we sort of formed a bit of a bond over the phone. I did stories on the shutdown, did stories on Aerosmith. There was one time in particular I remember where he rang up, out of the blue, said hey. And I said "Is this an interview" and he said no, but I asked if I wanted to tape it and anything good came out of it, you good with that? and he said "Oh yeah, sure". We talked for about 45 minutes or so. Good things came out of that. We've spent some good time together. It doesn't extend to dinner parties in his home, but it's certainly a good relationship both personal and professional.

book covers

Me: I was actually at that Hollywood Vampires show (see my concert pics here). In terms of these 2 volumes you released, could there be another volume with more interviews and stories?

JS: There could be. There's a few possibilities I've written down. We've talked about doing it, but we'll see.

Me: In your chapter about Peter Wolf, you asked him why he stayed in Boston after getting famous. I wanted to ask you a similar question: Did you ever think about leaving Boston and covering music in another city?

JS: Only slightly. I mean, you're aware of what's going on in other cities, pre-internet, getting tips from people living in other places. But I got in at the Globe pretty early when I was 22 as a freelancer. The Globe was a great paper and at that point and time especially and for quite a while when I was there, the Globe had a lot of space to fill and it was making money hand-over-fist, so they could afford to send me places even as a freelancer to L.A. or Minneapolis or Chicago, Detroit or wherever. So there was a lot of freedom to both travel and get stories and a lot that came in to Boston. Anything that came to New York, be it from England or anywhere else in the U.S., if they played New York they were going to play Boston. So even if New York was a hotter scene overall, Boston - I thought - was pretty damn close, so the overlapping bands was probably 98%. I felt I could cover as many of those groups as I wanted to here as any place. Also - the Globe was great. It was a very supportive environment and good editors. Long way of saying, I liked working in Boston and then, of course, friendships, etc. that I made over the years.

For info on Backstage and Beyond Vol. 1 and 2