![]() Love Stinks, the group’s eleventh album, has made more noise right out of the box than any other Geils LP in years, and ‘Come Back,” the album’s single, is making a quick rise up the chart. Geils Band finds itself right at home in the era of New Wave. We are volunteers.”Īnd so, by maintaining a generally steady commitment to tough, flashy, R&B-tinged rock, the J. We’ve committed ourselves to doin’ what we’re doin’- you know, three chords and unh! We are not prisoners of rock & roll. “I could have put on a three-piece suit and we could’ve gone disco, and maybe have been incredibly successful. “There were a lot of temptations to cash in,” Wolf admits. Whereas the Stones used their blues and R&B roots as a launching pad, Geils has remained stubbornly committed to its original idiom, resisting the commercial blandishments of discomania in the late Seventies as firmly as the band rejected any connection with the ill-starred “Bosstown Sound” of 1967 or the mindless stomp-and-spit boogie bands of the early Seventies. Ironically, as the wheel of musical fashion comes full circle, it may now be at hand. Ten years after its debut album, which had critics hailing the group as America’s answer to the Rolling Stones, Geils is still waiting for the big payoff. Geils Band has always seemed tipped for the top ranks of a rock stardom that never quite arrived. It’s a source of some irritation, actually, because the J. Name a major band and Geils has probably headlined over it at one point or another during the past decade. They weren’t all Früts: Bob Seger, the Eagles, the Cars, Billy Joel. Wolf is trying to recall some of the more memorable acts that have opened for the J. A band before its time.” “Īnd abandoned before its time,” cracks lead singer Peter Wolf, slouching on a sofa next to Klein, his ever-present black beret tugged so low over his forehead it almost touches the rims of his impenetrable black aviator shades. “Started off in white tuxes and ended up in Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear. “Früt, yeah, there was a group,” Klein chortles, referring to a now-defunct Detroit band (pronounced fruit). Geils Band, who, a week before embarking on their latest tour, are scattered like a handful of loose guitar picks around the office of their homey Boston rehearsal loft. Instantly, a chorus of hoots rises up from the other five members of the J. To celebrate Mick Jagger’s birthday, Geils, Richards, Wood, Peter Wolf, Seth Justman, and Bobby Keys.“Früt!” shouts bassist Danny Klein. Geils Band was opening for The Rolling Stones. He was in a band with Keith Richards and Ron Wood.ĭon’t get too excited: the band – called The (Original) Carltones – apparently played precisely once, and for the duration of a single song.At various points in their career, the Eagles, Billy Joel, ZZ Top, Yes, the Allman Brothers, and U2 opened for Geils and the band. In case you’re suspicious that this is mere hyperbole, we can assure you that it is not. Some of the most successful artists of the ‘70s and ‘80s opened for The J.Geils Band, they played gigs under the name “Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels.” (No word on which one of them was ostensibly Snoopy.) ![]() Obviously, both Danny and Magic Dick continued working with Geils, but before they evolved into The J. Prior to the founding of the band that bore his name, Geils was in an acoustic blues trio with Danny Klein and harmonica player Richard “Magic Dick” Salwitz. If he wasn’t a Peanuts fan, one of his early bandmates apparently was.(In short order, Geils was working out how to play Davis songs on trumpet and drums.) In a nice nod to his past, when Geils finally got around to releasing a solo album in 2005, it was entitled J. Geils’ father was a big jazz fan, one who played albums by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman around the house and took his son to see Louis Armstrong in concert for his 10 th birthday and to see Miles Davis for his 13 th birthday. Despite being known for his blues chops, Geils started out as a jazz man.Yes, we realize we’re starting off slow, but be honest: did you know what the “J” stood for? And don’t just try to assure us that you were totally going to say “John,” because you’re not fooling anyone. Geils, and we do so by offering up not only a playlist of his band’s best tracks from within the Rhino catalog but also a list of five things that you may or may not have known about him. Today we celebrate the birthday of the late, great guitarist known as J.
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