Through the 1970s, his harp was the featured instrument, and I'd credit him not only as one of the greatest blues harp players who ever blew, but as the inventor of rock harmonica. Geils Band had an instrumental virtuoso: the pricelessly-named harmonica player Magic Dick (Richard Salwitz). “Give It to Me,” from the 1973 album Bloodshot, moved from a reggae beat into locked-in funk.Īnd, as the Allmans had Duane's great slide guitar, the J. They expanded their stylistic range as they went on, always with a basic roots underpinning. They were performed with an extreme party momentum that was already a revival of rock's origins, and Wolf, even as he ran through another jive-talking deejay rap, was always dropping hints on the slower material that he could be a great soul singer. The songs written by Wolf and keyboard player Seth Justman-"Cruisin' for Love" or "Floyd's Hotel"-weren't exactly deep, but embodied a great soundtrack for misbehavior. Before too long, Wolf was married to and divorced from Faye Dunaway, as the band's publicity photos and record covers showed classic trashed hotel rooms and tales emerged of legendary parties. It was the golden age of the rock 'n’ roll frontman, modeled to a large extent on Mick Jagger: Stephen Tyler, Robert Plant, and Rod Stewart, for example, were emcees, dancers, singers, sex symbols, shamans, and jet-setters, crossing the stage in variations on a cockstrut. Geils Band gave it a particularly crass twist, as lead singer/showman Peter Wolf (Peter Blankenfeld) appeared on stage with a dollar sign on his cool-ass tux, and lit into "First I Look at the Purse." It was definitely party music, its big stars thought of as sex-and-drugs bad boys. Many did: The Faces, for example, Led Zeppelin, The Stones, Cream and Derrick and Dominos, even Iggy and the Stooges.
In the era of rock 'n’ roll in which they formed and first flourished-1969-76, the interregnum between psychedelia and punk-you could still fill arenas with a raucous or relatively refined electrified roots music. Geils Band, the Boston group whose guitarist John Geils died last week at 71, is remembered almost exclusively for "Centerfold," though occasionally in the wake of a break-up you still run into "Love Stinks." They were about as good a blues-oriented rock band as America ever produced-surpassed only, perhaps, by the Allman Brothers.
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