The J. Geils Band Biography

One of America's most well-known rock and roll touring groups in the 1970s was The J. Geils Band. The J. Geils Band was a bar band pure and simple, churning out greasy covers of obscure R&B doo-wop and soul tunes, cutting them with a healthy dose of Stonesy swagger. At the same time, the heavy boogie of British blues-rock and the ear-splitting sonic adventures of psychedelia influenced their contemporaries. Although their powerful music and vocalist Peter Wolf's manic jive filled venues throughout America, they seldom ever scored hit songs. Seth Justman, the band's primary songwriter, was capable of producing catchy R&B-based rockers like Give It to Must of Got Lost and Me. Still, these successes failed to launch the group to popularity partly because they were unable to reproduce the band's live enthusiasm in the recording studio. Early in the 1980s, the band added some pop to their hard rock, and it paid off with the colossal hit song Centerfold, which spent six weeks at the top of the charts. Unfortunately, tensions between Justman and Wolf significantly increased when the band was ready to record a follow-up, resulting in Wolf's resignation and the band's swift dissolution. A blues trio with J. Geils on guitar, Danny Klein on bass, and Magic Dick on harp (real name Richard Salwitz) first appeared on stage in the middle of the 1960s. The band switched to electric in 1967 when drummer Stephen Jo Bladd and singer Peter Wolf joined the lineup. The newly reformed J. Geils Band used Wolf and Bladd's specialized preferences to present themselves as gritty '50s greasers in contrast to the colorful psychedelic rockers who ruled the East Coast in the late '60s. The band quickly attracted a considerable local fanbase, including Boston University student and organist Seth Justman. After Justman joined the group in 1968, it continued to travel for several more years before signing a record deal with Atlantic in 1970.

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