By Paul Robicheau

Timelines bounce a bit through the loosely organized, vignette-rooted book, where the back half casually weaves through a checklist of characters and tales not to be missed.

Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses by Peter Wolf, Little, Brown and Company, 352 pages, $30.

People around the Boston music scene already know some intriguing tidbits about rocker Peter Wolf. For instance, that Wolf was once filmmaker David Lynch’s college roommate, that he befriended pre-fame Cambridge transient Van Morrison, or that he was married to actress Faye Dunaway in the 1970s.

Those relationships are naturally included in Wolf’s new memoir Waiting on the Moon. But they just scratch the surface when it comes to the cultural celebrities that steadily float through the book, since the legendary former frontman of the J. Geils Band might well be seen as Boston’s own Zelig.

What could have been a blatant name-dropping exercise becomes more of a subtle weave through a life that seamless bridges the “Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses” of the book’s subtitle. For every character that Wolf telegraphs atop a chapter, another innocently pops up to cross the reader’s path, whether it’s Norman Rockwell, Jack Nicholson, Andy Warhol, Jean-Paul Sartre, or many of the musicians Wolf met on the road and in the clubs.

Unlike the jive-talking motormouth that Wolf embodied as a late-night DJ at fledgling FM pioneer WBCN or onstage with the dynamic Geils Band (which surely deserves to be in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame), Wolf draws on a relaxed style as an autobiographical chronicler, revealing he’s more of a shy intellectual at heart. His writing is straightforward, candid, and rich in poetic detail, as if Wolf thought deeply about what he saw, heard and felt during his encounters, nodding to novelist Christopher Isherwood’s idea of being “a camera with the shutter open.”

You have to love a book that begins with a chapter titled “I Slept with Marilyn Monroe,” about a random mutual shoulder snooze in a Manhattan movie theater when Wolf was 10 years old. Early chapters are a slow build, the Bronx native talking about his parents (his father a frustrated opera singer and his politically active mother dodging the FBI) and his fearless first love as well as his fixing Eleanor Roosevelt’s microphone at a school assembly and hanging out in Greenwich Village, seeing Bob Dylan emerge in scenes reminiscent of A Complete Unknown.

You don’t have to be a rock fan to enjoy Wolf’s entertaining accounts. Many of his conversations with people through the book span literature, film, painting (Wolf studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts) and other topics. He shines light on mentor-like socialites Ed Hood and poet Bill Alfred as well as lesser-known songwriters, record company execs and limo drivers.

Some subjects garner more page space than others. Perhaps given its messy parting from Wolf, the Geils Band appears mainly as background — apart from Wolf hustling for gigs and record deals, plus the break itself. Lynch receives a short turn; it is a story of an odd couple broken by rent delayer Wolf. Years later, when a video cinematographer told Wolf he was having dinner with Lynch, the singer sent along a favorite book, earning a pleasant reminder that he still owed the filmmaker $33.40.

Adventures with Morrison prove more enlightening. They met one afternoon at the Boston Tea Party when Wolf didn’t realize that the guy asking about gigs was one of his heroes and the Irish singer couldn’t believe that Wolf was the “Woofa Goofa” spinning late-night R&B records. From witnessing Morrison’s unveiling of Astral Weeks material in the tiny Catacombs club to dragging the obstinate singer off a backstage toilet to take the Symphony Hall stage, Wolf exposes both the brilliance and frustration of his temperamental friend.

Peter Wolf. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Wolf’s relationship with Dunaway gets an even deeper dive, from the simple pleasures of shared musical tastes and a Gunsmoke marathon on TV to the insecurities and alcohol/drug habits that only fueled their divorce. Their crazy, contrasting careers in music and film considerable expands the experiences shared across those chapters — and beware the temper of a Wolf who feels jilted.

Some of the memoir’s best stories revolve around the blues masters who Wolf idolized. he served as their personal valet, assisting their arrival to Boston clubs. Muddy Waters and his musicians came to frequent Wolf’s nearby apartment as a welcome alternative to dressing rooms before, during, and after shows. “These visits were a sacred time in my life,” Wolf writes. He persuaded John Lee Hooker to let Wolf’s band the Hallucinations open for him – and to invite Wolf to hang out at his hotel room, with a spotlight on the TV. “Man, let me tell you, Pete,” Hooker said. “That Lassie, he sure is one motherfuckin’ smart dog.”

Timelines bounce a bit through the loosely organized, vignette-rooted book. The back half casually weaves through a checklist of characters and tales not to be missed. They include a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock (Wolf realized years later why the director badgered him to drink something stronger than tea), chummy escapades with the Rolling Stones, accidental studio frivolity with John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, and a queenly recording session with Aretha Franklin (yes, she duetted with Wolf for her 1985 album Who’s Zoomin’ Who).

The final chapter winds closer to recent times, when Wolf finally wrangled a dream duet with outlaw country icon Merle Haggard before a show at Boston’s harborside pavilion, where Wolf assembled a makeshift studio backstage. Soon he was another fly on the wall in Willie Nelson’s tour bus, where Haggard and Ray Price shared a pipe and bottle with Nelson, all laughing ’til showtime.

Haggard’s voice, Wolf concludes, “connects me to a ‘long line’ that winds its way through music history, like a river running through time.” Everyone knew Wolf got his feet wet along that line, accumulating countless stories. The only surprise is how vividly he unspools memories in this captivating memoir.

Note: As part of his book tour for Waiting on the Moon, Peter Wolf will be appearing, courtesy of the Harvard Book Store, at Cambridge’s The Brattle Theatre on March 11 and, courtesy of Writers on a New England Stage, at The Music Hall, Portsmouth, NH on March 18.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.