He was the lead guitarist and not the singer as most people thought when The J Geils Band hit the charts with their all killer, no filler album Freeze Frame. I still love all the tracks. Back before FM radio was hijacked by Lee Abrams’ crappy formats, the FM station I cut my teeth on, WDBR of Springfield, IL, played most of the records tracks: “Rage in a Cage,” “Insane, Insane Again,” “Centerfold,” “Flamethrower,” and “Freeze-Frame.” My personal favorite was “Angel in Blue.”
Several of the obits I read online put J Geils down as an Eighties success. This is blatantly false and lazy reporting. The J Geils Band had been plugging away with numerous records throughout the Seventies. Then they landed their first break around 1980 with “Come Back” and then “Love Stinks.” This led into Freeze Frame.
Sadly success was the worst thing to happen. Lead singer Peter Wolf and main writer/keyboardist Seth Justman couldn’t agree on which direction to go next plus the former was becoming more famous. So Peter left to become a pretty good solo artist (Lights Out is a fantastic album) and Seth took over the vocals. What was J’s role in this? Who knows but the band with his name on it was no more by 1985 despite a pretty good album and doing the theme to Fright Night.
Farewell J. Your guitar work on the only two albums I have by your band were excellent. Now in light of your passing, I may try to acquire the earlier work from the Seventies.