Another Round with Peter Wolf

A framed gold record of the J. Geils Band’s 1980 album, “Love Stinks,” hangs in the back room of McSorley’s Old Ale House, on East Seventh Street. It’s there because Peter Wolf, then the Geils Band’s lead singer, was, for decades, a McSorley’s regular who sometimes brought along his bandmates and friends. He grew up in the Bronx and took the subway down to the bar when he was a kid. “I used to come here when I was fourteen,” he said on a recent afternoon. “Because they didn’t give a fuck about your age.”

Wolf, now seventy-nine, was at a table up front, presiding over a menagerie of mugs, empty and full, of ale light and dark. He’d come from the Strand, where he’d purchased two books of letters, of Raymond Chandler and Truman Capote. He wore a black peacoat, a baker boy’s cap, and tinted glasses. Around the time of “Love Stinks,” he recalled, he’d won a beer-drinking competition here. There was some question as to whether the winning number of mugs was more or less than thirty-seven, perhaps not as ludicrous a total as it seems: the mugs are small, and Wolf, to go by his memoir, “Waiting on the Moon,” out last month, hides hollow parts in his lean, rubbery frame.

In the book, he and his cohort drink a lot, as he chances or charms his way into one indelible/surreal/intimate encounter/collaboration/relationship after another with a murderers’ row of complicated geniuses: Bob Dylan (he sends Wolf his leather pants), David Lynch (his art-school roommate changes the lock on their apartment, because Wolf was chronically late with rent), Muddy Waters (his band members stay with Wolf in his next tiny apartment), John Lee Hooker (they watch “Lassie” together), Ed Hood (Wolf’s “literary mentor,” who introduces him to Andy Warhol). Van Morrison, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Lowell, John Lennon, Julia Child, Tennessee Williams, the Stones, Sly Stone, Aretha Franklin, Merle Haggard. To name just a few. Wolf also chronicles his marriage, in the seventies, to Faye Dunaway, including a tumultuous time during the shooting of “Chinatown.”

“I didn’t want to make this book ‘Oh, I met so-and-so,’ ” Wolf said. “Nor did I want to make it kiss-and-tell. I also didn’t want it to be about me. I wanted it to be about them.” You could say it’s all of the above, in the best possible way.

A waiter named Richard Walsh came by, with a plate of saltines and cheese. “What say, Peter? It’s so great to see you.”

They talked about some old-timers: the guy who married a Ukrainian doctor and moved to Connecticut and had twins; the poet who never came back after COVID.

“He’s over seventy,” Walsh said.

“Still with the handlebar mustache?”

“Yeah.”

“What about Brendan, the waiter?”

“That’s my uncle. He comes in at six. You’re always in our thoughts here, Peter. Your gold album’s still in the back.”

Wolf said, “One day, there was a bunch of guys in here, and they tried to rip it off, because they thought the gold album was made of gold.”

“They don’t make it out the door, anybody tries to take something out of here.”

Wolf asked, “Were you here the night we had the beer-drinking contest?”

“That could be any night. I started here in 1979.”

“Maybe it was Brendan.”

Another old bartender, Scott Pullman, appeared: “My man!” He pulled a copy of Wolf’s book from his backpack. “Last time I saw you, I said, ‘For every story you tell me, I owe you a beer.’ Well, I owe you a shitload of beer now.”

Wolf signed the title page for him and asked, “Scotty, were you here the night we had the beer-drinking contest?”

“I don’t know. You been here a lot.”

“I loved it when you guys shut down and locked up and put the chairs up on the tables, and we all got to stay and just tell stories,” Wolf said. “It’s like when guys were in the Army together. You build a camaraderie. You wouldn’t be friends with each other otherwise. Who was the little guy with the glasses who used to sweep up?”

“Kevin. He wound up as a professor of mathematics, at Rutgers. He’s retired. Can we have one together later?”

“Maybe I’ll come for a nightcap,” Wolf said. “In fact, I think I will.”

“I’ll stay open,” Pullman said, and went to get ready for his shift.

“In the seventies, I made a trip to Nashville to meet my favorite songwriters,” Wolf said. “Harlan Howard and I shared many a drink over three days. He’s the one who came up with the saying ‘Three chords and the truth.’ He said to me, ‘The greatest thing you can do is go into a bar and find your place and listen, and you will hear an entire catalogue of songs, just from the pieces of conversation.’ ”

Employees and patrons came over to pose for pictures with Wolf. A woman nearby asked him, “How come everyone wants to take your picture?”

“Because I’m Henry Winkler,” Wolf said.

A barrel-chested, silver-haired gent in a fisherman’s sweater approached the table. “My brother!” he said. It was Brendan. Brendan Buggy. “It’s great to see you! Why haven’t you come down here more often lately?”

“I’ve been this, I’ve been that. Busy, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you call us, and we come see you?”

“You don’t have a phone in this place!”

“I’ll give you my goddam number. We’ve known each other since 1975.”

“Fifty years,” Wolf said. “Brendan, were you here the night we did the drinking competition?”

“I was here every fucking night. And some nights we want to forget we were here.” ♦