Peter Wolf gets MassArt honorary doctorate, decades later

Peter Wolf, who once college-hopped and posed as an art student before founding the J. Geils Band, received an honorary doctorate from Massachusetts College of Art and Design this week at its commencement Thursday at Leader Bank Pavilion. In a phone interview,

When Peter Wolf talks about getting a diploma now, he laughs as if it still can’t be real.

“It’s pretty ironic. ” he said in a phone interview this week from his home outside Boston. describing the years he spent drifting from college to college and “pretending to be enrolled as an art student.” This week. decades later. Massachusetts College of Art and Design awarded him an honorary doctorate during commencement Thursday at Leader Bank Pavilion.

“I still can’t quite believe it,” Wolf said. “Drifting from college to college to pretend I was an art student, and now getting a doctorate from an art college, is pretty ironic.” He called it “an honor.”

The story begins in the Bronx, in the years before the bands and the art-world legends. Wolf—born Peter Blankfield—wrote in his 2025 memoir. “Waiting on the Moon: Artists. Poets. Drifters. Grifters. and Goddesses. ” about refusing the normal route after high school. At his graduation ceremony. instead of a diploma. he said he was handed a manila envelope and told to attend summer school. He described it as “torment” he had endured once and swore he’d never go through again.

After that, Wolf found a part-time job. He said that after watching Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination on TV. he began painting “with a fervor. ” and then launched a college-hopping odyssey across the country. In the memoir. he described seeking out old high school friends who attended the colleges where he wanted to go—sleeping on dorm-room floors. eating in student cafeterias. and using access to art classes and supplies.

One stop, he said, proved especially generous. “The real bonanza. Brandeis University in Massachusetts … had recently built a new art center. ” Wolf wrote. adding that because he showed up so frequently. a visiting instructor put him in charge of the keys to the painting studios and “the fully stocked supply cabinets.”.

He hopped again—Chicago and Rhode Island are among the places he named—before applying to what became a pivotal chapter. Wolf said that. “just for the hell of it. ” he applied to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts by borrowing the $18 application fee and telling the school he was a high school graduate. He said he got in.

Wolf arrived in Boston in the mid-60s with enough money for one night at the YMCA. then slept outdoors by the Charles River the second night. On the third night, he met David Lynch, who was then a fellow student. Wolf and Lynch shared a one-room apartment on Hemenway Street. Wolf later left college to form and front the J. Geils Band, while Lynch left school to pursue film, but the two kept painting.

Now, the arc has come full circle: Wolf says the degree is not slowing him down. His plans include a new album and possibly another book or two.

He described how he learned about the MassArt doctorate. “I got a call from a representative of the school saying, ‘We’d be honored if you’d accept a doctorate from MassArt if you’d be able to attend our commencement.’” Wolf said he responded, “I’m honored to be asked.”

He said being a painter all his life made the news especially meaningful. Growing up, Wolf said he was dyslexic and that people didn’t understand it. Drawing and painting became his outlet, and he credits his father—who he described as “a very good artist”—with influencing him.

Wolf talked about painting, the German Expressionists, and the ongoing pull of art. In his words. the art movement that shaped him most is the German Expressionists. painters in Germany before and after the First World War. “Many fled Germany as Hitler came to power. ” he said. describing them as painters with “a really unique approach to color” and “very emotional paintings.” He pointed to a collection of German expressionist painters at the Harvard Museum. adding that the museum is free.

He also reflected on how music and painting fed each other. Music. he said. “came by accident at a party in a loft of art students in Brookline Village.” A couple of students had a band and couldn’t remember the words to a song; Wolf said he remembered them and—after they were drinking jug wine—got up to the microphone and started singing. “That was it: The start of my musical career.”.

Wolf said his first band—made up of art students—was The Hallucinations. He described an early milestone: their first actual date backing up bluesman John Lee Hooker and the singing group The Shirelles. He said they played a lot with the Velvet Underground.

When asked how the story moved from those early days to J. Geils, Wolf said some art students wanted to return to painting as music took over. He described how the New England college circuit kept the band busy—bands hired out for parties and entertainment across Massachusetts. New Hampshire. and Maine—and how Boston’s club scene in those days differed from what exists now.

The conversation returned, inevitably, to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Wolf said he can’t believe J. Geils isn’t in it.

“Well, people say that,” he said, laughing.

He said the band was nominated five times but “never been inducted.” Wolf added that he’s been involved in the Hall of Fame process in his own way—he said the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame called him, and he inducted Jackie Wilson, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and Jesse Stone, but “we never made it.”

He summed it up with a joke: “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. The bride waiting at the altar. Or the groom still waiting at the altar, I guess.” He also worked in Dylan.

Painting is another thread that runs through his book and through his current work. Wolf said “Waiting on the Moon” is “a memoir that doesn’t want to be. ” describing it as “a collection of short stories that happened to be my life. ” more about the people he was “privileged to get to meet.” He cited painters and artists he’s encountered—Norman Rockwell and Brice Marden among them—and said he helped Edwin Dickinson. who he described as a painter and part of BU. He talked about studying with artists who. he said. had worked with major figures such as Picasso and Matisse. including as assistants.

He also mentioned the Boston Expressionists and teachers including Henry Schwartz and Hyman Bloom, and said art remains something he keeps “a close watch on.”

Asked about whether there was interest in turning the memoir into a film, Wolf said each vignette in “Moon” could be a different episode. “But, no not as of yet,” he said, adding there is “a lot I left out.”

That “left out” space is already turning into something new. Wolf said he’s working on fiction now. describing it as “two people encountering each other” and leading into something “somewhat mysterious.” He said they both try to figure each other out. and one starts trying to discover as much as they can about the other—“and vice versa.”.

He said he’s several chapters in, and that it isn’t clear whether the story becomes a short story or continues. “Right now I’m just seeing where it leads. I’m enjoying that process.”

Wolf also described his band, the Midnight Travelers, and their touring. He said they just finished a run “throughout New England and the Midwest about two weeks ago” and that they would probably start up in October, with “maybe some dates in August.”

He said he’s seen fan drawings online and described a cult-like devotion to the group: people come “all the way from Maine to Detroit. ” and there’s a group called the Wolf Pack that attends every show with their own T-shirts. He described the moment when someone asks, “Where’s the Wolf Pack?” and “20, 30 people raise their hands.”.

As for what comes next, Wolf said he’s finishing a record that is about 80 percent done. “All the recording’s done,” he said, “it’s just adding a couple of what we call ‘spices’ to it.”

And while he could. in theory. live anywhere now—after years of hitchhiking from college to college and ending up as a “college drifter”—Wolf said Boston kept him. “There was something about it that kept me. It was school, then painting, then music,” he said. He described Boston as different from other cities. with its neighborhoods—North End. Beacon Hill. Southie—and with Cambridge “a lot to offer.”.

At this point, he said he considers himself a Bostonian.

That’s what makes the degree land the way it does: not as a polished ending, but as an unexpected validation of a life lived in motion. Wolf said the MassArt diploma “means a lot,” and he plans to enjoy the new label that comes with it.

“It’ll be nice to be known as Dr. Peter Wolf,” he said, still sounding amused that the world finally caught up.

Peter Wolf J. Geils Band MassArt Massachusetts College of Art and Design honorary doctorate David Lynch Boston music painting memoir Waiting on the Moon