Many bands have deviated from their signature sound in search of a hit single. Of course, the sound is only half the battle. You then have to come up with a song that will draw the audience into the new approach. The J. Geils Band did this magnificently with “Centerfold”, the song that shot the long-running band to the top of the charts in 1982. It was a short-lived success story. Their lead singer felt they’d gone a step or two too far with the changes and was soon out the door.
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Acclaimed but Unheard
You can visit a few fine institutes of higher learning if you pass through Worcester, Massachusetts. Or you can stop by the 60s haunts of the group that would eventually become the J. Geils Band, named after guitarist John Geils, who preferred “J.” as a stage name.
By the time the band snagged a record deal in early 1970, they had secured Peter Wolf as their frontman. And their sound had developed into an enticing mix of rock and roll and rhythm and blues. While most of the rest of the rock scene was diving into progressive textures, the J. Geils Band kept it swinging and swaggering.
The band quickly earned a reputation as one of the premier live bands of their era. Having Wolf as an energetic, charismatic frontman certainly helped. But translating that into chart success proved trickier. A 1974 No. 12 hit, “Must Of Got Lost”, proved an exception. For the most part, mainstream success eluded them.
The Big Hit
Later in the decade, they were dumped by their original label and picked up by another. Financial struggles made it clear that they’d need to alter their sound a bit if they wanted to continue doing business. As the 70s rolled into the 80s, that meant adding some New Wave touches here and there.
The process began in earnest on the 1980 album Love Stinks, which produced a pair of minor Top 40 hits, including the comical title track. At that point, Wolf and Seth Justman had taken over as chief songwriters. On the follow-up album, Freeze Frame, Justman would take even more of a central role as writer. In fact, he penned the band’s first-ever No. 1 hit, “Centerfold”, all by himself.
“Centerfold” managed to combine the band’s good-time image with a more streamlined pop approach. The band enjoyed another big hit with “Freeze-Frame” as a follow-up single. But Wolf didn’t like the fact that they were deviating so far from their original artistic vision. He left in 1983, and the band couldn’t recover from that when it came to their commercial prospects.
Behind the Lyrics of “Centerfold”
Justman came up with a clever take on the old scenario about the girl from high school who got away. In the verses, the narrator reminisces about his “homeroom angel,” back when he was “slipping notes under the desk” to this girl as “pure like snowflakes no one could ever stain.”
Flash ahead to the present time, when he happens upon the same girl in “the pages in between” of a men’s magazine. He hopes that they can reunite for more than pleasantries. “We’ll take it to a motel room/And take him off in private,” Wolf sings suggestively. Barring that, at least he has the magazine: “Oh, yeah, I guess I gotta buy it.”
“My angel is the centerfold” is one of those 80s refrains that stick snugly in your mind even as the years go flying by. “Centerfold” proved a smart career move for the J. Geils Band, at least for a little while.
Photo by Al Pereira/Getty Images
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