Back to Get Ya: The J. Geils Band’s Bloodshot at 50
Reflecting on their best studio album from the ’70s
When it comes to studio albums, the J. Geils Band was somewhat cursed.
Not that they made a bunch of bad ones (far from it), but they were always better served by their live releases. For whatever reason, the widescreen energy that made their live shows legendary at the time could be difficult to replicate in the studio.
On top of that, their most successful album effectively broke them up.
That said, the J. Geils Band had their moments in the studio. Bloodshot, released 50 years ago today, remains a prime example.
The J. Geils Band came together in Boston in the late ’60s, when an acoustic Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels added a couple of members of the Hallucinations, most notably Peter Wolf.
Having a tight R&B and blues-based band is one thing, but Wolf was the key ingredient to set it all off, a charismatic and talented frontman. He was a painter and an art student at Tufts. His musical education started at home — not just from his record collection, but from family members around the edges of show business (from which he drew some of his rapid fire stage patter).
Then throw in live shows, especially with the Apollo Theater being a brisk walk or one subway stop away from the High School of Music & Art that he attended in Harlem.
It didn’t take long for the lineup, completed when keyboardist Seth Justman joined, to develop an enthusiastic following for its live shows, which led to a record deal with Atlantic within a couple years.
Their self-titled debut was a mixture of inspired covers (such as the less obvious Motown selection “First I Look at the Purse”) and originals that fit right in. The 1971 follow-up The Morning After was almost as good, adding more staples for the rest of the band’s concert history. One of those staples gave them their first taste of pop success. “Looking For a Love” spent a couple weeks in the Top 40 in January 1972, peaking at 39 in a chart topped by “American Pie”.
The band’s first attempt to show off/cash in on its live reputation was 1972’s stellar Live In Your Face.
By this point, the band, outside of drummer Stephen Bladd, were all still in their 20s. But they were seasoned road dogs at that point, stepping back into the studio with Bill Szymczyk, who was otherwise most known at that point for producing The James Gang.
The final result is a compact, mostly effective blast of the band’s stew of rock, R&B, blues and pop, delivered without much holding back.
Bloodshot is bracketed by a pair of Geils classics that would be live staples throughout the rest of the band’s history.
The original version of “Ain’t Nothing But a House Party” by the Showstoppers was Motown filtered through Philadelphia, a hit in England that was unjustly ignored here.
The J. Geils Band gave it a rock edge, starting with Geils’ guitar licks, enough cowbell to make for a sequel to that SNL sketch and the propulsive rhythm section of bassist Danny Klein and Bladd.
Then Wolf takes the mic and with the gang backing vocals behind him, the implied party is delivered to the point where you can close your eyes and picture yourself in a packed, beer-soaked club with sticky floors. It comes complete with a center stage harmonica solo by the talented man, known not as Richard Salwitz, but by the stage name that made 12-year-olds snicker all around the country — Magic Dick.
And make no mistake, Magic Dick is all over Bloodshot, not just the terrific solos but in punchy backing that boosts the material throughout.
As much as Wolf drew attention as lead singer, the opening track shows just how much of a band they were and how well they could play off each other.
That chemistry is also on display on the back end, with the album’s longest song — the Justman/Wolf-penned “Give It To Me.”
A song of lusty love, it settles into a nice reggae pop groove that dares you not to move along with it. But after Justman’s organ solo cuts through it, just when you expect it to go right back to the reggae pop groove, it turns into a rock-and-soul revue breakdown that the band jams on for over three minutes.
The band was continuing to focus more on its own songwriting, going from five covers on the debut to three on the second album to only two on Bloodshot.
The other cover showed both the band’s good taste and cravings for non-obvious choices. Titus Turner wasn’t even 40, but out of the music business by the time the band recorded Bloodshot. His name came up more as a writer, as others had success with songs he wrote or co-wrote: Little Willie John’s “Leave My Kitten Alone”, Elvis Presley’s “Tell Me Why” and Little Milton’s “Grits Ain’t Groceries” (which was called “All Around the World” when Turner wrote it).
The band chose Turner’s “Hold Your Lovin'”, a more straightforward cover, complete with the choice to retain the handclaps from the original.
The originals show off the influences as much as the covers. “Make Up Your Mind”, in someone else’s hands, could have been doo-wop, but Geils & Co. throw in some percussive almost Latin rhythms. The net effect still evokes its descendants, just less obviously.
The bluesy “Struttin’ With My Baby” sounds exactly like you think it would from the title.
“Back to Get Ya” is a reminder that while Geils never topped those rock guitarist lists back in the day, he could stay in the pocket when the band vamps, a not-so-secret weapon holding it down as Magic Dick and Justman solos move into the forefront.
Wolf’s persona hadn’t been perfected only with his bands, but on the radio. He had an overnight show on WBCN in Boston in 1968, where his on-air persona and patter (“The Woofa Goofa with the green teeth!”) would become familiar to anybody who saw the J. Geils Band or Wolf solo later on, for that matter.
His stint as a third shift DJ lasted less than a year before he left to concentrate on the J. Geils Band full-time, applying the lessons he’d learned from childhood through college.
In lesser hands, it could have come off as annoying hipster shtick, but Wolf was an explorer, not a tourist, and his love for his influences always came through. It certainly didn’t hurt that his vocals could sign the checks his personality wanted to cash.
He sells the sweaty, funkier “The Southside Shuffle” with the energy of a believer. And he turns things down convincingly on the swaying “Start All Over Again”, a ballad the band wisely delivers with enough tempo to keep it from dragging the way a band like the Stones might have.
If there’s a weak link on Bloodshot, it’s “Don’t Try to Hide It”, which starts off like a boogie woogie nick of “Let The Good Times Roll”, but descends into forced “wackiness”, between the sax solo that sounds like the flatulence of an animal in its death throes to the realization that they chose to rhyme “heinie” with “shiny”. In the realm of songs about butts, Sir Mix-a-Lot, this ain’t.
But eight out of nine ain’t bad, especially considering how damn good those eight are.
Audiences picked up on what the J. Geils Band put down. Bloodshot would be their first album to go gold and their only album to crack the Top 10 in their first decade.
The band started to expand and shift its sound as the ’70s wore on. The changes were noticeable in their pair of 1980 hits off Love Stinks — Come Back and the title track.
They went in more of a somewhat pop-and-synth flavored direction on 1981’s Freeze Frame. It became the band’s biggest seller by far, going triple-platinum thanks to a pair of Top 10 singles, the No. 1 “Centerfold” and “Freeze Frame” (and another single “Angel In Blue” that should have been a hit).
It also proved to be the band’s undoing. The rest of the band, including Justman, Freeze Frame’s producer and the other main writer besides Wolf, wanted to go even more into that synths and pop direction. They went on without Wolf, who preferred that the band stick with what got them to that point.
Time proved him to correct. 1984’s You’re Gettin’ Even While I’m Gettin’ Odd showed that the audience wasn’t there for a Wolf-free version of the band, with neither Justman nor Bladd capable of filling the lead singer role as well. The direction also dated the material almost instantly (see the ’80s drum sound and way-too-precise keyboards on the lone single “Concealed Weapons”).
Sadly, the 1984 album, the J. Geils Band’s version of Squeeze, was their last. The group limped to the finish with the song “Fright Night” from the soundtrack of the movie of the same name. The movie holds up much better than the song, which could have come from any faceless band on an ’80s teen movie soundtrack.
While Wolf went on to a solo career that continues to this day, he did come back for on-and-off live reunions. There were one-off gigs and actual tours (but no new studio material) here and there up through 2015. Sadly, those came to an end with Geils’ passing in 2017 from natural causes.
Truth be told, for those not familiar with the J. Geils Band’s output, the live albums — Live Full House and 1976’s Blow Your Face Out are still the place to start, the spot to hear how they got their deserved stellar reputation in the first place. They’re also the top exhibits as to why the band belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But Bloodshot isn’t a mere placeholder. The J. Geils Band was locked in at that point able to keep things loose because of how tight they were. Even with a star lead singer, it’s unmistakably the work of a band that was firing on all cylinders.
Bloodshot remains on the short list of their studio high points. A lot of other bands would have been lucky to be so cursed in creating it.
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