Wednesday, Feb 9, 2022 • 14min

The J. Geils Band’s hit song about love gone wrong

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The new episode of the Behind The Song podcast is about the lyrics and history of “Love Stinks” by The J. Geils Band. An anti-Valentine’s tune that we can all sing along to, it was written just after singer Peter Wolf divorced Faye Dunaway, one of the most famous actresses in the world. It has just enough swagger to be a fun antidote to love’s downside, and it was their biggest hit in a decade when it was released in 1980. Watch the video episode and subscribe to the Behind The Song Youtube channel: https://bit.ly/2DBF4wJ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Janda Lane

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00:00

97.1 FM The Drive presents the Behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda.

Janda Lane

00:11

There are so many songs about love. This one feeling has inspired countless songwriters to sing about it. New love, remembering an old love, finding love in strange places, forgotten love, long lasting love, Valentine's love songs, and of course, Anti-Valentine's songs about love that went wrong. As much as we need the more flowery songs about this feeling, we also need the ones that get right down to brass tacks about when love has gone downhill.

00:47

And few of them get the point across with more swagger and humor than the one written during the disintegration of a marriage to a world famous actress,

Love Stinks

by The J. Geils Band. Now, if you get something out of this episode, give it a like at the end and if you're watching on Youtube, hit that subscribe button.

01:07

Love Stinks

is the title track of the band's ninth album, released in January of 1980, co-written by frontman extraordinaire

Peter Wolf

and the band's keyboardist and producer

Seth Justman

. It came on the heels of

Wolf's

divorce from megawatt actress

Faye Dunaway

the year before.

01:29

The unlikely couple met in San Francisco back in 1972, introduced by a journalist friend who was covering the band on the road. From the moment they met, in

Wolf's

hotel room, they began spending as much time as they could together, between

Wolf's

touring schedule and

Dunaway's

high voltage acting career. And two years later, in 1974,

Wolf

asked

Dunaway

to marry him and they did just that the very next day, on a hot summer day in August in Beverly Hills.

02:02

Dunaway

has said that she met a kindred spirit in

Peter Wolf

. He was as driven to succeed in his career and his art, as she was after all, and they both understood the sacrifices that they would have to make in regard to their relationship, in order to honour their commitments.

02:20

Plus,

Wolf

is a pretty fascinating character. He was born in the Bronx but went to Boston in the ’60s to study his first love, painting and art, at

The School Of The Museum Of Fine Arts At Tufts

, where his college roommate was none other than filmmaker

David Lynch

02:38

In the mid ’60s,

Wolf

became the first night-shift

for radio station

WBCN

in Boston. And in 1967, he joined The J. Geils Band as the energetic, jive-talking frontman and vocalist, sharing songwriting credits with

Justman

02:56

The classic line-up could really light up a crowd with their blues, rock and R&B covers, with founder and band namesake

Jake Geils

on guitar and a boogie sound, heavy on sax and harmonica, kicked up a notch by the enigmatic multi-instrumentalist,

Richard Magic Dick Saltwitz,

with drummer Stephen Bladd and bassist

Danny Klein

holding down the rhythm section.

03:20

They made instant fans of anyone who saw them live, including the bands they opened for, ranging from

B. B. King

The Allman Brothers Band

and more. They toured constantly, released their first album in 1970 and we're almost always on the road or in the recording studio.

03:40

The hectic pace didn't stop after

Wolf

married

Dunaway

in 1974 and

Dunaway's

schedule was relentless too. She made seven movies during their five year marriage, including

Network

in 1976, for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress. Meanwhile, The J. Geils Band released four albums between 1974 and 1978.

04:05

It was an exhausting run that didn't yield any major hits for the band. While

Dunaway's

career skyrocketed, particularly after her Oscar went.

Dunaway

said in her memoir, Looking for Gatsby, that they were like two warriors standing shoulder to shoulder, no ego-clash and that they were there for each other without effort.

04:28

But even so, the pressures of their careers proved too much for the pair to stay together and they separated in 1978. The divorce was finalized in 1979. Just a year later in 1980, The J. Geils Band released their highest charting single in a decade, with a song that anyone who had gone through a busted relationship could relate to. When

Love Stinks

spent three weeks on the

Top 40

chart and the lyrics go like this: "You love her but she loves him and he loves somebody else; you just can't win. And, so it goes to the day you die. This thing they call love is gonna make you cry. I've had the blues, the reds and the pinks. One thing for sure,

Love Stinks

05:19

It's such a great way to put the kaleidoscope of emotions that you feel when things didn't really work out like you'd hoped. Who hasn't had the blues after the reds and the pinks of first love turned to indigo, when love went wrong? And the song goes on: "Two by two and side by side. Love is gonna find you, yes it is. You just can't hide. You'll hear it call and your heart will fall. Then love will fly. It's gonna soar. I don't care for any Casanova thing. All I can say is love stinks."

05:55

Two by two and side by side, references the biblical story of the animals of earth going in two by two to

Noah's Ark

in preparation for the great flood.

Peter Wolf

also went biblical with his hilarious love-rap performed as a spoken word piece, before performing

Love Stinks

in concert where he told the tale of

Adam And Eve

as two star-crossed lovers. Adam as a guy who liked to wear his designers clothes while taking many long nature walks, stumbling upon Eve in the garden and thinking about ordering a pizza.

06:32

It's exactly the kind of fun that his big personality brought to the airwaves of

WBCN

back in Boston and it's a key element that made an impact on all their live shows. Way back from when they were basically a blues cover band back in the day.

06:46

It's also the kind of thing that kept fans lining up for their concerts throughout their career. His superstar wife was wowed by his ability to rock a crowd. She commented in interviews how exciting it was to hear a hall full of people shouting

’Wolf ’

during J Geils Band concerts.

07:05

And the song ends with this rhyme: "I've been through diamonds, I've been through minx. I've been through it all. Love stinks; yeah, yeah." And that part repeats as the song ends: "Love Stinks; yeah, yeah." A crowd pleaser, if there ever was one, written on the heels of a highly famous and now busted marriage.

07:30

For his part about that marriage,

Wolf

told

No Depression

magazine in 2010 that the two shared each other's world and both respected the work. He says, they made it a very assertive attempt not to become a celebrity-couple turning down requests from

Barbara Walters

for interviews and that kind of thing.

07:49

The two have remained friendly over the years since their divorce and they set a sort of cultural precedent for other rocker-actor marriages to come;

Valerie Bertinelli

into

Eddie Van Halen

Christie Brinkley

and

Billy Joel

Tommy Lee

and

Heather Locklear

Tommy Lee

and

Pamela Anderson

and so on.

08:11

The

Love Stinks

album climbed all the way to number eighteen on the

Billboard

Pop Albums chart and the song remains one of the band's best known hits. That album also paved the way for their next album

Freeze Frame

, which went to number one on the charts driven by the monster-hit

Centerfold

. A song that troad to the top of the

Billboard Hot 100

08:32

A couple of years after that,

Wolf

left The J. Geils Band over creative differences, embarking on a solo career.

08:40

He still performs occasionally and he still creates his paintings, one of a few rockers with that dual talent, like his friend

Ronnie Wood

The Rolling Stones

. The band reunited a few times after their split, but

Jay Geils

passed away in 2017. The J. Geils Band has been nominated for induction into the

Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame

multiple times, but the honour still hasn't been bestowed on the group.

09:04

To the dismay of their fans, Aerosmith guitarist

Joe Perry

said of The J. Geils Band in the Rock And Roll Globe: "If you saw that band when they were in their prime, you were spoiled. You probably expected that. That's how rock is. Well, no, they're a cut above."

09:24

They could stand toe to toe with any band in the world and they did.

Adam Sandler

famously covered

Love Stinks

in his movie,

The Wedding Singer

, and

Joan Jett

covered it for the movie,

Mr Wrong

09:38

It was reimagined as ’Bart Stinks’ for the

Simpsons

in an episode and it has been used in tons of other TV shows and movies when the scene requires a song that sums up love's exasperating flip-side with just enough moxie to make it all alright.

09:55

And while

Peter Wolf's

marriage to one of the world's most famous actresses didn't last, his song about the downside of love sure will and anybody who's had the reds, the pinks and then the blues will nod their heads and agree.

10:12

I'm Janna and this has been Behind the Song Special. Thanks to

Christian Lane

for the music you hear on this podcast episode. If you enjoyed this episode, give it a like and if you're watching on Youtube, hit that subscribe button, you can also follow behind the song podcast on Tiktok. And thank you for being a part of the Behind the Song family. On the way, a classic song with a killer riff about a true story and much more classic rock and roll.

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