Doug Corrigan
If you grew up near Boston, Massachusetts, during the 1970s, there’s a good chance you were a fan of the J. Geils Band. Formed in Boston in the late ’60s, the group helped shape the city’s rapidly growing music culture. Over the course of my life, I saw J. Geils in concert seventeen times.
Several years after leaving high school, I decided to get a tattoo. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, so I chose to wait until something felt right. It took nearly four years. Then one day, I saw an old album cover and instantly knew. I called my friend Josh Glantz, a talented Boston tattoo artist, and said, “Josh, I got it!”
“Great! Come down tomorrow and I’ll fit you in,” he replied.
At 3 p.m. the next day, after three grueling hours under the needle, Josh permanently engraved the entire caricature portion of the J. Geils Band’s Best of Two album cover across my back.
Years later, in 2014, I met Magic Dick, the band’s innovative harmonica player, at a bookstore in New Hampshire. He was performing with a young guitarist from Singapore named Shun Ng. I had no intention of showing him the tattoo. But after the concert, while I was in the restroom, my girlfriend at the time struck up a conversation with him. When I returned, she insisted I reveal it.
I looked at Magic Dick, hesitated, then turned my back and lifted my shirt. He stared for a moment, smiled and said, “Wow, that is the most dedicated thing I have ever seen. Do you mind if I show this to my wife?”
Faster than you can say “Freeze Frame,” I was surrounded by people oohing and aahing over Josh’s artwork. Magic Dick’s wife, of course, was thoroughly impressed. Someone then shouted, “Dicky, sign your name.” And just like that, he signed his autograph directly beneath his caricature.
Before we parted, I asked Magic Dick if the Geils band had any upcoming shows. “Yeah,” he said, “We actually have something in the works, but I can’t say what it is. Take my email address and connect with me when you hear it announced.”
About a month later, I heard on the radio that the J. Geils Band would be opening for Bob Seger at the Boston Garden in November. I emailed Magic Dick immediately. Ten days later, two front-row loge tickets arrived in the mail.
To this day it remains one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever seen. However, the meaning of the event ran much deeper. In 1981, I was supposed to see Seger at the Boston Garden with eight of my high school friends, but I lost my ticket before the show and never made it inside. Thirty-four years later, I finally got to see the legendary musician on stage. Watching Bob Seger at his piano performing “Turn the Page,” with 16,000 voices singing along, was the crown jewel of the night.