• Writer: Seth Justman
• Producer: Seth Justman
• Recorded: Summer 1981 at Long View Farm, Massachusetts
• Released: October 26th, 1981
• Players:
  Peter Wolf — vocals
  Seth Justman — keyboards, vocals
  Jerome Geils — guitar
  Magic Dick — harmonica
  Danny Klein — bass
  Stephen Jo Bladd — drums, vocals
  Album: Freeze-Frame (EMI, 1981)
• Also On:
  Showtime! (EMI, 1982)
  Flashback (EMI, 1985)
  The Best Of J. Geils (EMI-Manhattan, 1985)
  Houseparty: The J. Geils Band Anthology (Rhino, 1993)
• “Centerfold” was the J. Geils Band‘s breakthrough single, hitting Number One in early 1982.
• The song was inspired by a friend of drummer Stephen Jo Bladd, who one day opened a pornographic magazine to find a former high school sweetheart was the centerfold. Bladd told the story to keyboardist Seth Justman, who turned it into a song.
• The success of “Centerfold” was partly due to the then-new MTV. Hungry for videos to air, the cable channel gave heavy play to the song’s clip, which featured the members of the band performing amid a sea of cheerleaders in a high school hall and classroom.
• The single’s success helped the Freeze-Frame album become the most successful of the group’s 14-year career. It peaked at Number One and spent 70 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.
• It also won the band a following in Europe, where they opened for the Rolling Stones in the summer of 1982.
• Frontman Peter Wolf said timing played a big part in the success of Freeze-Frame: “People were hungry for a rock-and-roll band. People wanted new, funky, sweaty rock-and-roll. The clubs that had been discos started getting back into rock-and-roll. Between the emergence of MTV, the song ‘Centerfold’ itself, and EMI being at an aggressive stage, that all came together for us.”
• The group’s dynamic live show also helped, according to Justman: “A lot of young kids saw us for the first time, and they could see we were having a ball.”

FAST FORWARD:

• Wolf left the J. Geils Band in 1983. The group tried one album without him, 1984’s You’re Gettin’ Even While I’m Gettin’ Odd. They called it quits when the record stiffed.
• The city of Boston declared June 4th, 1999, to be “J. Geils Band Day.” The group was presented with a star on the Walk Of Fame at the city’s Tower Records.
• The J. Geils Band reunited for a short summer tour in 1999. Since then, they’ve only played together a few times — a millennium New Year’s Eve gig in Detroit in 1982, at the wedding of Bladd’s daughter a few years ago, at a benefit for hockey star Cam Neeley‘s charity organization in 2005, and a surprise 60th birthday party for Geils Band bassist Danny Klein last year.
• Guitarist J. Geils and harmonica player Magic Dick have formed a band called Bluestime.

The group’s breakup was a bitter one, but there don’t seem to be a lot of hurt feelings anymore — Geils has worked with Klein’s band Stone Crazy, and Magic Dick has recorded with both Wolf and Justman.