Rock memoir Peter and the Wolves provides evocative portrait of Cleveland’s punk many years

In 2013, singer-songwriter Adele Bertei wrote a memoir, experienced 200 copies printed, and dispersed them privately. Now the “rock and roll education” she credits to her friendship with punk musician Peter Laughner has been revealed as “Peter and the Wolves.”

Bertei, a self-explained “white woman hoodlum” who had used time in a juvenile reformatory, fulfilled Laughlin in 1976 in a Cleveland Heights bar when he complimented her performance of “Piece of My Heart.” He launched her to the operate of Patti Smith, rock critic Lester Bangs and his idol, Lou Reed. Bertei already was self-educated, impressively so.

Though the guide is small, it is a most evocative portrait of Cleveland’s punk several years as Bertei chronicles Laughner’s moves, from Rocket from the Tombs to Pere Ubu and the band they founded collectively, Peter and the Wolves. Through it all, Laughner was consuming and employing medications, his behavior turning into more erratic and self-harmful.