Speaker 1: Pushkin. Peter Frampton is a classic rock guitar god who
Speaker 1: rose to international fame in the late seventies with his
Speaker 1: chart topping double album Frampton Comes Alive. Frampton, who had
Speaker 1: previously played in English rock bands The Herd and Humble Pie,
Speaker 1: is known for making his guitar sing through his trademark
Speaker 1: talk box. This month, Frampton is releasing an album of
Speaker 1: instrumental covers that features some of his favorite songs, like
Speaker 1: this version of Radioheads Reckoner. I caught up with Frampton
Speaker 1: recently to talk about his new album, Frampton Forgets the
Speaker 1: Words and how the songs he chose provide insight into
Speaker 1: his expansive fifty year career. So it's like loving the Alien.
Speaker 1: David Bowie song that Frampton says is a tribute to
Speaker 1: his childhood friend who helped revitalize his career, and George
Speaker 1: Harrison's Isn't It a Pity, which reminds Frampton the time
Speaker 1: he jammed with George and Abbey Roads Studios while Phil
Speaker 1: Spector looked on from the control room. And he also
Speaker 1: talks about how becoming a pin up sex symbol in
Speaker 1: the late seventies almost sidelined his career. Plus we chat
Speaker 1: about how managing and an inflammatory muscle disease has impacted
Speaker 1: his writing and playing. This is broken record liner notes
Speaker 1: for the digital age. I'm justin Richmonton. Here's my conversation
Speaker 1: with a great Peter Frampton. Congrats with a new record.
Speaker 1: By the way, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I
Speaker 1: was really surprised just by the decision to do an
Speaker 1: instrumental so long after the first one which was really
Speaker 1: well received, Fingerprints, and then to make it covers this. Yes,
Speaker 1: what drew you to this idea? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I grew up. My first guitar hero was Hank Marvin
Speaker 1: of the Shadows and they were all instrumentals. They were
Speaker 1: the backup band for Cliff Richard Our English Elvis. So
Speaker 1: I started there and I've been through all my different
Speaker 1: different guitar players. I've listened to and everything. But I
Speaker 1: got to the point where I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: do the Blues album, which was the album before. But
Speaker 1: I had been diagnosed with my IBM my muscle inclusion
Speaker 1: by body my sitters, and there's a time limit on
Speaker 1: how long the fingers work unfortunately with that disease, so
Speaker 1: I got off the tour with we the band. So
Speaker 1: we were on the bus on the way home, I
Speaker 1: think to Nashville, and I said, we need to go
Speaker 1: in and do a blues album because I'd been playing
Speaker 1: all this blues with Steve in his show Steve Steve Miller.
Speaker 1: So I said, yeah. I said, it's to be covers
Speaker 1: because I want to get as much recorded as I
Speaker 1: can in the shortest space of time. So once we'd
Speaker 1: finished the blues album, I said to the guys, let's
Speaker 1: do an instrumental record of again covers so I didn't
Speaker 1: have to write, so that we could just launch right
Speaker 1: into it right, And I said, I don't care, because
Speaker 1: I love I've got so many favorite melodic and not
Speaker 1: so melodic songs that I love that I would like to,
Speaker 1: you know, play them anyway. And coming from the Hank
Speaker 1: marv In school, I pretty much knew how to do that. Well.
Speaker 1: It's funny, you know, I hadn't considered that. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'd read a bit about your IBM and that limiting
Speaker 1: your guitar playing, but I didn't think about how that
Speaker 1: might affect your writing. Is it just that you can't
Speaker 1: exert the energy writing when you want to when you
Speaker 1: have to play. Yeah, it's it's you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where you can or you can't. You know,
Speaker 1: it's you can't do both at the same time. So
Speaker 1: it's But the thing was, while we were doing the
Speaker 1: instrument und record it was so and the Blues record,
Speaker 1: I was at home. Then on the time days off
Speaker 1: or whatever, I started writing. And I've been writing ever since.
Speaker 1: So you know, the next record that comes out after
Speaker 1: this one will be a new solo record with all
Speaker 1: new material. Great, so you still you can still write,
Speaker 1: You still like to do it. And every day, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I've got to this point now in
Speaker 1: this world. We live in the COVID world, and so
Speaker 1: it's just me and you know, when I actually speak
Speaker 1: out loud, it scares me, you know, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the TV and I say something like, who the
Speaker 1: hell was that? You know, and it's me, your boss.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Yeah, so I go down make my coffee
Speaker 1: before I walk out every day. And because of my
Speaker 1: muscle thing, so while I'm waiting to work out, I
Speaker 1: got my legal pad in on the kitchen count and
Speaker 1: I write my dreams or I write what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: I just you know, free my mind, and just whatever
Speaker 1: comes out I write down, it looks like rubbish. But
Speaker 1: then when you go back and you read it, and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, I like that bit, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's I do that every day now, so and then
Speaker 1: you know I'm writing. I tend to write the music
Speaker 1: more at night, you know, when everybody stopped working. I
Speaker 1: start to enjoy myself. When it's dark. I like to
Speaker 1: play guitar, right that it always seems to be. That's
Speaker 1: when the muse comes. Yeah, is there a connection between
Speaker 1: the dreams you write down in the morning and then
Speaker 1: what comes at night? Is there is there a through
Speaker 1: line that you can find between the two? Not always,
Speaker 1: but sometimes Yeah, I'll pick a line from what I've
Speaker 1: written in the morning, and you know, start, well, maybe
Speaker 1: that's the first line of a verse, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: it's the second line, or maybe it's the chorus. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's the beauty of it, that the enjoyable
Speaker 1: part is trying to fix it it well, and the
Speaker 1: laborious part sometimes it's trying to fix it all together,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, I'm learning. I'm still learning so
Speaker 1: much about writing and trying to write in a different way.
Speaker 1: When I sit down to and I pick up an
Speaker 1: acoustic say, and I've got a regular tuning or an
Speaker 1: open tuning, and I usually go to my standard kind
Speaker 1: of things that I do every day. Then I'll just go,
Speaker 1: let's tune this one different. Yeah, and I'll just tune
Speaker 1: that different there and tune this one different. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the tuning is, well, it sounds good, and
Speaker 1: then I have to find the chords, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden there's notes in there that become so inspiring.
Speaker 1: It's like the Joni Mitchell one oh one of songwriting.
Speaker 1: I think I did read somewhere. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it's true, but oh, we love, we love Joni Mitchell,
Speaker 1: Oh my God, and that she said this and songs
Speaker 1: she can't play anymore because she can't remember the tunings,
Speaker 1: so I can believe it. So what I do is
Speaker 1: when I do change your tuning on my phone, You're
Speaker 1: like we all record on the phone. I just put
Speaker 1: the tuning down on that day, so I know when
Speaker 1: I go back, I look at the date of the
Speaker 1: bit and there's the tuning for it, you know, so
Speaker 1: you can you can match it. You're never you're never
Speaker 1: losing your way, No, no, I learned from Joni Mitchell's mistakes,
Speaker 1: not that she makes mistakes well you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: those are those are wonderful mistakes that she's So how
Speaker 1: did the song selection happen for the new record? Like
Speaker 1: the Blues album? I just said to the band, why
Speaker 1: don't we all make lists of, you know, favorite songs,
Speaker 1: you know, and so it was just basically we all
Speaker 1: chose it, you know, I mean favorites of mine. Stevie
Speaker 1: wonders I Don't Know Why, which is a very unknown track.
Speaker 1: I had loved that for multiple years because he's obviously
Speaker 1: majorly in love at that point, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know why I love you. But he starts off very plaintive,
Speaker 1: and throughout the song is repetitive all the way through,
Speaker 1: and then he just lets his emotion come out and
Speaker 1: he's it's almost like Lennon doing Mother, you know, He's
Speaker 1: screaming at the end, you know, And I just thought,
Speaker 1: I want to do that with the guitar, so and
Speaker 1: see if I can pay tribute to the wonderful Stevie
Speaker 1: wonder There's also songs like on your Record record by Radiohead. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm curious why you chose a song like that very
Speaker 1: interesting to hear Peter Frampton do Radiohead. And then how
Speaker 1: did you think to approach it melodically? I mean, it
Speaker 1: is very melodic, I mean, and the makeup of the
Speaker 1: the chords for that song are just it's a classic.
Speaker 1: It's it's just one of my all time favorite songs.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to be as close to Tom Yawk's
Speaker 1: vocal melodies as possible, at least at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: And then, as I said, one has to make it
Speaker 1: a little bit more interesting, not that you can understand
Speaker 1: what he's singing about anyway, but it just had to
Speaker 1: be get more interesting as it went on. And it
Speaker 1: was one of those tracks that we didn't to be honest,
Speaker 1: I didn't know whether we could do it, whether we
Speaker 1: could do it justice or not. And then it turned
Speaker 1: into my I think it's my favorite of the album,
Speaker 1: so and that's why it became the first track we
Speaker 1: released with a video and everything. So but Radiohead never
Speaker 1: stands still. They're always painting a different picture from a
Speaker 1: different angle. It's just I admired them so much. All
Speaker 1: of them wrote they all right, you know, So it's
Speaker 1: just one of those bands that you know, Wow, I'm
Speaker 1: glad those guys got together. Yeah, well, how communit you
Speaker 1: could do a justice at first? What was the hesitation? Well,
Speaker 1: it's like with all of them. It becomes a challenge
Speaker 1: because Radiohead fans are very protective of Radiohead, and I
Speaker 1: understand why, you know, because their version is the definitive version, obviously,
Speaker 1: And I've read a few reviews by fans that have said,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure whether to listen to you know what
Speaker 1: I would think when I but he said, this is
Speaker 1: the best version of you know, a reckoner or a
Speaker 1: Radiohead song I've heard, so hopefully I think I got across.
Speaker 1: I took great care, Like usually I come to the
Speaker 1: studio with one of my babies, and I take care
Speaker 1: with my baby. Well, I would take care with everybody
Speaker 1: else's baby on this album and make sure that we
Speaker 1: treated it with respect and didn't take it to a
Speaker 1: place where it would be just abhorrent to anyone who
Speaker 1: knew the original that Well, yeah, I mean, you guys
Speaker 1: are not shy away from picking you know, just beloved
Speaker 1: beloved artists, you know, Jacob Historius, Marvin Gay sly in
Speaker 1: the family Stone, all of them are fantastic song not
Speaker 1: all of them are classics necessarily in the catalog, like
Speaker 1: it was not like Marvin Gay's Heartache is not like
Speaker 1: A it's a It's not an obvious choice. No, Marvin
Speaker 1: Gay's song was it was actually see Motown was almost bigger.
Speaker 1: I believe it was bigger in Europe and especially England
Speaker 1: before it was that big here in the US. And
Speaker 1: so they released a lot more singles, so that one
Speaker 1: by Marvin was released as a single and was a
Speaker 1: hit in England. That guitar riff has always stayed with me.
Speaker 1: I went a little bit crazy on that one. I
Speaker 1: did that one, most of that one at home, whereas
Speaker 1: all the other ones were done live with the band.
Speaker 1: We put everybody else on that one, and I wrote
Speaker 1: an extra little piece for it, so it doesn't really
Speaker 1: sound like the song at points. I was just very
Speaker 1: inspired by that track, especially, but the Motown songs that were,
Speaker 1: you know, all our favorites were so uniquely written and played,
Speaker 1: and it's the sounds and the arrangements that really get me.
Speaker 1: And the quality, obviously at the very beginning, was not
Speaker 1: It was very It was rough to start with, but
Speaker 1: they I loved that about it. It was so great
Speaker 1: even like some of the tom tom fills. If you
Speaker 1: listen closely, the tom tom actually distorts the mic. But
Speaker 1: that's part of the sound, you know, and they weren't
Speaker 1: going for that, but it ended up being that way.
Speaker 1: And there's something about harmonic distortion like that that when
Speaker 1: it's good distortion, it just it's it makes everything sound better.
Speaker 1: Part of the charm of those early as late as
Speaker 1: you like sixty seven, you're still hearing some just you know,
Speaker 1: some of those recordings sound a little bit rough in insight,
Speaker 1: but yeah, just beautiful songs. Levi Stubbs. I read that
Speaker 1: they would always write the song for him and put
Speaker 1: it up a tone then he could actually sing, so
Speaker 1: he would have to stretch out for those. But you
Speaker 1: can actually hear his voice distorting on certain tracks. But
Speaker 1: you know, what did we do later on in the
Speaker 1: two thousands, We started distorting vocals, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: all been done before, and there was a reason why
Speaker 1: that had charm. We didn't realize we were listening to
Speaker 1: a distorted vocal. We just knew that it sounded great.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated that there were motown hits in England. Were
Speaker 1: there other motown songs? You remember being hits there that
Speaker 1: weren't quite as popular here. Yeah, like B sides. We'd
Speaker 1: have a lot of double sided engles, you know, where
Speaker 1: like the Beatles did and the Stones did, where both
Speaker 1: songs would be hits. And Motown had that too, you know.
Speaker 1: So Supremes, Levi and the Boys, the Four Tops and
Speaker 1: Smoky and oh so many great It's that's my music. Boy.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that stuff. We'll be right back with
Speaker 1: more from Peter Frampton. After a quick break, we're back
Speaker 1: with more of my conversation with Peter Frampton. What drew
Speaker 1: you to moving to Nashville. I was in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: with my family there up until ninety four, and then
Speaker 1: the huge earthquake happened, and so we moved to Phoenix
Speaker 1: because my two of my children were with their mother
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. We didn't want to be too far away.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's too hot there in the summer. Kids
Speaker 1: fall over and they get third degree burns. So it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love it, but it's nice to have a winter
Speaker 1: home there. So I got this call to buy from
Speaker 1: my publishers saying would you like to come and come
Speaker 1: to Nashville right with some of the great writers there
Speaker 1: do a week or ten days. I said, absolutely, I'd
Speaker 1: love to do that. So I did. And as I
Speaker 1: was leaving, my wife said, I hope you like it
Speaker 1: in Nashville. So I called her after a few days.
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, the community here for music
Speaker 1: is incredible. I said, I've met so many great musicians
Speaker 1: and writers. I think that this might be a good
Speaker 1: place for us to move. It's a pretty collaborative town,
Speaker 1: right Musically, yes, it is one of those towns where
Speaker 1: you meet and well it was before COVID, but where
Speaker 1: you actually meet up in a restaurant for lunch or somewhere.
Speaker 1: Oh look, there's so and so, and they said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I've got this idea. I would love you
Speaker 1: to play on it. And I say, okay, well, you
Speaker 1: know that would be great. Send me the MP three
Speaker 1: and I'll I'll put some guitar on it for you.
Speaker 1: Well that that doesn't always happen everywhere all the other
Speaker 1: places I've lived. It's sort of like, yeah, that's sort
Speaker 1: of like saying goodbye. Yeah. It is much more collaborative
Speaker 1: on many levels. There's all sorts of music here. It's
Speaker 1: not just country. Are you a fan of country music,
Speaker 1: so the old type. Yes, I'm a fan of the
Speaker 1: older country and you know, just good songs. Did you
Speaker 1: grow up did you grow up here in a lot
Speaker 1: of country? Well, the first song I ever learned was
Speaker 1: She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes, so
Speaker 1: my dad. And what was the other one? My dad
Speaker 1: taught me hang down your head. Tom Dooley Michael wrote
Speaker 1: the boat. So there you go. We've got We've got
Speaker 1: a little bit of folk, a little bit of country,
Speaker 1: and a trained song. So there you go. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that about covers it. You were born to be in Nashville, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: You've never pigeonholed yourself as a guitarist. You've played wide
Speaker 1: array styles. You've played on Ben Siduran records and Johnny
Speaker 1: Holiday records, a great French pop singer, all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Did that come from the music you loved growing up?
Speaker 1: Were you listening to all sorts of different things? As
Speaker 1: I've said, you know, Shadows were first Hank Marvin with
Speaker 1: that lovely clean strat sound, and then but at the
Speaker 1: same time my parents we got the record player and
Speaker 1: it was in time to get the first Shadows album.
Speaker 1: I remember that so I would play that. Then i'd
Speaker 1: leave the room living room, and my dad would put
Speaker 1: on Hot Club de France Jango Reinharts defran Crapelli, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't get out of the room quick enough. It
Speaker 1: was just awful music. And you know, I'm like eight
Speaker 1: years old, nine years older, and as my kids call it,
Speaker 1: Dad's listening to that silent movie music again. So gradually
Speaker 1: I didn't leave the room because I was halfway up
Speaker 1: the stairs and I went, oh, wow, how does he
Speaker 1: played that? You know? It just the thing that turned
Speaker 1: me off. It was an acoustic and it wasn't an electric,
Speaker 1: and it just didn't have it wasn't a stratocaster through
Speaker 1: a vox, you know. But then in the end it
Speaker 1: was it was a two album day every weekend with
Speaker 1: my dad. He'd listened with me with the Shadows, and
Speaker 1: I'd listen with them for Django. So if you think
Speaker 1: about that, then the next thing is, you know, listening
Speaker 1: to every rock guitarist known to man, and the blues players,
Speaker 1: you know, Eric and Peter Green, Mick Taylor all spent
Speaker 1: time with John Males bluesbreakers who I went to see underage,
Speaker 1: snuck in and was always in the front row looking
Speaker 1: at all these trying to work out what all these
Speaker 1: guys did, how they were doing it. So then I
Speaker 1: got my fill of the blues. And then I was
Speaker 1: still at school and I joined a band called the Preachers.
Speaker 1: They were all working there were semipro they'd all been
Speaker 1: in big bands, and they asked me to join, and
Speaker 1: the druma gave me twelve or fifteen albums and it
Speaker 1: ranged from Otis Blue, Roland Kirk, Jesus Stones, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it just it just went through all these Watermelon Man
Speaker 1: or these jazz albums and everything. Mose Allison. Oh, it
Speaker 1: was the first time I'd heard Mose Allison. And the
Speaker 1: breadth of the styles that I had to learn by
Speaker 1: Tuesday was enormous. So I, you know, always up for
Speaker 1: a challenge, So I learned all these songs that were
Speaker 1: on the list, and so I think that's when I
Speaker 1: first got this this love of different types of music
Speaker 1: that you know, to be pigeonholed in one blues or
Speaker 1: rock or jazz. I didn't want that. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be have my own style. It was a mixture of everything,
Speaker 1: and it finally happened after listening to so many different
Speaker 1: styles of music. We were doing the Humble Pie record
Speaker 1: with Glenn John's, you know, the Engineer's engineer in Olympic,
Speaker 1: the famous Olympic studios in Barns in London, and i'd
Speaker 1: just done the solo on Stone Cold Fever, which was
Speaker 1: on the Rock On album, and I came in and
Speaker 1: we listened and I didn't say anything. I just said
Speaker 1: to myself, I think you've arrived. I think this is
Speaker 1: you because I had found in one solo that I
Speaker 1: had kind of put it all together rock, blues and
Speaker 1: jazz tinged, you know, jazz tinged, but just note choice,
Speaker 1: I think is what my style is all about. That
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere, and you know, we had been
Speaker 1: playing it in rehearsal and maybe live, but yeah, that
Speaker 1: was just one of those moments where I just thought,
Speaker 1: while I think I was very pleased with it, and
Speaker 1: that was something that voted well for the future playing.
Speaker 1: And I don't stay to the blues scale all the
Speaker 1: time or hardly ever. Yeah, yeah, especially and on this record,
Speaker 1: you you know, it's like you're all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's incredible, thank you. Yeah, it's just going places that
Speaker 1: you've never been before you know. It's every day you
Speaker 1: you hope that find a lick, make it up, hear
Speaker 1: it and change it by somebody else, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it becomes another one of your library of licks. Right,
Speaker 1: So rock On is the last Humble Pie record aside
Speaker 1: from the live one that you played on correct, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until then that you felt you found
Speaker 1: your style. Yes, that was I was going backwards and forwards,
Speaker 1: playing blues and then a bit of jazz, and so
Speaker 1: it wasn't until that album that because it is a
Speaker 1: rock based band, the music was rock, blues, R and
Speaker 1: B based actually, so you know, it was just a
Speaker 1: case of putting together all the ideas that I had.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing about soloing for me is that
Speaker 1: live is the best place for a solo for me
Speaker 1: because there's no take too, So you've got to whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you've got to take it. That's it, buddy,
Speaker 1: you don't get to do it again. And in the
Speaker 1: studio I have, it's harder for me because I have
Speaker 1: to get to that place where I'm not thinking like
Speaker 1: you're not thinking on stage, I'm thinking about the audience.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about my band, I'm thinking about what we're
Speaker 1: going to do next, and so I am in a
Speaker 1: very free form, uninhibited place. And that's what I always
Speaker 1: look for in the studio, and it usually happens with
Speaker 1: the first take of the solo, or after I've taken
Speaker 1: a break and I come back twenty minutes later and
Speaker 1: I've done like half a dozen solos, I don't like
Speaker 1: any of them, and I come back and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it'll be the first or the second take again.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you start thinking, I don't want to think when
Speaker 1: I play, you know, I just want it to happen.
Speaker 1: We'll hear more of my conversation with Peter Frampton after
Speaker 1: a quick break. We're back with the rest of my
Speaker 1: conversation with Peter Frampton. Another song on your new record,
Speaker 1: Isn't It a Pity? Did you play on the original?
Speaker 1: That's one that the first day I came into Abbey Road,
Speaker 1: when George had asked me to come down and do
Speaker 1: some acoustic We all went into the control room and
Speaker 1: they done it the day before and they played it.
Speaker 1: You know, Phil spect Us there and or you know,
Speaker 1: Klaus and Ringo and everybody was there, and I just
Speaker 1: my jaw dropped when I heard the sound, because it's
Speaker 1: not that many people on that track, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like there's a thousand people. And that's that wall of
Speaker 1: sound with Phil Spector. Obviously, when we started I did
Speaker 1: the more country ones with acoustic. It was me sitting
Speaker 1: next to George, and then three of the guys from
Speaker 1: Bad Finger were playing, so there was five of us
Speaker 1: playing acoustics. The Phil specter more is better, you know,
Speaker 1: and in this case it was, so I did. I
Speaker 1: think I did five or six of the tracks, tracking tracks,
Speaker 1: tracking sessions, and then about I don't know two three
Speaker 1: weeks later if that, George called me back up and said,
Speaker 1: Phil Warm's more acoustics. So I said, oh, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: bring my acoustic down, and but this time it was
Speaker 1: just me and George sitting on two stools in the
Speaker 1: Sergeant Pepper room and in Abbey Road, I think it
Speaker 1: was anyway looking through the glass at Phil Spector. So
Speaker 1: we double tracked what we'd already done on the five
Speaker 1: or six that I played on, and then George said, well,
Speaker 1: let's do some more on some of the other tracks,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's when they would change reels and
Speaker 1: find another place for us to to overdub, and that's
Speaker 1: when George and I started just jamming between reels being changed,
Speaker 1: which was a moment I will never forget, you know.
Speaker 1: And then he kept on putting up songs I hadn't
Speaker 1: played on, and he just quickly showed me the chords,
Speaker 1: and I think I played on about three four five more,
Speaker 1: but it's so long ago now I can't remember which
Speaker 1: ones I could have been on My Sweet Lord, it's
Speaker 1: it's most likely, I am, but because there's so many
Speaker 1: acoustics on that, each new song they put up that
Speaker 1: I didn't know, George would quickly show me the chords
Speaker 1: and off we went, you know. And that was that
Speaker 1: was my experience on that on that on What made
Speaker 1: you want to revisit it for this record, Well, it's
Speaker 1: always been one of my favorite songs of George's ever
Speaker 1: since I walked in that morning and listened to it
Speaker 1: what they've done the day before. I don't believe there
Speaker 1: were either any vocals on it. It was just you know,
Speaker 1: the trap, and it was so haunting the chords and
Speaker 1: you could almost feel what the melody would be, you know.
Speaker 1: So I thought, rather than do one that I played
Speaker 1: on let's try one that I didn't, and each one
Speaker 1: of these wonderful tracks, legendary tracks that I picked, I
Speaker 1: had to be very careful because I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be a tribute and do the very best with George's tune, obviously,
Speaker 1: it was incredibly important that it be a good version,
Speaker 1: Like with all of them, you know, I would get
Speaker 1: nervous before all of them, but I think that's what
Speaker 1: drove me to make them as good as they came out,
Speaker 1: and I really am proud of Isn't It a Pity?
Speaker 1: I think that's it's turned out really good, kept the
Speaker 1: original vibe even maybe even a little bit more relaxed,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, with George and Bowie, considering that you
Speaker 1: were friends with them, that must have been just an
Speaker 1: extra added bit of you know, I hope I do
Speaker 1: this good, you know, first of all with is It
Speaker 1: a Pity? Yes, But then when it came to Loving
Speaker 1: the Alien David's song, that is the song that I
Speaker 1: was given the stage to do my elongated solo at
Speaker 1: the end of that number on the Glass Spider tour
Speaker 1: with David in eighty seven. So it was obvious that
Speaker 1: was the one I wanted to do because he gave
Speaker 1: me the spotlight right there for and it was an
Speaker 1: extended solo for sure. So David had given me a
Speaker 1: huge gift by having me as one of his guitar
Speaker 1: players on featured guitar players on the Glass Spider tour
Speaker 1: as well as Never Let Me Down record, because David
Speaker 1: and I went to school together and he always knew
Speaker 1: me as the musician, the guy behind the singer, you know,
Speaker 1: the guitar player, the lead player, and he saw what
Speaker 1: had happened with the comes of live stuff came out.
Speaker 1: The music is great on that, the playing is great,
Speaker 1: you know. But all of a sudden, my face gets
Speaker 1: being put on the front cover of every magazine known
Speaker 1: to man and woman, and I got turned back into
Speaker 1: It happened once before with the Herd in England Europe.
Speaker 1: The cuteness takes over unfortunately, thank god, I don't look
Speaker 1: cute now, and became this teeny bopper kind of adulation,
Speaker 1: which was very confusing for me and for the guys
Speaker 1: I think in the audience. So what David did was
Speaker 1: he could have picked anybody, obviously, but he called me
Speaker 1: up and asked me to do it, and I had
Speaker 1: no idea what he actually had in mind, and it
Speaker 1: was a gift. He was reintroducing me around the world
Speaker 1: in stadiums and then arenas as the guitar player, and
Speaker 1: I thank him every day. Really, you think of it
Speaker 1: more as a gift than that you were like a
Speaker 1: really amazing guitar player that he happened to grow up with. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean twofold. I mean I'm glad that he thought
Speaker 1: of me in that vein of being Obviously I knew
Speaker 1: he liked my guitar playing, yes, but I think more
Speaker 1: there was an underlying reason. It was twofold. Yes, Pete's
Speaker 1: always been a great player, but he's in trouble. Let's
Speaker 1: help him out here, And that's what he did. It's
Speaker 1: funny you kind of shot away from the attention you
Speaker 1: got from Frampton Comes Alive rather than leaning into it. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that initially the majority of people that were
Speaker 1: buying the album didn't know what I looked like until
Speaker 1: they hadn't seen me until they bought the album and
Speaker 1: they saw the cover, which is a great live shot.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, but I that the girls at that
Speaker 1: point I look pretty good, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: my poster is up on every girl's ceiling or wall
Speaker 1: or whatever, and the credibility that I had with my music.
Speaker 1: Musical audience don't like that. They don't like the girls
Speaker 1: screaming or whatever. And the guys get jealous because their
Speaker 1: girlfriend has got a poster of me on their wall,
Speaker 1: you know. So and then the guys go, well, I
Speaker 1: don't like him anymore. And that's that's exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: you know, And I don't blame them, you know, I
Speaker 1: could have got rid of the satin pants a little earlier.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That is a classic shot man that
Speaker 1: is an all time classic. The cover of that is
Speaker 1: as about as iconic as he gets. Oh thanks, Oh
Speaker 1: that's funny. So I guess you. Essentially, you didn't want
Speaker 1: to be turned into Bige's, right. The unfortunate thing was that,
Speaker 1: let's say, well, let's look at David Bowie. He he
Speaker 1: would reinvent himself for every album, and Madonna copied David,
Speaker 1: you know, by reinventing herself the same way. And it
Speaker 1: was more of the entire picture. Because David's an actor,
Speaker 1: was an actor, very very good actor, and so he
Speaker 1: would invent a character for every album basically, and he'd
Speaker 1: stay in that character for as long as he was
Speaker 1: promoting it, whereas me, I was kind of a jeans
Speaker 1: and T shirt kind of guy, maybe with the you know,
Speaker 1: the jean jacket or the jean shirt whatever, and then
Speaker 1: just started to everyone was wearing satin pants and sort
Speaker 1: of kimonos and stuff like that, and I guess I
Speaker 1: just slipped into it. But instead of, you know, getting
Speaker 1: out of that, I kind of furthered that by doing
Speaker 1: the cover of the follow up to There's so much
Speaker 1: I hate about the I'm In EU record. I don't
Speaker 1: know where to start. But it wasn't so much the
Speaker 1: albums as the period mentally where I was at at
Speaker 1: that point. I have this incredible photographer was taking the
Speaker 1: I'm In New cover and I arrived and put on
Speaker 1: satin pants and my little Lord fauntroy little sort of
Speaker 1: blouse kind of thing. And I should have worn jeans
Speaker 1: and a T shirt, which is what I wore during
Speaker 1: the day. I wasn't. I wasn't that guy in the
Speaker 1: satin pants. I was the guy in the T shirt.
Speaker 1: And he came in, I'm sitting on the floor. He goes,
Speaker 1: click click, thank you, that's it. And I could have
Speaker 1: changed everything right there by doing something completely different image wise.
Speaker 1: But I've never been involved. I've never really the image
Speaker 1: that I create is kind of there, and it's never
Speaker 1: been that important to me, you know. And that's where
Speaker 1: I made my mistake. After Comes ALIVEE came out. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at led Zeppelin at the time,
Speaker 1: we're all where the same kind of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: And but they they changed I didn't, you know, for
Speaker 1: too long and got it so so that that was
Speaker 1: the situation. I thought, well, this is what I wear
Speaker 1: on stage now, as if that's it for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life, you know. But no, no, Pete, you
Speaker 1: should change it up. You found your luck, you found
Speaker 1: your n then yeah, that's it. Okay, good, great, let's
Speaker 1: move on. I do want to ask you one one
Speaker 1: last thing. Yes, one of my favorite sides just in general,
Speaker 1: the first side of Town and Country, Humble past Town
Speaker 1: of Country, Yeah, and kicking off with take Me Back,
Speaker 1: which is one of my that's just I love that
Speaker 1: song today. Oh thank you. That's an open tuning, right, No,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not. No, it's not, it's it's uh,
Speaker 1: hold on, let me get a guitar. This is the
Speaker 1: guitar that I wrote it on. This is my my epiphone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on where I come from. See, it's it's all it's.
Speaker 1: If it weren't for Paul McCartney, I wouldn't have written
Speaker 1: this or Baby I Love Your Way because it's I'm
Speaker 1: doing a uh so. It's it's regular tuning, but I'm
Speaker 1: doing on the fifth string right up the top there
Speaker 1: on a G and then on the B string, I'm
Speaker 1: doing a B so, but I mute some of the strings.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like you're muting though, it's I'm only playing.
Speaker 1: And it was just me on acoustic. Andy Jones was
Speaker 1: the engineer, and they Humble Pie the rest of them
Speaker 1: were all sitting around me playing tablas and percussion, sitting
Speaker 1: on the floor all around me like hippies we were,
Speaker 1: and they were playing that and I was so it
Speaker 1: was all picking up on my acoustic mic as well.
Speaker 1: So it's a great, great vibe, I agree, Yeah, amazing vibe. Amazing. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thanks Peter. Thanks to Peter Frampton for taking
Speaker 1: us through his new album, Frampton Forgets the Words. To
Speaker 1: Hear It. Along with the playlist of our favorite Frampton songs,
Speaker 1: head to broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: broken Record Podcast, where we can find extended cuts of
Speaker 1: new and old episodes. You can follow us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at broken Record. Broken Records produced it Helpful Lea Rose,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez with
Speaker 1: engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and
Speaker 1: review us on your podcast app. The theme musics by
Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Bischman. Peace