A Conversation with Peter Frampton – HuffPost 6.6.11
Mike Ragogna: Peter!
Peter Frampton: Hello. It’s me.
MR: I’m happy you’re able to talk with me today.
PF: No problem. We’re covering a lot of things with one conversation.
MR: FYI, Thank You Mr Churchhill is probably my favorite album by you beyondFrampton Comes Alive! and your Frampton album.
PF: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
MR: I love it because it’s so personal, and it really seems like you were quite committed to that record.
PF: Well, after I took a break from vocals and did the Fingerprints CD, which was beforeThank You Mr Churchhill, and something I had always wanted to do. It just put me in a space where I realized that the next album was going to be vocal, but I decided to take it back to where I came from. Basically, it was time to do a little biography. So, most of the songs are about how I started as a human being, how I started as a musician, and how things have affected me along the way. So, there’s a lot of family stuff in there, as well as what has influenced me musically.
MR: Going back to Fingerprints, there was a certain Grammy involved there, right?
PF: Oh yes, that was definitely a surprise…it was a welcome surprise. It’s very nice to finally get my first Grammy, actually, and I didn’t sing a note on there, it was all for my guitar playing, which I’m very appreciative of.
MR: And you did not take that as any kind of a hint, did you?
PF: Well, I found it very difficult to sing again (laughs). No, I think it’s been something that I didn’t know how much would mean to me, especially after starting off and getting into bands very early on–not because of the way I sang, but the way I played. Then, along the way, the looks kind of confused the issue–the image was too powerful for the musician almost. So, I think Fingerprints turned that around for a lot of people. For my peers to give me the nod with the Grammy was…well, it was a wonderful prescription, let’s put it that way.
MR: Beautifully said. Hey, we’re at the 35th anniversary of the Frampton Comes Alive!album. Did it sneak up on you? How do you feel about its 35th anniversary?
PF: In some ways, it’s been a long time, and in some ways, it hasn’t been a long time at all. I think that it was a great opportunity, at this point, to do for the first time ever on world tour, Frampton Comes Alive!, including the extra tracks on the deluxe edition, which wouldn’t fit on vinyl, but were included on the remix. So, we’ll be doing an hour and forty ofFrampton Comes Alive!, from beginning to end; then, there will be an intermission; and then, there’ll be another hour and ten minutes of highlights from the rest of my albums. So, it will be a three-hour evening, and sometimes, we’ll do …Comes Alive! first, and sometimes we’ll do it second, depending on how we feel. Also, there’s a really nice, limited edition scrapbook that I put together with Universal to come out, and that’s going to be available through my website, Frampton.com, and also on iTunes. Also, Warren Haynes did a tribute “Do You Feel…,” which is an added track. Warren has been a great friend for many years, and he lent himself to the project and it’s a fantastic version. Also, one last thing–every night on the tour, we’ll be recorded by Abbey Road Live, and we will be making a fully mixed and mastered three CD package at the end of the evening of what you just saw and heard. So, you can either pick that up at the show or they’ll mail it to you.
MR: You’re celebrating one of the most classic and best selling albums of all time, and it’s amazing for anyone to have achieved that. Back in the day, how did it feel?
PF: Well, it was a very surreal period, where it almost didn’t seem like it was happening to me. It was happening to this…it was an entity. It was so huge at that time that it was very hard to get a handle on it because things were moving so fast at that particular time, and everybody wanted a piece, you know? Now, looking back on it, it’s almost impossible to feel it was me, even though I know it was and I lived it and breathed it. Now is such a different period for me. I’ll always be remembered for Frampton Comes Alive!, but I’ve got so much other work that I’ve done since that, that I feel it’s almost like after Frampton Comes Alive!ran it’s course, my career–I’ll say it– “Petered” out. It was almost like starting again from scratch, and I feel that it’s now built up to a level where I’m playing places that I haven’t played in many years. We’re playing big amphitheatres on my own, which is like “an evening with.” So, I’ve worked my way back up, as it were, as far as being able to play to more and more people each year. I just have never stopped, basically.
MR: Of course, proof of that being you sang the national anthem at…
PF: …I did the national anthem in Chicago and Cincinnati, and I did it on the talk box–I sang it once, and then I did it on the talk box. People were singing along when I sang it, and then when I went into a reprise of it with the talk box, it was deathly silent because people were so shocked, and they were just laughing. It’s a such a funny sound, but people loved it, and they just went crazy for it.
MR: That’s actually a good question. Back when you were using the talk box, it was all in good fun, wasn’t it?
PF: Oh, yeah. The reason that I used it was because I’d always heard that sound. It’s been made by many different instruments and electronic effects and stuff. As soon as I got one myself, the idea was to communicate with it, not just as a sound, but to actually communicate with this weird sound. I immediately saw the humor in it, and when you talk through it to people, you just see a million smiles because it’s one of those sounds that makes you laugh.
MR: And you certainly popularized it with so many people having used it ever since. It just keeps resurfacing.
PF: Well, I guess a lot of different people have used it. I was not the first to use it, and I’m definitely not the last.
MR: I also want to ask you about your guitar. Are you still playing your Gibson Custom Peter Frampton Les Paul?
PF: Yes, that is definitely my main instrument. I do play other guitars during the show, but the black Les Paul has always been my favorite and suits most of the material.
MR: Nice. Being so influential, what advice do you have for new artists?
PF: New players and new guitarists, all I can say is listen to as many players as you can and steal from as many of them as you can–all their best licks. Then, when you’ve got their licks down, one day you’ll wake up and you won’t sound like you’re doing them, you’ll just sound like you because you’ve developed a style by putting everybody else’s together. Then, that just becomes a library of licks that you’ve learned from other people, and then you’ll play them your way. As far as the business is concerned, never let anybody tell you what to play or what to write because if you chase a trend, you’ll be late, always. Always stay true to your original ideas. I think that’s how trends are made–by something new–not by chasing the tail of someone else.
MR: Nice. I hope that you have a great tour, Peter, and I really appreciate your time to talk today.
PF: Very good. Thank you for having me.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney