He’s already talked at length about his diagnosis of the autoimmune disease Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM) and how it will eventually end his touring career, so Peter Frampton and I only briefly visited the morose and took a jog with the upsides of his situation instead.
“My family is calling me more. It's brought us together, I think,” Frampton, 69, explained. It’s also led him to a new covers album, All Blues, plus three more records including a solo LP. Read our full chat below.
Peter Frampton w/Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Evening. Sat. Sept. 7, 7:30 p.m. $29.50 & up. MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, 4802 N. U.S. Hwy 301 N., Tampa. livenation.com.
Congrats on the No. 1 blues chart debut, numbers-wise the best performance since Fingerprints — I imagine that doesn’t get old, even at this point in your career, but what’s the accomplishment feel like when you consider where you are in your career and the team that is helping you on this series of albums?
Well, it was a complete shock and surprise that it came out and went straight to no. 1, but it's been five weeks now and it’s still no. 1, so I'm just amazed. It's phenomenal. The acceptance has been unbelievable. I can't really complain at all. It's something that I never expected. Like, I never expected Fingerprints to get the accolades that it did. And so, it's always when I do something that I can really get my teeth into, and just challenged myself.
I'm not known as a blues player as far my style of playing. I love the blues, always have. I love jazz, I always have, but I am neither one of those. I'm not a blues player, or a jazz player; I'm just somewhere in between there. But I always had total admiration and love for both styles. So this was time to dig in, and having played a couple of summers with Steve Miller — I've known him for most of my life, he's such a wonderful man and encouraging — for every show he just got me out there, and we'd play anything from two to six blues numbers within his act, not in mine. And it was very enjoyable.
So I got so excited about playing the blues again that I thought, "Well, with the situation the way it is, the quickest way to get into the studio with my band is to go in and do covers." And so just do my favorite blues songs. Well, we ended up doing that, plus there's enough for two albums, two blues albums in the can. So, yeah, and the other one's just good. I'm very happy.
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Kind of Blue is your desert island album, and there’s no guitar on it, but the title track is on All Blues. Can you talk about the things you hear on those songs that — if this makes sense — that aren’t on the tape. The guitar parts that Peter Frampton hears? Maybe on “All Blues” in particular as far as and how Rob and Adam prepped you for that one-take recording before Larry came and cleaned up?
What I hear on that is, it's just it's it's all down to the choice of notes. They're all 12 bars, basically, just slightly different, slightly mutated 12 bars. I don't know what it is. I can't explain to you. I mean, I normally wouldn't be attracted to an album — especially as my favorite album — without any guitar on it. But I would have killed to play on that, and so would a million other players. But it's, it's cool to just play along with it, and I've done that many times.
So when we got into the studio, Robert done his pieces on the drag; I think he had the hardest job of all. And he rose to the occasion with phenomenal playing on that. Then Adam and I just worked out the horn part [hums the tune]… those beautiful phrases, as simplistic as they are. I love the lead as well. The first take was us doing the little riffs, and I did the solo live, then came back and did the melody afterwards. That's how that was done. But it was basically as lives it gets.
How old were you when you realized that you could start playing harp licks like Little Walters on guitar? What was the practice like for that?
Well, it was actually during Humble Pie when when I started listening to Little Walter because Steve Marriott was always listening to Little Walter. I got this love of his playing. I mean, there's nobody else like quite like Little Walter. And it's so difficult to do. Most of his stuff, it's just I don't know how he does it, you know, playing off of it a little tiny bit, myself. He’s just an incredible player.
I've always tried to learn, like Junior Walker, I would even learn his licks on guitar. There's certain people that when they play, I've got to learn that — I don't care whether it's guitar or not. Little Walter… he was one of the first, I'm not sure if he was the first, to put his harmonica through a guitar amplifier so it distorted like guitar. I think he wanted to be a guitar player. So it's him trying to be a guitar player, and me trying to be a blues harp player from the other way. Just phenomenal choice of notes — he was oozing soul.
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We're talking a lot about Humble Pie. What’s it like, for you, inside, to play “Going Down Slow” in front of your fans who always knew you were more than the guitar player who left Humble Pie? What's it like to be with them and play that song?
Well, we're not actually doing that one live, but doing doing doing it in the studio was very emotional, obviously. I didn't really realize what it meant. I knew what the lyrics were, but it didn't really sink in until we started playing it. And I think the hairs on the back of all of our necks turned up on that one. It was, again, one of those first or second takes, and all live playing and singing. I knew that when I first started singing that first verse, that everyone in the band and control was listening to me. It was almost like we were on stage because we were all playing live like we do when we're on stage. It was a very emotional take, I remember, that.
Is the reason you're not playing it live a personnel thing, or just because you don't want to rehash that every night?
Oh, no, it's not that that's not the reason. It's just that we can only do so many, and the show has to be built. It doesn't matter whether it's the best track on the album; if it doesn't fit in a certain place in the act, then I'm not going to do it. So we've chosen three or four from All Blues.
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OK. And to kind of hit back on that tour, I think you're on a break right now…
Yes.
How much of this tour gets in the way of you getting in the studio and kind of working on album three, since no. two is done, so then maybe album three and four…
We've already finished four.
OK, so you're almost done with four…
[Frampton laughing] There's another blues record in the can. There's an instrumental covers album in the can, obviously because I could do these without writing anything. And then I started writing. And then we've almost finished cutting tracks, and overdubbing, on a Peter Frampton solo record. So there's actually there's three in the can now.
Alright, so gone are the days of procrastinating on writing songs in the Bahamas?
No [laughing]. I've not recorded this much in this short of space ever in my life.
Your motto is to learn something new every day. What was that thing for you yesterday?
Yesterday I came up with something on an open tuning that I hadn't realized before. And it was on an open tuning that I have used for years, just an open G. I found a different voicing for something, and it was inspiring. And I had a capo on, and the combination of the two things led me to start writing something, so I wrote something yesterday [laughs].
Right on, and I apologize for kind of going off track from All Blues, but there was something when you kicked off the tour in Tulsa. You responded to people talking about this being the final tour. You said, "We'll see about that." And I know that the press material says that this is the last tour, but you know, as you've kind of gone through a big leg of this tour, what is your feeling on that now?
I coined a new phrase this morning — "realistically cautious." I don't ever want to — and you've heard me say this in other things — but I don't want to go out there and play substandard to what I can play today.
It's very, very slightly affecting certain things in my hands. Not to the point where it is making things more difficult to play, but I see where we're going. And so I just have to… you know, Europe is waiting to find out if we can go there. I would kill to get to Europe and the U.K. one more time to go say "goodbye" over there. But I can't really say that right now because that wouldn't be until late spring, or early summer, so I have to wait and see.
You talked about finding new things to do after the diagnosis manifests itself — and that's a morose thing, like you just explained. And there is that silver lining about awareness being raised about IMB and myositis. There’ve been lot of donations for research. Your son said, “We’re Framptons, we’re survivors,” but how much have fans, family, or maybe even Kim Wilson who had to pass on an initial session because of heart surgery — how much have they been able to offer real relief for you, or break, from all this stuff that you just talked about?
Um, I think family is the most important thing, and they've come to… they're calling me more. It's brought us together, I think, and that, that support is big.
I love the support of my fans and people out there on the internet. When I walk down the street, in Nashville, that's where I live, people say "Hi." I was in the coffee shop this morning, and a very nice man came up to me and said, "Sorry to hear, I'm a huge fan." And that really makes you feel good to see how much people really do care. I had no idea. It really is much, much appreciated.
And I want to get this last question in since you're such a multifaceted person, and I don't know how to ask this without it sounding like a sound bite type of thing, but I really do have to know. Who do you have in this Democratic primary?
Oh, I'm not going there. It's too early to say.
OK, I had to ask because I was like, "Man, I wonder what Frampton thinks at this point, because I'm very confused."
Yeah, no, no, I don't really… I changed my mind a bunch of times already. So you know.
Just like the rest of us.
I don't know.
Well, thank you so much for your time. Congrats on the album and, you know, congrats for being on the road. We look forward to seeing you in Tampa with this bill, which is epic.
Absolutely. Can't wait. Cheers. All righty, bye for now.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 5, 2019.