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

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