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Twenty years ago in San Francisco, a young man from the South London
suburbs made one of the biggest-selling rock 'n' roll records of all time.
The double album Frampton Comes Alive, recorded onstage at the hippy palace
Winterland, topped the American charts for 17 weeks, selling a staggering
20 million copies. It continues to sell over 100,000 copies a year. They
might not have been joking when they stated in the movie Wayne's World II
that the album was issued at birth to every kid in the American suburbs!
Frampton Comes Alive hijacked the Seventies. The songs 'Show Me The Way',
'Do You Feel Like I Do' and 'Baby I Love Your Way'(recently a hit for Big
Mountain) were constantly on the radio around the world. Their trademark
sound, the talk-box - the weird wah-wah-wah-ing plastic tube that linked
singer and guitar, looked like a strange sexual device and sounded like a
kazoo player being electrocuted - necessitated several teeth implants. At
a ceremony in London last month, Frampton presented it to the Hard Rock
Cafe.
Earlier this summer, though, Frampton and talk-box were back onstage in
San Francisco - at the other legendary hippie hangout The Fillmore West.
"Winterland", says Frampton, "is now a car-park." He was recording another
live album, called - what else? - Frampton Comes Alive II. It's due for
release in October.
The blond ringlets are gone that helped make him a pin-up when, as
frontman of pop group The Herd, he was voted The Face of 1968. Nowadays he
looks more like a blond British Springsteen - but he still sounds the same.
And the audience, laid-back and happy, look like they didn't bother to go
home from the last Comes Alive concert. Marijuana smoke curls up towards the
row of chandeliers. "Every time the wind blew my way", Peter Frampton
laughs, "I had this big grin on my face".
Frampton these days, like most stars who survived the Seventies, has
nothing to do with drugs. He doesn't drink. He bicycles and lifts weights.
He even gave up smoking a year ago. One of the reasons that Seventies rock 'n'
roll nostalgia has become such big business is that in an era when rock stars
spend more time at Alcoholics Anonymous or working out at the gym with
their accountants, we can all look back without danger to a time of
decadence - a kind of Safe Excess.
"The Seventies was the party era", says Frampton. "And I was definitely
part of that! You lived in a strange surreal world where bizarre behaviour
seemed real." Like the party in Los Angeles where guest of honour Elton John
locked himself in the bathroom and refused to come out until Frampton arrived.
Frampton walked up to the front door, mobbed by desperate partygoers. He
knocked on the bathroom door. "It's okay, Elton. I'm here". Elton rushed
out into his arms like a long lost son, sobbing - and the party began.
Or the time he stayed with The Who in a five-star hotel in the States and
watched The Who's legendary wildman drummer Keith Moon - fed up with the
snooty attitude of the hotel receptionist - drive a rented car right
through the glass doors and into the hotel lobby, smashing into the front
desk and demanding the key to his room.
Frampton had always loved The Who - even though they'd once dangled him
out of a window by his feet to ruffle his popstar ringlets! The only group he
loved more was The Small Faces.
"When I joined The Herd it was as a Blues guitarist. Then one day the
manager looked at us all and pointed at me and said 'You'll sing!' I said
'I don't sing'. He said, 'You do now. You look the part.'"
One day ? helping out at a recording session for French rock hearthrob
Johnny Hallyday - he met one of his biggest heroes - Small Faces frontman
Stevie Marriott.
"That Johnny Hallyday session was basically the Small Faces and me - which
was a fantasy realised, because if there was ever a band that I wanted to
be in, it was the Small Faces! We were like chalk and cheese", says Frampton.
"But we hit it off right away. He knew what I was going through with The
Herd, that I hated that the accent was on the looks, not the music. And
Steve idenitified, because he'd been through the same thing a couple of
years earlier, when he was the Face Of '66 or whatever."
One of the best moments in his life was when Marriott asked him to join
the Small Faces. Unfortunately, the rest of the band vetoed it.
"It was nothing personal - they just didn't want to split the money five
ways! It's funny, I remember I was at the producer Glynn John's house in
Surrey - Steve was playing in London with the Small Faces, which was their
last show - and Glynn was playing me this great album, which turned out to
be Led Zeppelin's first album! And while I was listening to this, the
phone rings. It's Steve, calling from the gig saying, 'I've left the Small
Faces. I can't handle it any more! Can I join your group?' And I said, 'Of
course you can!' and that's how Humble Pie was born.
"The postscript to this is the following day I'm in my grungy little flat
in Hammersmith and I get a call from Ronnie Lane saying, 'Can we come and see
you?' So the three Small Faces came round and asked me if I would join to
replace Steve! I said, 'You've put me in an extremely difficult position,
because I'd like to play with us all together.' But I'd already given my
allegiance to Steve. And they brought in Rod (Stewart) and Ronnie (Wood).
It took two people to replace him!"
Rod Stewart was an old pal of Frampton's. Aside from a love of blues and
R&B, "when I was 15 or 16 we used to jam together at the After Hours
Club" - Rod and Peter shared a passion for football. Later, when they had
dollars to burn, they would both buy American soccer teams - Frampton
co-owned The Philadelphia Furies with Rick Wakeman of Yes, Paul Simon of
Simon & Garfunkel and The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger. "Of course",
Frampton laughs, "It was a total failure!"
Humble Pie moved to the States. "Originally", says Frampton, "we went
there because we didn't want to be screamed at! That's the reason we left our
respective bands-to get away from all that. In America we had no prior
history, we were just accepted for the music."
They embarked on a series of gruelling 200-plus nights a year tours. In
the Seventies, a decade before MTV was invented, the only way to let people
know your band existed was to be there, in their face, every night. But that
kind of touring comes with its darker side.
"I wasn't really into drugs at that time. I was a late bloomer in
everything. With Humble Pie it was just a good glass of wine and a joint.
Though the joint", he extends his arms like he's just caught a fish, "was
about that long! It was the thing to do almost", he turns serious. "You
had to. At least it was very difficult to avoid."
Even harder when the two finally decided to go their separate ways in '71
and Frampton launched his solo career.
"It's much more difficult being a solo artist than being in a band in that
respect, because you've got to do everything yourself. With a band, if one
guy's got an off day, another guy will take over."
The split with Steve Marriott was acrimonious. Frampton shrugs, "Steve and
I had just reached the point where there were two leaders in the band -
except that he could shout louder than me! The band started off as a very, very
democratic situation - whatever anybody wrote, we recorded. Then gradually
its direction got more and more narrow as we started playing America, and
it was obvious what the audience wanted ? Rock Blues, which I love, but I was
also writing a lot of different styles, which we did in the beginning when
we were more this Rock R&B band with Jazz over the top, and there wasn't
this outlet anymore.
"So I was feeling a little frustrated, musically. Really I think it was
just coming of age. Humble Pie had been like an apprenticeship for me. My whole
guitar style seemed to start to gel. I had definite plans and I wanted to
do them. So I told them - and they all got mad! They couldn't understand why.
And I couldn't explain why. It just didn't feel right for me. And because
I left, their album Rocking The Fillmore shot up the charts. And I had five
years of starting at the bottom again."
Frampton's solo career pre-Comes Alive was not a success. It was only when
he hit on the idea of choosing the best tracks from his failed solo
catalogue and playing them before a live audience that it soared into the
stratosphere.
"People are wrong to think I'm a multi-millionaire", says Frampton. "I got
paid a lot less than you think. A lot of the money never found its way to
me. I can't mention names and it's history, but it happened to everyone
back then-The Beatles, The Stones. We're talking millions of dollars."
But a lot of what he did make was spent on the inevitable Seventies sex,
drugs and partying. "I was a binger. The thought of it now", he shudders,
"is unbelievable. I can't believe we wasted so much time."
Barely two years later, his fortunes took a quick reversal. 1978 "was not
a terrific year," he understates. He starred in the ill-fated movie Sgt
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - scorned by the critics and a box office flop.
A car crash in the Bahamas left him with a broken arm and serious muscle
damage. He broke-up with his longtime fiancee Penny. There were rumours
that he had become addicted to heroin.
"All true", says Frampton, "except the last one. "I've never done heroin.
I think at a party once I might have snorted something like that without
knowing it. It's a period I don't enjoy talking about. But I learnt a lot
from it. I value life more now. After the car accident, I know what I had
to do to get back to where I was, to get my arm working again. You can have
all the money in the world, but if you lose your health and your happiness,
it's nothing."
The Framptons are a close family, and one of Peter's way of keeping
grounded was to go back home to Kent to see his parents and his brother
graphic artist and part-time musician Clive. "But it was hard, because
I was constantly on tour in the States. So they used to come out here
to see me."
In the end, he decided the best solution was to move his family to the
States. "I bought them a house in Westchester, New York, around the corner
from my house, with a couple of acres. It was beautiful. My mum and dad
were avid gardeners, so this was their big chance!" But they didn't take to
America as easily as their son and moved back home to England.
Peter was never tempted to come back and join them. "I miss England very
much. I still feel absolutely English. I haven't given up my British
citizenship. But America became my home. I created relationships here - I
got married here, had children and that was it."
Frampton's first two marriages ended in divorce - though he still sees his
12-year-old daughter and seven year old son. Undaunted, he's about to try
for third time lucky with current fiancee Tina, from Cincinatti, Ohio.
They plan to set up house in Nashville, since the Los Angeles earthquake
finally drove Frampton from his longtime home.
"My fiancee's family have got a couple of cabins up in Nashville - it's
beautiful there - rolling hills, green, it reminds me of England a lot.
It's great, because they said I can just go up there with my acoustic guitar
and just be in the woods. We're having a brand new house built. You know," he
says, "I've not been this happy really. I'm much happier now than I was
being the Frampton Comes Alive Peter."
So why is he doing Frampton Comes Alive II, then?
"I play best live. There's something about when I play live that you can't
get from a studio. There's the audience, there's the added adrenalin,
there's no 'take two' - you only get one chance so you put everything into it.
It's very much from the heart.
I feel with the last couple of albums that I got back on track, writing
what I feel, like the old days - and those albums didn't really see the light
of day. So this is just more of me, live."
Frampton says he always thinks of himself as "the guy who does the live
thing". It was this thought that rescued him from six months of depression
in 1991 when Steve Marriott died. Frampton's solo career was foundering
when he ran into Marriott in England and jammed with him in a pub.
"When I was back in L.A, I called him up and said, 'What do you think
about us trying to write some songs and make a record?' and he said, 'Well,
come over then'. So I went to England. The first day we got together the
sparks were flying creatively. Next thing I know, he's on a plane to Los
Angeles and we were hanging out at my studio in North Hollywood every day,
writing. He sat down one day, after a couple of weeks, and said, 'I never
thought I'd work with you again, I really didn't. But I'm really enjoying
this.' I said, 'The feeling is absolutely mutual.'
"Because what had happened was at the beginning of Humble Pie I was sort
of a pupil of his, in a way. Then I went off and did my own thing, solidified
my style and came back in my mind on the same level as him. I don't
think he ever thought of it that way, but that's the way I saw it. It was
devastating when he died."
Marriott flew home to Essex after working in Los Angeles with Frampton,
fell asleep, jetlagged, with a lighted cigarette and died in the resulting
blaze. Frampton found out when a kindly soul from an English tabloid newspaper
called up and demanded a comment. But after six months of "sulking" he
thought, "You're the guy who does the live thing - so, go out and play
live!"
And, doing so, does he hope to recreate rock 'n' roll history.
"People have said, how can you recreate Frampton Comes Alive? I'm not",
Frampton insists. "But if there's one aspect of you that you feel is the
best, why shouldn't you do it again?"
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