SOLOS to leave you SPEECHLESS
On Frampton Forgets the Words, the rock icon lets his Les Paul do the talking.
IN 2006, PETER FRAMPTON’S keen desire to shine the primary spotlight on his guitar playing — and perhaps to put to rest the teen-idol stigma that had frustrated him since his 1976 blockbuster, Frampton Comes Alive
— was reciprocated with a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Pop Performance. The album was Fingerprints, a 14-track guitar tour de force that featured cool covers like Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” along with funky, accomplished originals and guest appearances from Hank Marvin, Warren Haynes, Mike McCready, John Jorgenson, and a reunited Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.
In the years since, Frampton has cut a slew of solid albums that speak to his legacy as both a pivotal jazz-inspired rock player who bucked the British blues boom and an open-minded elder statesman, as likely to champion Radiohead and Pearl Jam as Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell. Indeed, it’s Radiohead’s thorny and lurching “Reckoner” that acts as leadoff track on the Peter Frampton Band’s latest album, the instrumental covers collection aptly titled Frampton Forgets the Words.
Frampton and his band — keyboardist Rob Arthur, bassist Steve Mackey, guitarist Adam Lester, and drummer Dan Wojciechowski — perform a spectrum of his favorite soul and rock tunes, ranging from Sly & the Family Stone’s “If You Want Me to Stay” and George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity” to David Bowie’s “Loving the Alien” and Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” In addition to the elegant melodic heads in each song, the far-reaching album finds the 71-year-old guitarist evoking a similar modal majesty in his solos as he did on Frampton Comes Alive and Humble Pie’s 1971 classic Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore [see page 57], but with an arguably more mindful delivery.
Perhaps, Frampton says, the encroaching physical limitations from his 2018 diagnosis of Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM) has informed a certain savoring of each note. Following his diagnosis, Frampton set out in summer 2019 on what he billed as Finale: The Farewell Tour, where he skillfully, and with apparent joy, reached into his ample back pages, showering outdoor amphitheaters across the country with that roiling, Leslie-assisted churn on “It’s a Plain Shame” and “Doobie Wah,” and digging into the brisk, Les Paul–plus-Marshall bark of Humble Pie classics like “Four-Day Creep” and “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” But the sense that this really was his goodbye was a concerning one.
In conversation, Frampton remains upbeat, resilient, gracious and still allied with the same excitement that first stirred his desire to play as a kid, busking on the steps of Bromley Technical High School with a young David Bowie. With the latest and most accurate signature version of his legendary, lost-and-found three-pickup 1954 Gibson Black Beauty — a.k.a. the Phenix — now in production at the Gibson factory in Nashville, Frampton, too, it seems, has once more risen to new heights and plumbed new depths as a player, producer and performer. As he wrote of his many ups and downs in his best-selling 2020 autobiography, Do You Feel Like I Do?, “I’ve been to the moon and back without a rocket. But I’ve always managed to stay optimistic. There’s always reason to hold out hope.”
I“NOW THAT I DON’T HAVE FOREVER, IT’S BROUGHT EVEN MORE SOUL INTO MY PLAYING”
’m so fond of your phrasing and touch on this record. The vibrato is very careful and deliberate, and the tone feels really curated, as well. Is there wisdom coming to you as a player now that might not have been there 50 years ago when you played with Humble Pie?
It’s very hard to explain the things one does on a guitar, because I’ve been doing it for so long. I will say this: I do think that we are the sum of our years. We gain wisdom. I’ve been playing all my life. I’ve listened to many, many different players and many different pieces of music that I just love, and I will often sit down and play them note-for-note simply because I love them. Now, what has perhaps played into this feeling you’re describing in my playing, along with having all these years of experience, is that, when I was diagnosed with IBM, my muscle disease, it was obviously a devastating diagnosis, knowing that one day certain muscles won’t work anymore, and those muscles are in my hands, which obviously
I need as a guitar player.