Peter Frampton
Show me the way
Frampton comes alive … on the topic of musical collaboration
Whether in the studio or live on stage, Grammy winner Peter Frampton loves to play his guitar alongside other musicians.
He has written music for or performed with nearly every big name in rock ‘n’ roll history – George Harrison, Ringo Starr, David Bowie, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King and the Doobie Brothers, among others – and loved every minute of it.
He says the energy of other artists fuels his own creative process, and the collaborative experience itself has no rules, freeing both musicians to explore new territory.
“That’s how the guitar keeps on getting reinvented every 15 or 20 years,” Frampton says, “and how art and photography and writing and all the arts, they reinvent themselves by people breaking the rules and doing it differently.”
This year, Frampton embarks on a tour with Cheap Trick that rolls into the Ohio State Fair Aug. 8.
“I’ve always admired (Cheap Trick),” Frampton says. “They’ve always had great material.”
Frampton says audiences will get the best of both bands.
“We’ll do the songs that people expect, obviously, and hopefully, we’ll throw in some that we haven’t done for a while,” Frampton says.
That means looking for Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me,” “Dream Police” and “Surrender,” as well as Frampton’s hits “Show Me the Way,” “Do You Feel Like We Do” and “Baby, I Love Your Way.”
“My career has always been about playing live,” Frampton says, eager to please his longtime fans with hits from Frampton Comes Alive!, one of the best-selling live albums of all time.
But to categorize Frampton as an aged rocker relying on his past greatness would be a mistake. He has been heralded as one of the most progressive thinking artists out there.
“We have to look forward,” he says, “and if you get wrapped up in thinking about what was and what you wish it was, then you’re missing what’s coming.”
Looking forward means pushing himself creatively and musically. And that’s why he loves collaborations. Case in point: his partnership with the Cincinnati Ballet in 2014 yielded a new mini-album, Hummingbird in a Box, a body of work that critics called “…stunningly subtle,” that will leave serious guitar fans “in rapture.” It was a work that he composed specifically for his then-hometown ballet company – he has since moved to Nashville – to dance to, an exercise that challenged him to conjure a distinct beginning, middle and end to his compositions. That’s not always an easy task for a composer deeply influenced by American jazz.
Collaborations also help Frampton break through what he calls the Brick Wall Syndrome.
“I’m climbing up this wall, you know,” Frampton says, describing the process of composing, “and I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. Then I’ll either play with somebody, write with somebody or hear something on the radio that just knocks me down and say, ‘Okay, back to the drawing board.’”
Frampton, with a little urging, recently took a look at his collaborative process itself, and some of the insights he has gleaned:
Start Early. Frampton and David Bowie went to the same school in the U.K. and played Buddy Holly tunes together at lunchtime. If the only collaborations you have are work or school assignments, you’ll never experience the joy of finding like-minded partners who push you, or grow up to be your lifelong friend who has an alter ego named Ziggy.
Keep an Open Mind. “Oh, I never really have any expectations,” says Frampton. “I’ve stopped expecting anything and just look forward to just enjoying myself.” In 1970, Frampton, while a founding member of Humble Pie, worked with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass in the Beatles’ Abbey Road Studio. Pedal steel guitarist Pete Drake came to the sessions and brought a device called a “talk box” that sparked Frampton’s imagination and became one of his trademark guitar effects.
Bring Your Best Self. “I know when I walk into a room with someone to write with them whether it’s going to work out before we even sit down,” Frampton says. Going in cold is the hardest thing because there is little time to build a relationship. “Luckily for me, it’s been 95 percent (great) every time … and 5 percent, I would say, didn’t work for whatever reason.”
Learn on the Job. Hummingbird in a Box was the first time Frampton had ever composed for dance and, while critics loved it, Frampton says the experience taught him how he would do things differently next time. “I can see I had no idea what I was letting myself in for,” Frampton says about dance phrasing, “which I kind of liked, doing something blind; it’s a challenge.”
Be the Master of Ceremonies. Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Sonny Landreth, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, B.B. King and others came together under Frampton’s Guitar Circus, a highly successful concept that toured in 2013-14. At the age of 18, Frampton was also one of the founding members of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s first supergroups, Humble Pie. If you make a funhouse, people will come and play.
Keep Your Sense of Humor. Twenty-four albums, multiple Grammy awards, thousands of lyrics and hundreds of collaborations with big-name talent combined with years of touring might have set Frampton’s ego aloft to the rarified air of rock legend-land. And yet it hasn’t. He remains approachable, kind, quick to laugh and to please. He’s appeared on The Simpsons and feuded with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. If Peter Frampton calls with a new project, you can be sure that most musicians would race to pick up the phone.
So what was the one collaboration that Frampton looks back on as his favorite? Let’s travel back down Abbey Road.
“I mean, obviously, I got inspired by various different things George (Harrison) was doing,” Frampton recalls, referring to not only the music being made but also the great musicians Harrison surrounded himself with. “He was at his zenith of writing … so I just saw someone at their creative height and learned a lot from that.”
Cindy Gaillard is an Emmy award-winning producer with WOSU Public Media. Learn more about the weekly arts and culture magazine show Broad & High at www.wosu.org/broadandhigh.
BOX:
Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick
Ohio Expo Center
Aug. 8
WEB REFERS
-A Dublin doctor whose home jukebox is stocked with Frampton tunes
-The local club responsible for model train displays at the State Fair
-A state fair first-prize pie baker from Grandview Heights
-A Dublin student who has been part of the fair’s baking competitions
