Peter Frampton - All Blues/Frampton Forgets the Words

In his recently published autobiography [Do You Feel Like We Do?], Peter Frampton detailed personal health issues which have materialized within the past few years.  Sometime during his 2013 tour, Peter Frampton and his band were playing with a Frisbee backstage prior to a show.  He noted at the time that he was having difficulty running.  He chalked that up to “getting old”.  During a show two years later in Walker, Minnesota, he was kicking a beach ball off the stage and he fell.  He and his band joked that it was an “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” moment.  Three weeks later, it happened again as he tripped over a guitar cable.  It was then he thought something was amiss.  He went to see his doctor during a break in that tour.  His doctor referred him to a neurologist. 

He told the neurologist that he was having trouble with his arms and legs feeling weaker, and that putting anything in the overhead compartment of a plane was becoming more and more difficult.  The doctor had him do a finger flexor test, as well as having him hop on each leg ten times.  He was fine with his right leg, but not so good with his left leg.  Whatever was affecting him didn’t affect both sides of his body.  Since whatever was bothering Frampton didn’t affect both sides of his body, the doctor eliminated Lou Gehrig’s Disease [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis] as a cause but zeroed in on Inclusion Body Myositis [IBM].  Unlike ALS, IBM is not life-threatening, but it is life changing.  The disease is a progressive muscle disorder – he’s getting weaker in his legs, arms, hands and fingers.  IBM progresses at different speeds for different people.  Luckily for him, IBM is progressing slowly.  The disease’s progression is slow enough for him to decide he wants to record as much new music as possible before he can’t do it anymore.

Given his IBM diagnosis, Frampton and his band recorded three and a half album’s worth of material between September 2018 and April 2019.  The first installment of these recording is All Blues [2019].  He got the idea to do a blues album from a couple of tours he did with Steve Miller.  During Miller’s set each night, the two musicians would play a handful of blues numbers.  One such number was Freddie King’s Same Old Blues, which is the final song on All Blues.  I admit to having a bit of trepidation about this release.  Why?  Eric Clapton always refers to himself as a bluesman, but with him the results are mixed [in my opinion, anyway].  For all the great guitar playing, there is still the voice of a white Englishman singing songs written by black men from Mississippi.  Irish guitarist Gary Moore tired of the heavy metal game and remade himself as a “bluesman”.  He had the same vocal problem as Clapton, and as good a guitarist as he was, sometimes he tended to overplay like he was getting paid by the note.  Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher is the other side of the white blues coin.  Rory oozed the blues.  Rory thought of himself as a student of the blues, but he had the indescribable “IT” when it came to the blues.  I bring up these guys in the context of a piece about Peter Frampton because I had to wonder this – would a Frampton blues project be more like Clapton or Moore, like Rory Gallagher, or does it lie somewhere in between?  Then I reminded myself that the blues was nothing new to Peter Frampton.  Before Frampton Comes Alive made him a megastar, he played the blues with Humble Pie.  He still plays Four Day Creep in his sets [I saw him in 2011].  Having reminded myself of his Humble Pie past, I took the plunge into All Blues.

On All Blues, Frampton and his band played Frampton’s favorite blues songs, but with their own spin, their own arrangements.  Frampton’s playing is, as always, impeccable.  He doesn’t overplay.  Most of these songs I know – some of them I don’t.  The opening track is Muddy Waters’ I Just Want To Make Love To You.  With Kim Wilson [of Fabulous Thunderbirds fame] blowing the harp alongside, this was a good opening number.   There are Taj Mahal’s She Caught The Katy and Freddie King’s Me And My Guitar. They are closer to how Led Zeppelin might do them [think I Can’t Quit You].  I wondered how he was going to do Georgia On My Mind.  This song is so identified with Ray Charles, how could one cover it without sounding sacrilegious?  As I listened, the answer was simple – Frampton let his guitar do the singing for him.  I had the same thought about The Thrill Is Gone, BB King’s signature tune.  There aren’t that many words for Frampton to sing, which he does passably, but it just doesn’t feel right.  The saving grace here is Louisiana slide maestro Sonny Landreth.  For all the good guitar playing, he should have passed on this one.

Frampton then throws the listener a curveball with the title song, All Blues.  This isn’t blues – it’s jazz.  Not only jazz, but Miles Davis jazz.  This song is from Kind Of Blue.  Frampton brings guitarist Larry Carlton [four albums with Steely Dan] along for the ride.  Not only do the two guitarists sound magnificent, Frampton’s keyboardist Rob Arthur is simply perfect here.  Somewhere, Bill Evans is smiling.  Frampton’s cover of Bo Diddley’s You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover doesn’t utilize the signature Bo Diddley beat, but the rhythm section of bassist Glenn Worf and drummer Dan Wojciechowski still make it work.  Frampton’s slide playing is very tasty.  St. Louis Jimmy Oden’s 1942 standard Going Down Slow sounds tailor-made for Frampton’s current health struggles.  Frampton and his band dig deep for this one – it’s very well-done.  The same goes for Slim Harpo’s I’m a King Bee, where Frampton’s talk box makes an unexpected appearance [“buzz awhile…”].  The finale of All Blues is Freddie King’s Same Old Blues.  This version is faithful to the original, even down to the background singers. 

If Peter Frampton the 1970s megastar had made this album back in the day, he probably would have lost his audience, and critics would have savaged him.  But the megastar is long gone, replaced by a rock elder statesman.  As such, Peter Frampton made an excellent homage to the blues.  Though it isn’t perfect, it succeeds more than I thought possible.  Blues purists [of which I am not] might even like it.  The answer to the question I asked earlier [Clapton/Moore or Rory Gallagher], the answer, to these ears anyway, is closer to Rory.

Last Friday [April 23^rd] the second installment of Frampton’s “last recordings” dropped, the title of which is Frampton Forgets the Words.  As the title suggests, it’s an instrumental album.  Frampton has been here before, with his album Fingerprints [2006].  The album’s songs were mostly Peter Frampton originals, the lone exception being Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.  Frampton Forgets the Words, like All Blues before it, consists of covers of other people’s music.  His reasoning for this approach is simple – to write original music for as much as Frampton wanted to record would have taken a very long time.  He didn’t know how much longer his muscles would last to make/record more music.  Lack of time was the root of the problem that came with I’m In You, the album that followed Frampton Comes Alive.  The way he saw it, I’m In You was doomed because he didn’t have much time to work on it.  All the songs from the live record were many years in the making, but the record company wanted more “product” to sell to take advantage of Frampton’s wave of superstardom.  It matters not to me with All Blues and Frampton Forgets the Words because I have more of his guitar playing to hear. 

Frampton and his extremely capable band put down ten no-vocal versions of songs from artists ranging from Marvin Gaye and Lenny Kravitz to David Bowie and Sly & The Family Stone.  Frampton and company cast a wide net to capture music from different genres, from soul, funk, jazz, art rock, country, and a solo Beatle.  Of the ten songs, I knew six of them.  His take of Sly & The Family Stone’s If You Want Me To Stay [from 1973’s Fresh] is a better listen than Sly’s original.  There are two other soul covers – Marvin Gaye’s One More Heartache and Stevie Wonder’s I Don't Know Why.  I don’t know either one, so I don’t have any preconceived notions of what they are supposed to sound like.  One reviewer described Frampton’s version of One More Heartache as “soul, psychedelia, and the blues coexisting in the exact same moment.”  I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I don’t have better words to describe it so I’ll go with it.  The jazz number is Michel Colombier piece Dreamland, where Frampton plays Jaco Pistorius’ bass parts on his 1954 Les Paul.  This was an inspired choice.

Peter Frampton cites Roxy Music’s Avalon album as one of his all-time favorites.  He chose to record the title track.  Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry’s lounge lizard schtick never appealed to me, but it’s his album, not mine.  Frampton does a good take of a sleepy song.  To each his own, I suppose.  Frampton also felt compelled to record his own version of Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way.  My only comment about this song is this – why?  He’d probably answer with “why not?”  As inspired a choice as Dreamland was for this album, I put these two songs in the “uninspiring” category.

Frampton made a couple more interesting choices.  One was Radiohead’s Reckoner [In Rainbows, 2007].  I really like this one. Frampton replaces Thom Yorke’s falsetto vocals [an acquired taste that I have yet to acquire] with his guitar.  The song is much better for it.  I like it a lot – it has kind of a floating, spaced-out vibe to it.  The other choice from left field comes in an Alison Krauss song, Maybe [Forget About It, 1999].  Alison Krauss has one of the most angelic voices one could ever hope to hear.  Frampton’s guitar tone captures the mood of the song perfectly.

The remaining two choices of songs each has its own personal story behind it.  One is David Bowie’s Loving the Alien [Tonight, 1984].  David Bowie and Peter Frampton were friends dating back to their school days.  In 1987, Bowie did his Glass Spider tour.  By this time, Frampton’s career had gone downhill and picked up speed.  It had been eleven years since Frampton Comes Alive made him a star.  Bowie needed a guitar player.  He offered the job to Frampton, who jumped at the chance of being “just the guitar player” without the pressure of being the front man.  Bowie let him take a long solo during the show – this was the song.  Recording this song is Frampton’s way of saying “thank you.”  It’s a good one.  One final song is George Harrison’s Isn’t It a Pity [All Things Must Pass, 1970].  This isn’t Frampton first Harrison cover.  He also covered While My Guitar Gently Weeps [The Beatles, 1968] on his 2003 release Now.  Frampton said the reason he chose this one was because when he got the call to work on All Things Must Pass, Isn’t It a Pity was the first song he heard from the album when he first set foot in Abbey Road Studios.  Frampton effortlessly captured the power and majesty of George’s answer to Paul McCartney’s Hey Jude.

I mentioned that he recorded enough music for three and a half albums.  He has enough blues songs recorded for a second blues album, and the remainder are Frampton originals.  Now that COVID restrictions are lifting somewhat. hopefully he’ll find the strength to finish the fourth album.  When those two albums will come out is anyone’s guess.  In the meantime, All Blues and Frampton Forgets the Words will tide me over just fine.