UPDATE: (9/17, 1:52 p.m.) Frampton’s show at VACU Live on Sept. 17 has been cancelled due to “unforeseen circumstances.” This comes on the heels of Megadeath’s show being cancelled at the same venue two nights before, also hours before showtime. Style has sent questions to organizers to find out what’s happening. 

There’s a small group of classic albums that are virtually synonymous with the 1970s. I don’t need to list them here but they are by artists like Carole King, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, the Bee Gees and Led Zeppelin. But when it comes to live albums from that decade, one stands out above the rest in terms of broad appeal and commercial success: Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive!”

“It’s now sold 17 million copies worldwide,” Frampton casually informs me after I asked about its sales earlier today during a phone conversation; unsurprisingly, the double-live album remains his commercial peak. It was the best-selling record of 1976 and features definitive versions of three of his most popular hits which immediately became FM rock staples, “Baby, I Love Your Way,” “Show Me the Way,” and “Do You Feel Like We Do.” The latter two songs also helped introduce rock audiences to the talk box, which produces a robotic wah-wah-like sound that amazed us little kids at the time, because we thought Frampton actually was making his guitar talk. (You have to remember “Star Wars” was just arriving and the space-age future felt close at hand). In reality, it was a cheap rubber tube running from a guitar effects pedal to his mic as he mouthed words to spectacular effect.

These three hits on “Frampton Comes Alive” have since been covered by everyone from Dinosaur Jr. to more recently, Dolly Parton, whose rendition of “Baby, I Love Your Way,” recorded with Frampton sharing vocal duties, was a highlight of her album “Rockstar” from last year. On a Virginia-related note: jam band Phish famously nodded to Frampton with the title of its 1999 live album, “Hampton Comes Alive.”

Frampton, 74, is an interesting guy to chat with, warm and engaging with a hearty laugh. He grew up in England idolizing American music by the likes of Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent, learning to play their songs alongside his young school classmates, David Jones (later to become superstar David Bowie) and George Underwood, the artist who would design Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” and “Ziggy Stardust” album covers, as well as T. Rex’s debut. At the age of 16, Frampton formed the Herd, and soon would become a guitarist in one of rock’s first supergroups, Humble Pie, with bluesy singer Steve Marriott. Feeling hemmed in, Frampton left that band in 1971 to pursue his solo career, looking for ways to incorporate his love of jazz playing with rock.

Always a good-looking kid, Frampton was pegged from the start by managers and music execs as a teen pop idol, but he always pushed back against that stereotype and preferred to be recognized for his musical skills, even if Rolling Stone always wanted him shirtless for their covers. His musical skills led to playing and recording with a who’s who list of artists that includes George Harrison (that’s Frampton’s acoustic playing on “My Sweet Lord”), Harry Nilsson, Donovan, the Small Faces, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ringo Starr, and his old friend, Bowie, who he performed with on the Glass Spider tour in 1987.

But superstardom also brought with it excessive partying and piles upon piles of that pure white nose candy, which helped disguise the fact that Frampton was being swindled out of his fortune by a reportedly unscrupulous, mob-connected manager; it also probably helped lead to some artistic low points (“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” the movie, anyone? It’s so poorly conceived that it’s now a beloved cult classic, which Frampton indicates has helped him get over the disappointment of it.)

After his lowest period musically in the 1980s, Frampton stuck with his guitar and eventually won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album for “Fingerprints” in 2007. But as it is wont to do, tragedy struck again when the guitarist announced in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis, which involves the slow degeneration of muscles in his legs and arms; he stays seated while performing these days. However, he’s kept a positive attitude and managed to continue touring, writing music and carving out a fitting third act to his career. Based largely on the strength of his famous live album, Frampton will be inducted into this year’s class of the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame at a ceremony on Oct. 19 in Cleveland.

Style spoke to him on Monday afternoon by phone for about a half-hour before his performance tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 17 at Virginia Credit Union Live! Frampton, who has been touring for 60 years now, notes that he’s already chosen who will induct him into the Rock Hall … but he’s not going to tell me who, he says, laughing.

Style Weekly: I have to start by congratulating you on making the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, that seems like quite an achievement.

Yes, it’s something that I’ve always thought about but never expected over the decades I’ve been eligible. It doesn’t matter when [it happens], I am absolutely honored and over the moon.

Does that mean this tour has a different feel to it?

I think ever since the finale tour in 2019 when it started, there’s been a different feel from the audience. It’s a very caring vibe in the room. I cannot thank them enough. It was hard to tell everybody in the beginning, in 2019 [about his diagnosis], I’d been keeping it to myself until I was starting to notice it – and people would notice it. Audiences have been unbelievably caring toward me. I feel it every night, it’s the same feeling.

You know, you sit at home after a tour, or when you go out and meet the people, and I never thought that 500,000 people would vote for me [for the Hall of Fame]. The combination of still being out there and playing, and the fact that many people went to bat for me, is why I called this the Positively Thankful tour. I wasn’t planning on it, but I had to go out again, and I’m so glad I did because it’s been absolutely tremendous.

I’m sure they’re appreciative of the struggle you’ve endured in learning to play guitar again after your diagnosis. How did you find the motivation to keep playing live?

It’s not so much learning to play guitar again, it’s just slowly having the muscles taken away. It’s incremental in a very, very slow way. But I’m at the point now where things are becoming more difficult to play and I’ve had to adapt over the last few years, because it doesn’t just affect my legs and arms, it affects my hands. So that’s the worst part of it for me. But because I’m such a positive person, this will sound weird, but I actually enjoy the challenge of adapting, too! (Laughs). You know, if there’s a wall, I’m going to climb it, that’s just my makeup. I’m never going to lay down. You’re not going to keep me down.

I assume you’re having to be choosier with the notes you play?

Well, choosier with my fingers. I was telling the guys the other night, I was in the middle of a lick in a solo, and I was like, “I’m not going to be able to make that note I want with that finger.” But I’ve retrained my brain and another finger came forward and played it for me. It’s pretty amazing what the mind can do if put to the test. It’s been interesting, put it that way (laughs).

I meant to ask earlier if you were on friendly terms with any of your fellow nominees in this Rock Hall of Fame class?

Yeah, [Mick] Jones of Foreigner I’ve known. He played on my first solo record, “Wind of Change.” We’ve known each other even before that, when I did a week session with the Small Faces for Johnny Hallyday, and I was an added guitarist –which is basically how Humble Pie formed. Mick was the musical director for Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis, rest in peace. Wonderful man … I can’t think of all the others …

There’s Ozzy, Alexis Korner, John Mayall being inducted.

Alexis Korner, I knew. I did play on a radio show with a bunch of other people including Steve Marriott many years ago. John Mayall, same thing. They were both kind of a stage for so many great talents that came. Charlie Watts was playing with Alexis Korner. John Mayall you got your Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, da-da-dah, da-da-dah. Many more. Unfortunately, we’ve lost John, haven’t we? So we won’t be seeing him.

It’s funny, I interviewed Richard Thompson within the last couple years, and we started talking about the Marquee Club – that sounded like such an amazing time period and place to be with all those great bands coming up from the Yardbirds and the Who to the Stones, Zeppelin, King Crimson, Hendrix, Pink Floyd. What are your most cherished memories there?

Well, first of all, Richard Thompson played with us on the Peter Frampton Guitar Circus and I love him! So great, so great. I think that the Marquee was such a staple for [Frampton’s first band] the Herd, that’s how we got discovered. You get discovered by the Marquee basically, if you’re good enough. We were very lucky that we got our own residency on a Saturday night in the summer of ’67 or ’66 maybe, when I was 16. And so we got discovered by Steve Rowland, the record producer who was producing huge hits in England. He took us to [Ken] Howard and [Alan] Blaikley and that was it. We had Howard and Blaikley write us some songs, after one release that didn’t do so well, the second single was a Top 10 single [“From the Underworld”]. But that’s the reason I’m talking to you now, basically, playing the Marquee in the late ‘60s.

I have to ask a question about falling in love with American music as a young kid, with a young classmate and friend like David Jones (soon to be David Bowie). Do you have a favorite moment from your lifelong friendship or the Glass Spider tour you did with him in ‘87?

Well, many great moments on the Glass Spider tour, that was a gift David gave me. He saw what happened to my career because of the teeny bopper thing that came about. But he could’ve had anybody play guitar and he chose me, which was wonderful. We’d played together before but never onstage.

You know, we’re making a documentary now, and we went back to England, my brother and I went to our own old home where we grew up. Then we went to my old school, where my father was the head of the art department and had designed the building. He was very involved. That’s when I met David and [artist] George Underwood, it was the three of us.

My dad said to us, ‘Why don’t you bring your guitars to school and stick them in my office in the morning, and when lunchtime comes, get them out and have a jam,” or whatever he would’ve said at that point (laughs). So for the documentary, we went back to that actual stairwell going up to the art [block] where we sat with our guitars and played. I went back there and sat on the very same step and played a Buddy Holly song. I hope it’s in focus, because we were all crying (laughs). It was a very special moment, to walk back to that same stairwell, same bannisters, same tile. They changed so much in the school, but not that! I could go in my dad’s room, and I could see him up at the front of the class. It was heady stuff, so fantastic.

Didn’t Bowie used to quote your father, who was his art teacher, a lot? Were there any particular things he said?

Yeah, they were mainly swear words (laughs hard). Actually, I never heard my father say anything worse than “bugger.” But you know, he was in the Army during the war, so I know he knew those words, but he never broke that. Maybe because he was a teacher and couldn’t swear at school.

I don’t know, I just feel like – don’t we all as guys – I look in the mirror some days and say to myself, my dad would’ve done just that, whatever it was. Or I say, “I’m sounding like my father.” I was always a slob, now I’m a neat freak – that’s my dad!

We turn into them. We can’t help ourselves.

Hard to escape genes.

Yes, DNA! (laughs)

Who’s making the doc?

We’re doing it ourselves, its Phenix Films, and we have partners in production that are bringing in the money, so we’re very lucky. I’m actually going to New York after the last concert date in Cleveland. We’re honoring the McEnroe brothers [tennis great John and his brother Patrick are receiving the City Parks Foundation Icon Award on Sept. 26] at the Central Park show they have every year. The day after that, I’ll be going to the editing suite where my bandleader, keyboard player and dear friend and partner [Rob Arthur] is the director. He’s phenomenal. I’m going to see for the first time some things that Damian [Rodriguez], our editor, who was Scorsese’s editor [on the Netflix film, “Rolling Thunder Revue”] has edited together. So we’re very lucky.

So it’s in post-production?

We have a couple more interviews and that’s it. We’re hoping for a final edit in January so it will be out next year, hopefully, as soon as we can get it out.

Today it seems like some hits have become even more formulaic in certain ways. Do you have thoughts about the coming AI age?

Yeah, we have an issue that is every artist’s worst nightmare, which is to have someone be able to sing a song with your voice. I have a copy of John Lennon singing over my acoustic album version of “Baby, I Love Your Way.” And it really sounds like John Lennon is singing my song.

The other thing is, the widow of Steve Marriott is trying to sell his AI rights forever to the highest bidder so there can be Steve Marriott-sounding voices out there on records. Which is, as I said to start with, our worst nightmare. I’ve just put a title into Chat GPT, or whatever it is, and you say “write a poem” and it comes out in 4 seconds! I will never, ever, ever use anything that is generated for me, I would just feel awful. It’s got to come from me. That’s very, very dangerous. I mean, Robert Plant, Paul Rogers, I think Elton, myself and a slew of artists … Robert Plant actually paid for the lawyer in England to give [Marriott’s widow] a cease-and-desist. But of course, she owns Marriott’s voice rights, so she can do whatever she wants, unfortunately.

Is there a group effort being led by those artists to push back?

Yes, well, I believe it’s in the House, they’re working on it. I’m totally behind it and will help with anything I can to stop it. But as of the moment, I don’t think we have anything close.

I’m a fan of [pedal steel player] Pete Drake’s; I was stoked to find a couple of his early ‘60s records on Starday in the vinyl dollar bin here at Plan 9 Records. And last time I was in Nashville, I bought a CD of him playing all Beatles covers, I think from Ernest Tubb’s record store. Drake was the one who turned you onto the talk box, correct? Do you remember how that went down?

Ah yes, I know the store [Frampton lives in Nashville]. Yes, I had been listening to “Music of My Mind” by Stevie Wonder in maybe 1970 [1972]. Throughout that record he used the talk box, it was called the Bag made by Kustom, and I heard that and freaked out. He mainly used it for background vocals with a synthesizer, you know? When I was doing the sessions for “All Things Must Pass” playing acoustic with George [Harrison] and three [members] of Badfinger, so there were five acoustic players …

Phil Spector’s wall of sound.

Wall of sound, yea! There was two of everything: drummers, bassists, piano players. Yeah, and George said, [imitates in pitch-perfect Harrison impression]: “Well, tomorrow we’ve got Pete Drake coming in from Nashville and he’s gonna play some pedal steel. Bob told me about him.” You know who Bob is, right?

Oh yeah, Dylan. That’s a great impression of George by the way, or Geoffrey to use his Beatles code name.

Well, thank you. A little lower is Ringo, middle is George, and very high is John, so I can kind of do them all (laughs). Anyway, he says that Pete’s coming in tomorrow to play on the more country tracks. So I sat down that next day, as I did every day with my acoustic, and there’s Pete Drake setting up in front of me. Literally he was facing me, I could put my foot out and touch his pedals. He said, “Hey Peter, do you want to hear something?” I said, “yeah, yeah,” I thought he was just going to play me a tune. But he gets out this little bag, in the bag there’s a little box, then there’s a tube and wires and he’s plugging it up, and he puts this very tiny clear tube in his mouth and the pedal steel starts singing to me like Stevie Wonder. Same sound. I thought, “Eureka!” (Laughs) There is actually online, not video, but audio of when Pete Drake first showed it to me, and you can hear George and me still laughing.

I can remember being a young kid and hearing that talk box sound for the first time. All of us kids thought your guitar was actually talking. That live album was so huge, how much of it do you think was timing, or the novelty of that sound?

People will usually say a lot of these numbers were on previous studio albums. My forte has always been live, I love to make records, don’t get me wrong, but my forte is live because I think there’s an extra umph I get from the audience and adrenaline.

The “Comes Alive” set was the first time in San Francisco we’d ever headlined. So we had to add the acoustic set to make up time, because we were used to doing 45-50 minutes, and now we had to do an hour and 20 minutes. It was the first time that had happened. I have no clue why it was so big, there’s a lot of factors. But there’s something about where you drop the needle – I can say that because we have vinyl again – it makes you smile. There’s something extra that I give out live that people love.

There’s a joy that comes across on that recording. 

Exactly. That, I think, is still true today. Obviously, I enjoy what I do so much that I can’t keep a straight face.

Yeah, lot of people had that album in the ’70s. I asked our photographer the other day, he was like, “yeah, I had it.” It’s funny that so many Americans of a certain age grew up on that. That Linklater movie “Dazed and Confused” I thought showed it well, that high school experience of driving without really going anywhere, as FM radio plays “Do You Feel Like We Do” every few hours. 

Absolutely. I think that a lot of people probably saw “The Simpsons” as well, which was so much fun to do, to make fun of myself. When they called me up they said we’d like you to be on there. I said, “What’s the premise?” They said it’s a Lollapalooza concert and you’re headlining. There was silence from me, and I said, “I wouldn’t be headlining a Lollapalooza concert,” especially then. And there was silence on their end, and I went: “Got it! You want me to be the old, crusty rock star who’s fed up with everything.” They said, “We couldn’t have said that better ourselves.” (Laughs) I even got to write some of the dialogue, they drew that as well. That was my favorite thing about the whole thing, I ad-libbed and they turned it into a cartoon. Wonderful.

Hey, I even enjoyed “Sgt. Peppers” the movie when I was a little kid, because it was so damn weird, almost surreal, like something you’d see at the local amusement park, King’s Dominion. You fighting Steven Tyler, who looks like he’s barely conscious while singing “Come Together,” for a woman who is inexplicably chained up … I used to think you were like the fourth or fifth Bee Gee, or their wild cousin, Bee Gee Fresh. Sorry, I know that movie is something you’ve said you wish you never did. 

Oh no, no! I’m starting to like it now, because they’re telling me it’s a cult movie (laughs).

Oh, it is a cult movie. I put it in the same category as “Kiss Meets Phantom of the Park,” which I remember watching when it aired on TV. Do you have a definitive memory of the Sgt. Peppers shoot? Or was it just sheer nonstop excess, classic cocaine casualty trainwreck of a film.

Yeah, pretty much excess. Also I think we thought, the Bee Gees and me? We can’t fail. And of course, we failed. But you know, it wasn’t really [our fault]. There was no real script to speak of. Anyway, I’m way over being embarrassed by that. I just laugh when people mention it now. It seems like every time I bring out a new record, it gets screened a lot (laughs).

I better wind this up, any new albums or projects coming up you’d like to mention?

I am and have been working on writing for a new album – it’s for me. This album is going to be something from my heart. And I have a self-quality control meter that I [use] to throw out so many ideas for songs, before even finishing them, if I know [they’re] not going to be worthy of being on this album. I know everybody says this, but I think it’s going to be the best studio album I’ve ever done.

Any timeframe for when it will be released?

Before I’m 80! (laughs)

Peter Frampton performs on Tuesday, Sept. 17. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and show is at 7:30 p.m. All ages. You can find tickets here.