Thursday, September 24 is the start of the Nashville Film Festival. The opening night film is always of great importance, and this year’s opener is “Frampton,” a documentary about musician Peter Frampton’s battle with a degenerative disease that threatens his ability to play guitar.
Peter Frampton is rare in that he is one of the only artists whose most popular record is a live album.
Frampton started his career in the band Humble Pie, then broke off and went solo. The audience response to his first four studio albums was pretty lukewarm. And then, in 1976 he released “Frampton Comes Alive!”
The album went nuts. That year, Rolling Stone readers voted it Album of the Year. It stayed on the chart for 97 weeks and went Platinum 8 times.
The album captured his energy as a live performer and people loved it.
“My persona, basically, it doubles in people-pleasing as soon as I walk onto stage,” said Peter Frampton. “I’m there for their escape. Into my music to get away from everything that’s going on in their lives outside music. I have this thing that’s part of my persona that engages people and I’m very lucky to have that,” he said.
That connection as a live performer has been his secret sauce ever since.
Nashville connection while recording with Bob Dylan and George Harrison
One reason for the massive success of “Frampton Comes Alive!” is his use of a new technology at the time, the talk box. It was a gadget introduced to him by Nashville’s own Pete Drake.
Frampton was at Abbey Road recording studio in London, recording George Harrison’s masterpiece “All Things Must Pass.” George Harrison and Bob Dylan wrote “If Not For You” together and it was time to record. Frampton says that Harrison asked Dylan to recommend someone to play pedal steel on the song and Dylan said, “You’ve got to use (Nashville’s) Pete Drake, he’s the best.”
While they were recording there was a moment of down time. Drake said, “Pete, you want me to show you something interesting?” and proceeded to hook up a little homemade talk box. “He takes out this little tube and then puts it in his mouth and the talk box starts singing it me.
And I just went, ‘There it is!'” Frampton said.
Further connection connection: Nashville is Frampton’s “kind of place”
Frampton’s knack for connection is also what drew him to Nashville. Frampton first came to Nashville in 1994 and his publisher set up a number of songwriters in town. “I had so much fun. I said, ‘This is my kind of place,'” Frampton said. He moved here in 2014 and built a home studio, Studio Phoenix where he’s recorded several solo albums and worked with others to record theirs.
Peter Frampton in his Nashville home studio, Phoenix Studio
A diagnosis that threatened live performance
In 2019 Frampton was diagnosed with Inclusion Body Mitosis. “I have these little inclusions. They have found their way into my muscles. What those inclusions do is they just go to the muscle and say, ‘Uh, I’m gonna make you turn into fat.’ Basically, it’s telling my muscles to turn to mush.'”
The disease is zapping his superpower. He is slowly losing his ability to play guitar. The documentary that is showing at the Nashville Film Festival charts Frampton as he copes with what he said would be his last performance.
But then, it wasn’t. He’s performed fairly regularly since. “When I knew what I had, I said I would only play if I were at the top of my game. Well, I went against my decision because I love it so much” he said.
So why give it up? “It’s what I do. I get that feeling. When I pick up a guitar and I come up with something new, that feeling goes straight to my stomach. I get so excited. It’s still there. It’s never gonna go away. I can’t help myself,” he said.
The documentary isn’t about the end of performing, it’s about the magic that Frampton brings to it.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM