Peter Frampton

PETER FRAMPTON’S NEW album — brilliantly titled Frampton Forgets the Words — sees the British guitar legend tackling songs by Radiohead, Lenny Kravitz, George Harrison and David Bowie, using his instrument to replace the well-known vocal melodies of the originals. As he explains, there’s an art to making the guitar talk. And he should know; it is, after all, what he’s been doing for decades.

One of the covers is “Isn’t It a Pity” from George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, an album you played on. Harrison, along with Pete Drake, is sort of responsible — even indirectly — for introducing you to the talkbox.

That’s true. It’s on YouTube, actually, the audio from when Pete Drake put that tube into his mouth after setting it all up, and the pedal steel started singing to us. You can hear George talking and me laughing, I think. It was just jaw-dropping. When, he was using The Bag, made by a company called Kustom, for background voices and ad-libs. I thought, “Now a sound!” Then I heard Jeff Beck do a Beatles number [“She’s a Woman”] with it, and after that I was sitting in front of Pete Drake at Abbey Road — and I see it. He completed the circle for me. And of course the next thing out of my mouth was, ‘Where do I get one?’”