Peter Frampton is currently on a farewell tour having been forced into retirement owing to the onset of Inclusion Body Myositis, a degenerative condition that affects the muscles and looks to end his playing career for good. However, rising above the tragedy, he’s in high spirits when we strike up our Zoom call. We mention that it’s been a long time since we saw him perform on this side of the Atlantic: “We were supposed to be there in May 2020,” he says ruefully. “Then, of course, the pandemic shut us all down…” And thus the performances rescheduled for this November in the UK take on an extra level of significance.
Once hailed as the most famous artist in the world, he tells us how those heady peaks were a mixed blessing and very nearly his undoing. But every story has its beginnings and Peter’s starts in the late 1950s…
What got you interested in playing guitar in the first place?
“Probably Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Lonnie Donegan first. Lonnie was the first person I saw on TV doing skiffle, then when he came out with Rock Island Line, it was starting to be more rockabilly. Then Cliff and The Shadows: I became obsessed. I wanted to be in The Shadows from when I was eight years old. From Living Doll on, it was like every kid that was musical wanted to be Hank Marvin. They were the instrumental Beatles. I can still play just about any Shadows number you’d care to mention, note for note.”
What was your first instrument? Obviously, you would have wanted a Strat, but they wouldn’t have been available in Britain at the time.
“No. I mean, the most I could have hoped for at the very beginning was a Höfner, a Futurama III or something. But no, when I was seven, my dad and I went up to the attic to get out our summer holiday luggage and I noticed this little leather case. I didn’t know whether it was a violin or what it was. I said, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘Oh, your grandmother gave me this – she thought you might want to learn to play it one day. It’s a banjolele.’ My dad got it out and played a couple of chords on it, then I think we, , that kind of stuff. Once I’d mastered those pretty quickly, my parents thought, ‘Wow, he picked that up quick.’ I think they knew pretty early on they were in for trouble.”
