Peter Frampton
In 1978, I had a near-fatal car accident in the Bahamas. There was a point when I could have lost my right arm - but it was good because it forced me to slow down and take a break.Collection: Car
The more simple my life is, the happier I am.
I've never stopped making new music, and whether the audience wants to hear it or not, I'm going to play it. Because I'm an artist, and I create, and I've got new stuff.
You can't listen to 'Frampton Comes Alive!' without smiling.
I've always wanted to be the best guitarist in the world, ever since I was eight years old.
I've always had a good time in bands, and when I wasn't having a good time, I left.
I'd often use a Leslie cabinet on its own in the studio because everyone in the late Sixties and Seventies was experimenting with them. We'd stick anything through a Leslie because it made everything sound so good.
Mistakes were made, so I learned by my mistakes.
If one percent of the people who take iPad or iPhone videos of concerts watch them, I'd be very surprised.
I'm sure that I am enjoying my sobriety. And respect it. If you've been through what I've been through, then you really do treasure it.
The reason I wanted to play guitar was because I saw Buddy Holly and then our own homegrown Shadows on TV in 1957 or '58. I wanted to learn to play guitar so I could do what they did and be in a band.
I never gave up. I'm a fighter.
I started out as a musician, and I ended up as a cartoon.
There's a place in England called Petticoat Lane, and... they always used to get the heavy albums, like, a week before. So I went down there and got it, and I went back home. I didn't come out of my room for about three days. I just played it nonstop... 'Sgt. Pepper's' was the best thing I'd ever heard in my life.
An artist has to be selfish; otherwise, he's not true to his own art.
When you don't have someone, you feel you want someone. Then when you do, it's nice to be single for one night.
I acted in 'Almost Famous.' My album 'Fingerprints' won a Grammy Award in 2007. Even more prestigious, as far as my kids were concerned, I appeared in episodes of 'The Simpsons' and 'Family Guy.'
I was on 'The Mike Douglas Show' twice. I was on the cover of practically every magazine in the United States. I never said no to anything. I told everything to everybody. I gave everything away, and when you give it all away, you have nothing left.
It got to the point where I couldn't afford to borrow any more money to lose. Know what I mean? That was just before 'Frampton,' my fourth album. As we were recording it, I was very down and depressed.
I used to jam with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces.
I have a soft spot for 'Wind of Change' because it was my first one, and it was a departure from Humble Pie - very much so. It showed me the spectrum of what I could do.
If there's ever a live record that deserved to be mixed in surround sound, it's 'Frampton Comes Alive.'
I wrote 'Show Me the Way' in the morning and wrote 'Baby, I Love Your Way' in the afternoon of the same day. I've been trying to figure out what I ate for breakfast that morning ever since!
Performing live has been one of the most important opportunities I've been given, and I am lucky to share my music with so many of my amazing, loyal, and diverse fans.
People are buying my life when they're buying those records. I hate to sound bigheaded or something, but that's the reality of it. Suddenly, everything you've been doing means something.
I write about what happens to me. It's all there. I couldn't do it any other way.
I think, at some point, I might have said it must be great to be as big as Elvis, but that wasn't a realistic dream.
I pile up the press clippings and send them off to my mother. She's got a scrapbook going back to when I was, like, eight years old.
I love staying at home and not seeing a guitar for ten days... but then I love that feeling of picking it up again.
I love to be a hermit.
I've always loved to play live.
Most rock movies are never authentic - you'll have someone supposedly in 1958 playing a 1990 guitar, and a 1986 microphone.
'Penny for Your Thoughts' was something I noodled on for a while.
You know me - I'm the road dog of road dogs.
A lot of people were moved to write after September 11th. It had to affect us all in a way.
Everybody wants to be on the front cover of 'People' and 'Rolling Stone.'
Hey, I've done a lot of other things, but I'm also very aware that when I kick the bucket, the first paragraph will be, 'The man responsible for 'Frampton Comes Alive!' just dropped dead. Frampton Drops Dead! after coming alive all these years.'
I never thought I would do an all-acoustic tour or an all-acoustic album.
Most of everything I've ever written actually was written on acoustic. 'Do You Feel' was written on electric. 'I'm in You' was written on piano.
As long as I can have enough to make the record and pay the mortgage, those were always the two things that were most important to me.
I've never been in this business to make money. I've always been in it to make good music.
I love everything to do with movies.
I'd sold more records than any other person in history with one album, at that point, in '76. It became a very scary place for me, because I didn't know whose advice to ask and lost my confidence in my own gut feelings about everything.
I love working with film, whether it's the technical side, the acting side, or the musical side.
This was the rule that I had when we made 'Frampton Comes Alive!': being known as a live performer, I'm not going to go into the studio and overdub.
The number of times that anything is overdubbed on 'Frampton Comes Alive!'... the rule was, if it didn't make it to the tape, then we can redo it because it needs to be done. If it made it to the tape, and it sounds good, we leave it. So nothing was overdubbed on that album at all that wasn't absolutely necessary.
I've always been very gadget-conscious.
I had so much out there, the world was going crazy about 'Comes Alive!' I didn't need to go and rush into something else. You're only as good as your last record, so don't put one out for a while.
I believe I'm an artist that just shines live - it's just something that happens.
The '80s were a difficult period for me.