So here comes Frampton, a live rocker once more, playing his own music on stage for the first time since 1986, when he traveled as opening act for Stevie Nicks (Frampton also spent most of 1987 on the road as a sideman with an old school mate of his, David Bowie). I said to myself, ‘I’m the guy that did the big live record, and I haven’t been on the road.’ ” The audience let me know very loudly that it was about time I came around again: ‘Where the hell have you been, and why haven’t you been on the road?’ It was the thing that snapped me back into reality after the horrible thing with Steve. I went to see them, and they got me up there jamming. “We had a long history of playing big stadium dates together in the ‘70s. When we played or wrote music together, tension adds to that.”įrampton’s first public appearance after Marriott’s death came last fall at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at the Universal Amphitheatre. I’ve always said that life with Steve and I was-I don’t want to say love and hate, but there was a lot of tension between us. It was Steve’s and my band, so it wasn’t right” to continue.Īmong the names being kicked around for the Frampton-Marriott led band was Chalk and Cheese, Frampton said, “because the English have an expression that two things ‘couldn’t be more different than chalk and cheese.’ As great as it was that we worked together, we were very different people and we pushed each other to each other’s limits. I tried to keep going and bring the band together, looking for somebody to complete the lineup. Then his house burned down, and he was in it.”įrampton’s account of Marriott’s death last April 20 (Marriott was 44 years old) may be couched in dry, stiff-upper-lip British humor, but the experience was wrenching for him both professionally and personally. (Marriott) went back to England to sort things out. We were on the springboard, just about to leap off.
Frampton says they recorded demo versions of a half-dozen new songs, lined up a record deal, and prepared to join the ever-expanding ranks of ‘70s stars making ‘90s comebacks (the list includes Little Feat, the Doobie Brothers, the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Ted Nugent).
His voice was fantastic still.” After that initial get-together in England, Marriott returned with Frampton to Los Angeles, and the two set about writing an album and putting together a band. “The first day, after not working together for 20 years, we wrote a song. “Every time I went through these stacks of tapes, I’d go, ‘No, no, not as good as Steve, not as good as Steve,’ ” he said-Steve being Steve Marriott, who had founded Humble Pie with Frampton in 1969 and carried on as the band’s leader after Frampton left to go solo in ’71.įrampton’s solution was to seek out Marriott himself. In 1990, Frampton conceived a plan that would carry him back to his beginnings: Instead of being a solo act, he’d start a band like Humble Pie, in which the singing and songwriting would be shared by two or three members.įrampton, now based in Los Angeles, started looking for another singer-guitarist to split time with him fronting the band. Now the rocker who once headlined sold-out football stadiums is looking for a new record deal.ĭiscussing his prospects for the ‘90s in a recent phone interview, Frampton, who will be 42 on April 22, sounded like a man who has found some balance and equilibrium-proud of his past success, able to cope with the late ‘70s fall, and game for another try. Two late ‘80s albums for Atlantic Records failed to reignite his career. The man who had played lead guitar in the raucous blues-rocking Humble Pie, who had done a respectable cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on his first solo album, seemed to be staking a claim as the next Davy Jones or Bobby Sherman.įrampton’s subsequent albums did nothing to change those unfavorable impressions, and he was left to spend the ‘80s trying with no great success to make a comeback. He came off looking like a fluffy-haired lap dog. Poor Frampton’s job in his musical, non-speaking role was to look cute, pal around with the Bee Gees, and serve as a sexless, soft-focus love interest. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the charmless musical that wove a woeful sub-cartoonish plot around neutered renditions of Beatles songs. Those doubts turned to certainties in 1978, when Frampton starred in the disastrous film version of “Sgt. His 1977 follow-up album, “I’m in You,” went platinum, but its smarmy title hit put his rock ‘n’ roll credentials in doubt.
From this peak of fortune Frampton stumbled, then plummeted.
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