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I’m In You: Peter Frampton Still Feels Like We Do

Can you Come Alive a third time?

I don’t think so. [much laughter]. I really don’t think so. I don’t think I want to come alive again [more laughter]. I think I’m quite happy at the level of alive I am. It’s very good for me. I’m living. Any day above ground is a good day, that sort of stuff.

If I do any more live material, it will be a while. I’ve done enough live stuff for six people’s careers. The DVD was the last thing I really appreciated live that we did. We had to put a single CD to go out with it for whatever cross promotional, I don’t know… not many people had the DVD’s at the time. So it made it look like we had Peter Frampton Comes Alive 17 at this point. When that one came out I just wanted the DVD because it was a great opportunity to have something out because the footage from the 70’s is really cheesey. It’s not great, didn’t keep well. It was a great idea, I thought, to finally get it. If you weren’t there back then, we still play just as good if not better. It was a great way to capture some of the older material live, visually, in excellent quality. And get a couple of new things in there as well.

What is the coolest venue or gig you ever played at?

The most amazing gig we ever did was JFK Stadium in Philadelphia which I played twice. It was then the biggest stadium. 95,000 supposedly paid and apparently another 15,000 were there that I was told didn’t pay. Of course, the money went else where. I think it was ’76 and ’77. Before the live album. Yeah, the first one was Yes and myself and we did over 100,000 there. It was amazing. And the following year I did it again when the I’m In You record came out and I think it was just 95,000. [laughter]. But it was full. A sellout in ’76… we had done some stadiums, but that was like two stadiums at once. It was pretty phenomenal because it takes a while for the applause to get back to you because it’s so huge. Very disconcerting, but the adrenaline I had I would have to say was at it’s highest for any gig possible. So that was pretty intense.

If you were an alien sent to catalogue earth’s species, how would you describe the human race?

I don’t know, pushy? [laughter] Very pushy. Let’s go to another question.

Did you and your old friend David Bowie ever rough each other up when you were younger? If so, who won? If not, who do you think would win?

Of course I would win. Absolutely. No, we didn’t. He was 3 years ahead of me in school and so… so I was 11 or 12 and he was 14 or 15. I mean 12 to 15, at the point, might as well be 25 years. The common ground was the music, but at the social level it wasn’t; we weren’t as close till later. We used to hang out and just play at school, just bring our guitars to school.

I didn’t rough house with David, but he did get into an altercation with his best buddy, who was also a friend of mine, George Underwood, who turned his eye a different color. I remember when that happened actually. David took George’s girlfriend out behind his back, that was all. Nothing big. And that was it. George came and smacked him one. I think it was at school. I remember hearing that David Jones had been taken to the hospital and they had to wash his eye or something, I don’t know, because he had taken it to the eye. And my dad who was David and George’s art teacher, also taught boxing on the side after school. So he taught George how to hit too. So my dad took responsibility for the whole event. So the reason David’s eye is a different color is because of my dad. Anyway…

Any plans to work together again? I know you worked on the Glass Spider album and did that tour.

Never know with David. He’ll come out of the blue somewhere and have a great idea. I’m always there for him. So if he ever wanted to do anything else, that would be great. I’ve always been a huge fan ever since I was… I looked up to him ever since I saw him playing in the school band. I would love to, always love to.

Desert island: What guitar player is there?

It has to be Django Reinhart the Belgium jazz player. He does have a couple of guitars right? So he can jam? Or is just the one guitar?

Just you two and there’s a couple of guitars there.

That would be it. That would be my dream. Don’t know what he’s like as a person, so I hope it’s a big desert island. I can have my side and he can have his just in case we don’t get along. And I’ll brush up on my French so when I get to the island I can say “Bonjour Django. [laughter] We’ll be jamming later.”