Peter Frampton: The Guitarist

Feb 6, 2007 7:56 PM, By Gino Robair

           

So it wasn't like "You've got three months to deliver a record. Go do it."
No, it was not. There was no finish date. They kept on trying to give me finish dates. [Laughs.] I'm a sort of "It'll be ready when it's ready" guy. You can give me a deadline, but it'll only help a little.

Can you tell me about the session that included Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman on "Cornerstones?"
That was recorded at British Grove Studios in London. Bill has been a friend of mine — and Charlie for that matter — for many years. But I'm closer to Bill. Since I was about 14. He produced the first band I was in, when I was still at school, called the Preachers. I've known those guys a long time, and it wouldn't have been right for Bill not to be on the record.

So I just said "What do you think? Why don't you two play together again?" I think it's a major coup, actually, getting the original Rolling Stones's rhythm section together again. And they love playing with each other, too. It was fun to watch. Bill would go out there: "There's this one piece: I think I can just get this better." I said "Go on, then." Because he was doing some of his Wyman sliding: [imitates] "woov woov." Those things. And Charlie was watching the overdub and said "look at 'im. He's doing his Wyman thing. I love it." So it was good to see them enjoying each other. That was a fabulous day. Unbelievable.

What made you decide to cover "Black Hole Sun?"
Everybody's got those songs that just hit a nerve, big time. I have to stop and listen to "Black Hole Sun" whenever it comes on, and turn it up really loud. Chris Cornell has done some phenomenal melodic stuff. I'm a huge fan. And the guys in Audioslave are brilliant.

The song just doesn't go where you think it's going to go, and that's what's so attractive, melodically. It's not normal. [Laughs.] Maybe it is to Chris, but it's not to me. I just do not think that way at all, but I love the way he does. It's eye opening how differently people write.

What was your processing chain for the melody? It sounds like an autowah.
Yeah, it's a vintage Mu-tron III.

It responds so un-uniformly and musically. It sounds amazing on that track.
Yeah. Right before it, I'm using the Seymour Duncan boost pedal, which is very cool. It gives you three settings. One is flat and just boosts level. Then there are two different forms of boost added in there with a little bit of an EQ curve. But the reason I like it is that it's so simple. I use the flat setting and just boost the signal a little bit, and it overdrives the front-end of the Mu-tron a little further, to make sure that it hears every note that I'm playing.

It's very vocal sounding.
Because it's dynamically triggered, you are controlling it by how hard you play. It sounds really good live, too. It's just louder. [Laughs.]

Is there a favorite instrument or guitar-sound that inspires you?
For "Smokey" and "Double Nickels," it was a Gibson ES-175. Many years ago, I had an ES-175, the large-body jazz guitar used by Wes Montgomery and Steve Howe from Yes. I had one after I left Humble Pie, but somehow I must have sold it and got something else. Anyway, I got a 1959 at a very good local guitar dealer, Gary Dick's Classic Guitars. The sound that that guitar has! For someone that is immensely thrilled with the sound of Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, and George Benson, and all those wonderful silky sounds, this guitar can do them all. It's just phenomenal. Whether you play with your fingers, whether you play with your pick, it's just that jazz tone to die for. I'm very lucky.

Gordon Kennedy, my co-producer and co-writer, came up when I first got it and played it through another amp. I was playing through a Fender Tweed Twin that I have in combination with a Vox AC15. Funny combination, but the two just complemented each other. I do a lot of that: just mix and match. Wasn't very loud on either amp. It just had this silky sound. And Gordon said "That is actually the sound of butter." [Laughs.] I thought that was a nice way of putting it.

Let's say you are going to record a melody for a song. Do you know what guitar and amp to go to, or do you experiment to get the right sound?
Knowing whether it's going to be a clean sound or a dirty sound, like on "Double Nickels" or "Smokey:" I knew exactly what guitar and amp will make that clean-sound sound rich. With something using electric guitar, I'll go for the Marshall and the Les Paul first. There's just a plethora of mix-and-match options from then on.

Options you know already?
Each guitar has a sound. If I'm doing a heavy riff, I know that if I go to my '58 Les Paul Junior with the one P90 by the bridge, I know what that's going to sound like through every amp: it's going to sound incredibly good, rich—a great sort of Who rhythm sound. You get to know characteristics of guitars with different amps.

I recently got a Hank Marvin-model Strat, with the special tremolo. I've been playing that through different Fender amps. I've got a '62 and '63 Vibroverb. I've got a '62 Vibrolux. The Fender Twin is a '59. Just choosing the guitar and the amp can take a couple of hours. [Laughs.] It's very enjoyable, though.

Is Aaron Swihart your house engineer?
Aaron is someone I've been working with for two records now, so yeah. I wish he lived in Cincinnati, or that this studio was in Nashville, because he has to drive up and spend time away from home. He knows his stuff and is very methodical. He's the guy that knows the room and is a wonderful person to work with.

He has the same outlook towards sound as I do: there are no rules and let's experiment. But he's also got a lot of new stuff that he's learned from working with other people that play a completely different musical style than I do. He's well rounded and has a good pair of ears.

Do you ever engineer your own tracks?
Yes, I have done. The one thing I really like is to have someone around for recording drums, because it is so critical. I'll start engineering drums myself because my son plays drums and we're doing some demos for him. But it really is an art to recording drums. Everybody does it differently and there are no rules. But it's very, very important. If you can make those drums sound as good, if not better, than what they sound like in the studio, then you're a good engineer in my book.

You're recording to 24-track with 2-inch tape?
Yes, 2-inch tape to start with. Fill that up. Get the take you want. Then blow it over to Nuendo. And then we have 48 tracks going out of that, so it's like we're using two 24-tracks, which is wonderful. But it's as if they're linked, and you don't have to wait for them to wind back. [Laughs.]

So your studio is big enough that you can track basics with drums, guitars, and keyboards?
We've had five people track at a time here. A little tight, but it works.