Peter Frampton on his 70's Guitar Rig and Other Details From "Frampton Comes Alive"

hey everybody i'm rick biatto so when i interviewed peter frampton for my episode 100 what makes it sound great on do you feel like we do i really wanted to talk to him not only about the song but about the rig that he used what amp he was playing through or what amps how his effects were chained together and it's a pretty complex setup he starts out by saying oh it wasn't that complex and then by the time he he gets done describing it you realize it was very involved here's my interview thank you for doing this really appreciate it oh i appreciate you man because i don't know you you just uh freaked me out with that piece on me i i just i never think of myself as someone to be i guess i'm being modest but it's wild that so many people want to know how i play so i'm i'm very very honored that you wish to do what you've already done let alone this oh this is really uh this is really exciting i've been waiting to do a what makes this song great video on you but i thought i would save it to 100. oh okay is that what it is yeah that's why i haven't done that that's why i haven't done an episode specifically related to to this song or you know for the series i said i'm hope i hope that peter will be actually in the video i've never actually had this is what i would like this series to become right is to actually have the artists in there have you got enough guitars there man i i have a few yeah you do i'm sure that uh i'm sure you have a lot of guitars too peter yeah i know we it's the and the the thing is you know you always need one more i keep telling my wife that anyways yeah to know yeah to no avail apparently i actually talked to you about this song when i interviewed you in nashville back in 2018 and we talked about a little bit about the writing of the song and i'm going to include some of that video because you're playing your guitar and you talked about how you started the with the original riff and then you said why don't we go up a third you know and and uh but i want to talk about some of the particulars as much as you remember first i'm going to start with your setup okay so okay at the time you were playing were you playing 100 watt marshall early 70s um are you talking about when we wrote it or when we got the live album on the live album my setup was very very simple it was a hundred watt um marshall that was it i think i i mean i think i graduated to 200 watts with one cabinet each probably just the one cap um one amp and one cab then maybe maybe maybe two but i can't really remember but it was just i mean in the end it was i think it was it was it was 200 watts um marshalls uh through two single uh top cabinets clutch slanted cabinets and they were just linked i would plug into the second channel top so it was the basia channel i would set the tone for that for my neck pickup basically um on the phoenix and then i would link out of the bottom channel to the top uh channel of the the the same amp to to the top channel uh and then i just bring up the the treble channel just a hair so it gave a hair for air and so i had that air on the top of it so um but it was only very slightly because in those days one channel was so much brighter than the other in those early marshals and i love that you know so and and then i just plug straight in there's there's no effects at all okay how loud would you be peter it wasn't uh extremely loud it's probably louder than we play now because we have veneers um so we go for sound rather than level i don't know probably about with 101 marshall i don't know if i was four or five maybe uh because that was pretty loud it's pretty loud so um but the second channel was was um just just on you know but then i would link to this the second martial amp and do exactly the same thing go into the uh second channel um and get my tone on that again and then link that one so they were both linked i was using both channels on both amps how would you run your talk box would you you'd have a separate microphone with that with the uh yes the talkbox and would that be driven by a different amplifier no in those days on comes alive the um we didn't get that fancy so on my main amp it was it was just uh in the loop of the marshall you know so as you would normally when you first buy one that's how you do it you it would be another speaker and then the switch on it would either be the speaker cabinet or the top box and then the crew would turn um uh chuck would turn my uh my second amp off at that point so it was all very manual when you had your leslie hooked up how would you split the signal to go to that i mean this is actually very complicated in a way for the yeah there i believe that we just took another feed out of probably the the second the lower uh one of the out the inputs of either of the marshals would have another jack in it and that would link to um well i had two leslie's so would have 200 watt uh two more hundred watts and they would drive the leslie's and i'd have just the straight uh leslie made by leslie peddle the original you know um fast and slow and the preamp level on that as well so um yeah so i had one when we recorded come to life i had two stacks one of which was bob mayo's guitar the other one was underneath was bob mayo's keyboard because you could never rely on monitors back then so i had separate volumes on the cabinets for for bob both bob's um thanks and then um uh let's see and then my two cabinets would be on top of that and then um right next to uh that to the left looking at the back line um the two cabs are together two amps are together then there'll be one leslie right behind me in that line then the bass and then the drums and then i had the second leslie on the side which was like a side fill and i used to drive those pretty hard and those because there was it was the ultimate chorus you know i never really bought it i never really bothered about the chorus pedals well i don't think there were it was only an mxr 90 at that point that's right and a while that was it and i didn't i i'd done my time with the wawa with humble pie loved it but i wasn't into it at that moment i i just had the mxr 90 um the echo uh the the vincent x correct to um as my delay and uh then the lesbian fast and slow switch so that was i had three buttons that was about it throughout the solos that you have i think there's about five different solos probably six if you consider bob's uh yes keyboards yes yes um there are a lot of dynamic changes in your soloing and that's what to me beyond what you play the fact that you use so many dynamics in your playing would you turn your volume down or would you switch to the middle pickup or to the rhythm pickup the little pedal that i had uh pedalboard that i had gave me if i switched the mxr on it gave me a slight boost in level if i switched the vinson on it gave me another boost in level so really um i would turn down on the guitar this combination turned down on the guitar for rhythm parts and then whack it all the way up for a solo but if i had both of them on uh mxr and vincent then i had that extra um uh preamp oh no boost that just drove the marshall even harder so that was the difference between playing rhythm and lead after the first chorus this is what's fascinating about the song so it's a 14 minute and 15 second song i mean there will be people on here that watch this that'll that may not even be familiar with this although i can't even imagine that after the first chorus you go back to the intro and then you have a solo right now how did you develop the form of the song to to start including all these different sections because the original one on frampton's camel is 6 minutes and 44 seconds right well it's the same arrangement um until we get to where the talkbox happens from the studio to the live um and just just as a side note there were two takes that we loved of the original studio version i wish we had still had the second version because the one on the on frampton's camel is the slower of the two it's pretty damn slow you know it is slow yeah but we like the feel of it and the slope of it you know um but the the faster one is would have been more like the live version you know but the arrangement that all those the solo is the same i think after the reintroduction um everything's the same until we get to when it all comes down and then i uh there's bob solo and then uh and then the um talkbox bob was immortalized in the song because of you introducing him with bob mayo and the keyboards for good reason too he was legentastic fantastic musicians yes everyone knows bob mayo because of that they know his name they know him i mean this is actually really unusual that in this massive legendary song you immortalize another one of the players yeah bob mayo was so nice i named him twice peter this is another thing your voice is blended so well together on the harmonies bob was a was an excellent harmony singer yeah a chameleon as well because you know he also did the same kind of stuff with all the notes uh foreigner and so he would morph into these different styles and he was just one of those uh 360 degree players apart from being um the the library of music i mean you could not he would not falter you could call out any song jazz soul you name it whatever it was you know he knew everything and the bastard had perfect pitch too so and i i i just you know we we had a we had a great relationship for many many years and even towards the very end uh i think we were closer than ever and uh yeah it was it was very sad to lose bob that way you guys have a very similar harmonic sense meaning the the way that you would treat on that particular song treat the chord progression in the solos if you're going d to f to c to d both of you would be changing keys this is what the thing that that turned me on to your playing with humble pie i mean way through your entire career right you knew how to play over the chord you just no i didn't know what that was it just i always when you come back around from from c back to d and you'd play the third and the d major chord i was like that sounds so good what is that why does that sound so good i mean i just started playing guitar that was the biggest record out in the world and i hear this i mean this is why this is so influential to me i literally was just a beginner and i had to know what you're doing it just everything sounded so right to me and it didn't sound like anybody else that i was listening to at the time oh well thank you i i don't know the answer to all this you know because this is just something that i developed by my not following the herd of of not following the herd of other guitar players that just went eric and peter green and you know mick taylor and oh just they're phenomenal players and i knew this and i think i told you that i just i felt they were so the blues that they were playing all of them if you if you put their styles all together that's that's a thesis right there and i just thought i can't as much as i love it if i go down that road i'm gonna be just one of many and i just thought well i started off listening to hank marvin and django reinhardt the same days you know because my parents listened to django and the hot club de france and i just thought i might my love is really for jazz um even though i'm not a jazz player but i love being influenced by that and the special notes those that some people might call wrong but i call all perfect you know just because you're an a doesn't mean to say you can't play in the key of b you know there's certain things that you can do you know you're you're soloing though always to me it didn't sound like necessarily like a jazz player but it sounded always like it was influenced by jazz player if you take your solo on something's happening you followed those chord changes so perfectly and that really helped me with my ear to know where to go like why does he go he always goes to the right notes on when the chords change and that really was was made a huge impression on me well it was basically just uh i just played the tr uh the triad of of the call by going to you know right so it's kind of playing it safe [Laughter] it was definitely not playing it safe it was it was so right on so how many different versions did you choose from for that song for example for the record do you remember something's happening or yeah no for uh for do you feel like we do one version one version okay no everything by the acoustic numbers and um baby i love your way and show me the way and maybe uh one other um all came from the that one night at winterland in san francisco there was one i remember reading this or maybe you told me this that on one of the songs that the kick drum mic had gotten bummed what was that so i always try to remember was was it one song that that happened and it moved 90 degrees away or something yeah i i kicked it um it's my it's all my fault but but it was you know if if there's the bass drum skin you know obviously it was like this you know uh we didn't have a hole in the bass drum we just used dampers because i wanted that the more puffy bass drum sound and then i kicked it so it was like this you know so chris kimsey uh who mixed it was just you know beside himself and we didn't use samples in those days so right he just fussed with it until it sounded good you know so when i talked to chris a couple weeks ago he said that he said i didn't really use effects on the voice it just used the room sounds that were there he said there was very little effects on the mixes for the whole record really it was just using the natural room sounds and there's really you know this that was the sound yeah uh well it's like there's rooms that just have this incredible sound for recording i've omni recorded in a few of them that but i can tell you that the film or east the academy of music in new york and the beacon now are incredible rooms to record in uh for theaters and uh up one level was winterland because that was uh you know um uh beacon would be 2400 or something winterland was i believe like uh at least five maybe 7 500. it was just a bigger but it a bigger room a bigger room sound it just had that room sound that you could bring up because it didn't have that awful slap uh or it wasn't too late you know and we would move the mics by uh turning the tape upside down and playing it backwards and then delaying them so that when you turned it back that the room sounds would actually be closed the back room would actually come closer uh we did a lot of little tricks like that but it was basically just as chris has obviously said um it was literally just the rum sound was so gorgeous you know and when chris was mixing it you would be right there right yeah yeah well he did tell me that that that um uh oh no he said that you had mixed half the the only mixed one side of the one record and then you that you played it for the label and they said where's the other half of the record exactly jerry moss the m of a m um came we said we were finished um and i guess he didn't know that because of budgetary reasons uh management had said well this is like your fifth album you haven't really hit you know pay dirt yet but just make it a single album you know so um i mean the frampton album had sold a healthy amount 300 000 which so we knew the next one we could be building on something so um but jerry came he listed he sat down and i'll never forget it there's a a comfy couch right in down the steps in front of the console and he sat down there the big wonderful speakers there they had and um and we played side one and side two which was five tracks that's all it was and um i just saw his head coming up over the meter bridge and he goes oh my god where's the rest so we said oh you mean you want a double album he said you're damn right i do so i said well we don't have definitive versions of a couple of them like the newer ones people love you and show me the way so he said well go and record some more ah right so chris uh we were touring uh very soon after that and uh we went out and recorded a half a dozen shows and uh well actually um eddie kramer did the new york uh recording of um uh comac long island in the uh hockey arena there which i don't believe is there anymore he did show me the way dear eddie um did a great job recording that one and then chris came out to do uh another couple of of uh shows and we got on one night in plattsburgh it's funny how you remember um it's such an indelible you know recording for me um at the college there we recorded um with maybe a thousand people recorded baby i love your way and um and chris mix both obviously show me the way actually no he mixed baby i love your way but he had it we'd run over and he got another project to go to so he left me to mix two songs one was shine on and one was show me the way so i mixed show me the way which then became the first single uh and guess what cheyenne was on the b side so um but i mean he he left the board pretty much set you know i'm not going to take uh full responsibility for that mix i had sat there through the whole process and watched exactly what he did and i just basically copied his template and um i'm sure he'd agree with me there so um yeah it's um that was a i couldn't believe that i ended up mixing show me the way that's amazing that's that is really that's really great and at the time peter you guys were mixing you'd be moving the faders yourself right you'd be oh you want no automation no automation and it will be all hands on deck for certain you know like do you feel the way it level wise it comes up and down and up and down it's a performance at that point okay one more okay i think we might have to do an edit piece on this one okay where do you want to start from you know it was uh it was wild in back in those days and you had lots of bits of tape with different marks where the fader has to come from this part that that part and then back down so yeah i think that a lot of people don't realize that when you used to mix on tape pretty much everybody would there many times you would mix songs not just not forget about live records just every record if it was a long song especially you might have a chorus mixed and then a verse mixed or you might have gotten something great on one pass and listen back oh i really like the verse of that and then you would just edit it together exactly but basically what we did we wanted it because it was live we wanted to get as much in each mix as possible so it flowed obviously but i think there's a there's an edit when it builds up one that i remember when it builds up to wow on the downbeat there of the beginning of the end section when he goes that's an edit right you're playing the d chords up at the top yes yes yeah that's an edit there so um at the end of the talk box right before the next session section is is where the end that one of the edits was when's the last time you went and listened to any of the songs on that record uh oh gosh i don't know a while ago i catch him on the radio every now and again so but uh i i tend to change the channel did it surprise you that radio stations i know there were edits of do you feel but when i was growing up radio stations would play the whole song i know yeah and uh we did a seven minute edit that was the single which got to like number 17 or number 21 or something in billboard which i couldn't believe um and um but then in new york plj uh radio station which was the sort of the top 40 fm station uh they did their own edit not so good but hey it was everywhere i like i said you know it's tend to change the channel because it was all a bit too much there's a great video of you on midnight special where you guys are playing the song and you do a really long version of the song as well on there yes and you never play the same solo ever no did anyone play the same solos back then uh i don't know really i think i think there's as many people back then that had played worked out solos as people that just you know i don't think santana ever played the same solo you know i don't know you know but um you always improvise your solos always yeah every time and that's um there's a story behind that um midnight special uh so it during the during the afternoon when we're doing camera rehearsals and everything he had chosen the director lovely man and he he was sitting right in front of the stage and watched and he's he said well i we need like three or four numbers and so we did do you feel uh show me the way money and nowhere's too far and then i finished i came down i sat next to him i said what do you think and he said oh i love those he said we'll do all those and i said well you know what our next single is um it's this other one called baby i love your waist let me hear it let me hear it so we went back up and we played it and he said yep let's do that one too so that one almost didn't make it as part of the show and now of course they split that into so many different shows you know one song here two songs there but um yeah what what what a great guy he was he was things were so different back then it wasn't it wasn't like well how long is it it's got to be three minutes you know there's none of that anymore you know and if you want to be on a a late night show uh or you know even saturday night live if you look at the the amount of time it is for the music section it's like this minuscule little leg you know everything's it don't people like to see music i thought they did um but it's like everything has to be edited down to three minutes for our uh attention span and that wasn't the case back then i'm glad i grew up then [Laughter] peter i did a video i i you probably didn't see it but i did a video where i reimagined stairway to heaven um and it was did you see it or not and i i i imitated you what i think you would have played and my friend phil x imitated eddie van gaal and it was actually the day before eddie died and then oh eric johnson played on it and um so if you haven't seen it i'll send it to you but it's no i i heard about it i have not seen it but thank you it was my best imitation of you so i can't wait all right wonderful peter thanks so much for today and uh and uh it's great to see you again same here and i hope we can meet in person in the not too distant future one more time sure i'm sure all right thanks i'd like to once again thank peter for being part of that episode if you haven't seen it go check it out on my main channel the link is in the description and don't forget to subscribe to this channel and leave a comment like the video thanks so much for watching that's all for now don't forget to subscribe if you're a first time viewer ring the bell that'll let you know when i go live and when a new video comes out give it a thumbs up leave a comment that's very important if you're interested in the biato book go to my website at www.rickbeater.com follow me on instagram at rickbiota1 check out the new beatto ear training program at beautiertraining.com and if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato 2

Views: 96,423

Keywords: Rick Beato, Interview, peter frampton, peter frampton do you feel like we do, peter frampton baby i love your way, Guitar solo, Guitar Rig, marshall amplifier, talk box effect, talk box guitar, frampton guitar lesson, discussion, what makes this song great, Music production, 70s guitar riffs, 70s guitar solo, 70s guitar

Id: rnzd5WTKuNA

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 01 2021