I have always wondered that over the years, but yeah, I think it’s “thank you”.
“Mediocre”? Please. Frampton is a great guitarist who even ended up touring with David Bowie, whom he’d gone to school with, at one point. It’s not his fault that his greatest exposure as an artist coincided with the point in his life when he was extremely pretty.
A great electric guitarist totally makes me weak in the knees. Thanks for this share - a great start to a long holiday weekend.
I saw Frampton after his double-live LP, and yeah, I was enamored by the talkbox (also used to good effect a couple years earlier by Rufus) enough to build my own, but what blew me away was the sound of his guitar through Leslie speakers, which I was familiar with but had yet to hear – I walked around the coliseum soaking that glorious rotating sound in and will never forget it.
So talk. Such box. Wow.
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“Journeyman” is probably a better term; “great” is not.
That concert I mentioned above was a good illustration of the difference. It was held at an outdoor amphitheater on the old Expo '67 site, Place des Nations. Frampton was the lead-in act for the Mahavishnu Orchestra - this was a stop on the tour that Frampton recorded for the Comes Alive album. (As an aside, the admission price for Place des Nations concerts at the time was $2 CAD. Other $2 concerts I saw included James Cotton and Paul Butterfield together in one show, and the Gary Burton Quintet with Pat Metheny, Larry Coryell’s Eleventh House and Return to Forever, all in a single show. My, how times have changed!)
Montreal youth of the time were extremely hip to British and European artists, usually aware of these artists ahead of the rest of North America, so the place was packed with a younger audience to see Frampton, and Frampton did put on an enjoyable set. At the end of the set, the audience was extremely noisy calling for an encore.
McLaughlin came out with Mahavishnu, and asked for his customary minute of silence - the younger members of the audience were still yelling for a Frampton encore. Eventually, McLaughlin decided that he had got enough “silence” and started to play - immediate dead silence from the audience (and no few jaws had dropped to the floor). The reaction of the audience was quite noticeable - those of us who were already familiar with McLaughlin enjoyed an “I told you so” moment. McLaughlin’s set was… impressive. Mahavishnu made converts that night…
…and that is the difference between a decent journeyman guitarist and a great guitarist. Frampton might have upstaged another band: he didn’t upstage the main act that night.
Please note: “great” is not the same as “best ever.”
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I’m not sure I’d call John McLaughlin best ever, much as I love his music. Great, yes; best ever, possibly not. Ditto for Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Al Di Meola, Larry Coryell, Pat Metheny, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Robert Fripp and Frank Zappa, all of whom I’ve seen live (and thus know that they can do in person what they do in recordings). It’s not surprising that any of these people still have strong careers (Frank excepted, unfortunately) - these guys are great guitarists and, in general, great musicians, but best ever? Who’s to say?
Is Frampton at the same level of accomplishment as these chaps? As imaginative or innovative or versatile? I think one would be hard pressed to say that.
So please note: it isn’t necessary to be great to put on an enjoyable show (and Frampton certainly did when I saw him), so I really would be wary about using that term for any and every entertainer who does. Not all good musicians are great; not all “stars” are “superstars”. As a society, we have a real tendency to devalue these terms by inflation.
I discovered that you can do the talk box thing with your smart phone. Play a song and put that tiny speaker against the corner of your mouth and shape the sound coming out. First time I showed that to someone she said I want that app. what is it. When I explained she looked disappointed. It is funny though.
Frampton is only a fair guitar player. It is his enthusiasm that makes him stand out.
The trick is to saw the horn off of a tweeter. Much more effective than a cone speaker.
Frampton appeared at a time when the guitar gods of the 60s were killing themselves off with drugs and motorcycle crashes and just could not possibly get mom and dads approval as something to be obsessing over in your bedroom for hours and hours every day. He positioned himself as the bluesy guitar player every mother could love. Smart marketing that ended with him playing Sergeant Pepper in that execrable film that tolled the end of some era or other and ushered in the disco age.
I am tempted to post my favorite Neil Young clip again so we can all recall what heart is.
Well, according to Wikipedia, the following year he released an album titled “I’m In You”, so…
Yeah, I’ve never understood what was up with the Midnight Special in-studio crowd. They always seem very, very sedate, even for awesome performances. I figure they were all given a hit of Thorazine or something beforehand.
Life is an exhibition, not a contest. Please, no wagering.
Why worry about what one food you would choose to eat for the rest of your life (cherry flavor pez), when you can have them all? Whenever you like?
Most people seem to think that Eddie Van Halen is probably the world’s “greatest” guitarist.
But who cares? I’d rather watch Billy Zoom – or Peter here – any day. (Must be the smiles, lol.)
This thing is actually called a Heil Talk Box
That was actually more or less my point. In that particular concert, those of us who went to see McLaughlin heard a pleasant lead-in act, which was a nice surprise; those who went to see Frampton (the majority, I think) got an unexpected presentation of one of the ways that music can be powerful. (I say “one of the ways” advisedly.)
There’s plenty of room in the world for music that isn’t “great” (and I certainly listen to my fair share of it - see Colosseum II above). Let’s just not inflate its value, because that does this music as much of a disservice as it does the genuinely great stuff - it places a weight on it that it can’t carry, and prevents appreciating it on its own merits. In this case, calling Frampton a great guitarist means claiming that he can hold his own with the power of a McLaughlin or the expressiveness of a Beck, and he can’t - his imaginative abilities (even more than the technical ones) are limited when compared to these worthies. What he can do is put across a pleasant tune, and that has its own worth.
Here is an interview with Bob Heil (the creator of the Talk Box) talking about its creation with Joe Walsh and how Peter Frampton got his talk box as a christmas gift from his girlfriend, Penny.
The whole interview is amazing and well worth a listen.
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