August 17, 2021 • 61 mins
As part of our summer archives series, we revisit Alec’s interview with two rock legends, Patti Smith and Peter Frampton. Alec’s conversation with Patti Smith took place before a live audience at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey, in December 2016. She tells Alec she was never looking for fame. Her love of poetry, art, and a desire to “do something great” motivated her to move to New York when she was 20. She chronicled her formative friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe in her best-selling memoir, Just Kids. She talks to Alec about fame, friendship, and motherhood. Peter Frampton’s double album, Frampton Comes Alive! is one of the best-selling live albums of all time, and it completely changed his life. Frampton started playing guitar before he was eight years old. He talked to Alec about his musical roots in England, playing in bands like The Preachers and The Herd, and how, at 14, the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman became his mentor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. And I'm Kathleen Russo and I'm
finally hosting Here's the Thing. Oh my goodness, Kathy, how
long have you and I worked on this podcast. It's
only been ten years, Alec, ten years. Well, of course
you should have a turn hosting one of our staff
(00:22):
pick shows from the archives this summer, but justice once, okay, Alec. Thanks.
One of the perks of this job as the executive
producer of Here's the Thing is you get to meet
so many people you admire in respect, including people whose
posters hung on your bedroom wall in Upstate New York
during the nineties seventies, and people whose LPs you listen
(00:46):
to on your turntable over and over so often the
vinyl warped or war thinned. My archival picks today are
two of these grades. Poet, writer, musician and the ultimate
punk rocker Patty Smith and one of the best guitarists
and vocalists in the world, rock legend Peter Frampton. Get
(01:07):
these phone calls in quick succession. You'll number one and
the charts. You know it's the biggest selling record of
all time. You've just outsold Carol King's tapestry. We'll hear
alex conversation with Peter Frampton in a bit, but first
let's hear from music icon Patti Smith. Alex Conversation with
(01:27):
Patti Smith was recorded live in two thousand sixteen at
the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey. When
I called Patty's manager to book her on the show,
I was surprised and frankly thrilled when Patty called me
back herself to tell me she was a huge fan
of Alex and of course she would be a guest.
(01:47):
I love when we record live shows for the podcast
because it brings a whole new energy and feel. As
you'll hear, this was a love fest with the audience,
and Patty, no stranger to live shows, was the perfect guest.
Alex started by asking if she'd have the same career
if she started out today. Actually, I have no idea
(02:09):
because I didn't really come into the music business. I was.
I came. I wound up in music by mistake. I'm
not really a musician. I didn't really want to be
a musician or a singer. I just wanted to I
wanted to be a poet and a writer, and it
was accidental. So would it accidentally happen now? I don't
(02:31):
think so. I think I would have to be more
focused on what I wanted. But also because I'm so
on technological and things, I mean, I'm just not really
suited for right now, So probably I would have to
be like a physicist the band in the game. You
don't even drive. No, I don't know how to drive,
(02:52):
so I couldn't do that. That's true. She doesn't have
a license. I said, you ever a live in l A.
She said no, I don't swim and I don't drive.
That's true. But if you came in now, you'd be
a scientist. Who said, well, I I don't know what
I would be, but I don't think I would have
a problem no matter where I came in. You know,
I would figure out something. I'm pretty scrappy now. But
(03:16):
when you say that you weren't a musician, how did
that begin for you? Well, I mean I came to
New York in nineteen seven wanted to be an artist,
and I also wrote poetry. And after I I just
started writing more poetry. And then uh was shepherded by
people like Alan Ginsburg and and William Burrows and Gregory Corso,
(03:40):
and they all read their poetry. So I wanted to
read poetry, but I didn't want to be boring because
I went to a lot of poetry readings and they
were snoresville, you know, they were like, sorry, but really boring.
So I just started like, at least have good wine. Wine.
I didn't even drink, and I don't anything interesting really,
(04:02):
but I mean, I'll have a shot at to kill everybody. No,
I mean no, I never had a drug problem. M
minutes on that I have a drug problem now. Actually,
I was such a sickly kid um that and my
(04:23):
parents worked so hard to keep me alive that you know,
when I when I came out into the world, the
last thing I was going to do is fuck that up.
You know, I just I'm not. I don't have a
self destructive event. But also when I was a kid,
my mother was a chain smoker, and she I mean
real true chain smoker, and when she ran out of
(04:46):
cigarettes and she didn't have money, she would pace all
night long. I get up at midnight and see my
poor mom pacing because she didn't have a cigarette. And
I thought then I'm never gonna be dependent on anything,
because I thought, what would happen if you got stranded
on a desert island you didn't have cigarettes, You'd like
fall apart. So it was like an early lesson in uh,
(05:10):
what I didn't want facing on a desert cigarettes have
to grow to back and then But I feel like
somehow I didn't answer one of some questions. Oh, I know,
because you're yeah, it doesn't matter. You do whatever you
want to do. How I wound up singing, I just
wound up singing, like to make up little singing, little
(05:32):
songs acapella between poems to make it a little more interesting,
and then sort of wrapping poems. And it was just
organic from somebody just did it on your own. You
didn't see anybody else doing that, No, I mean I
saw like beat poets or I mean just I think
of everybody that I was influenced by at that time
(05:54):
of my life, Johnny Carson was the one. I just thought, like,
you didn't have drug problem either. Yeah, I'm not surprised,
but I mean, but just the fact that Johnny Carson,
his his his ability to improvise or to get himself
out of any situation. That was always what I was
looking for. If I was on stage, gotten a bad situation,
(06:16):
find my way out of it. You grew up in
South Jersey, and you're kind of tough. The way you
grew up. Your dad. What did your dad do for
a living? He was worked in a factory. She's waitress.
And how many kids in your family? Three girls, one boy?
And I was the oldest, oldest, And it was tough.
(06:37):
Well yeah, I mean it was financially tough. We had.
It was in those ways very tough. But in another
way we had it was very magical because I had
really great siblings. I had a great imagination, read hundreds
of books. My parents. We knew that they had a
(06:57):
lot of strife and stress, but you know, it was
just the world seems so magical. It wasn't so bad
for us. Books were my salvation, and so I I
didn't think of things. The only bad thing was when
I'd be hungry. I mean, truthfully, I like to eat.
I was really skinny and a real I was always hungry,
(07:18):
and that was my big Yeah, really skinny. And then
when you left home, where'd you go? New York? I
left when I was twenty and Basically I left to
get a job because in uh South Jersey and Philadelphia,
the New York shipyard closed down and there were like
(07:40):
thirty thousand jobs overnight were lost and there wasn't any work,
no matter how low a factory job, nothing, And there
was no more work, and I needed a job. So
I went to New York City to get a job.
And where'd you get a job? Um? In a bookstore.
I got a series of bookstores until I really landed
(08:02):
a great bookstore job in Scribner's Bookstore, and I worked
there for about five years. Doesn't it really tells a
lot about you? That really pretty much sums it up?
Your home in Jersey, you can't get a job, you're starving.
You going to New York to get a job. I
thought you were gonna say in a restaurant, Well, no idea,
it soon as you go to a bookstore a different
(08:23):
kind of food. But no, you know what happened. My
mother was a waitress and she tried to give me
a job at her counter, but I was so clumsy
and such a day dreamer, and she fired me. And
so then she was upset that I was leaving home,
but she got she let me take my white uniform
(08:43):
and my wedgies. So the first day I got I'm
one Time Square and of course Time Square was all
different than you know. And uh, I got a little
a job immediately because they needed a waitress at a place,
a little Italian place called Joe's Um on Times Square.
And within like two hours I dumped one of the
(09:04):
I had a giant tray as tripped and the whole
tray of veal parmisanas went on this woman's tweed suit.
Not only was I fired, but my three hours pay
went to her cleaning bill. So I went back to
port authority, left the waitress uniform and the wedgies in
the girl's bathroom and thought maybe somebody can use them
(09:27):
and h Then I looked around for a better job.
How does art, poetry, music come into your life when
you're in New York when you're twenty years old. Well,
first it was just getting a job. I didn't get
a job the first or second day. I mean I
was sleeping in the subway, sleeping in uh Central Park,
sleeping at the cemetery and Flushing or Greenwood or wherever
(09:52):
it was, and near where Herman Melville was buried, and uh,
it took a little while, and truthfully, it wasn't really
until I met I met Robert Maplethorpe, and uh we
met a couple of times. But I was in a
(10:13):
bit of a jam because a grown up asked me
to go out to eat. He was probably forty, but
I was like twenty. To me, seemed like, you know,
he was a grown up, you know, And uh, I
was really afraid that my mother used to say, don't
go out with a stranger because you know, they just
want one thing. And I thought, I was so hungry,
(10:35):
and he said he would take me to dinner. And
he took me to the Empire State Building diner, and
I remembered to this day he ordered, uh we ordered.
He ordered me swordfish and it was five dollars, and
I thought he's going to want everything for five dollars.
And I was petrified, and so I I ate that
(10:59):
I couldn't even eat it. And I'm so angry, I'm
gonna eat. Maybe I should leave now, Yeah, exactly, not
that door. But these potatoes are so good of just
a couple of more potatoes that I'm going to write
out that door. He'll never know. No, I didn't know
what to do. Then when we walked, no, we didn't.
(11:19):
We didn't have any dessert. We walked all the way
down to uh Tompkins Square Park and we were sitting
there and then all of a sudden, he said, I
have an apartment right around here. Would and he asked
me if I wanted to. It was really creepy. He
actually had like it's like like a turtleneck, a white turtleneck,
(11:40):
I remember, and a medallion. I mean, it was really powers.
That's so funny. Now he was supposed to be a
science fiction writer, but I was. And when he said that,
I thought, oh my god, this is the moment, you know,
and everything my mother ever told me for like ten
(12:02):
years of my life. And I was sitting there paralyzed,
figuring out what to do. And I looked and I
see Robert Maplethorpe coming, you know, up through it just coming.
It's almost like a cloud parted and here he comes
with like long curly hair and a sheepskin vest and
you know, and his dungarees. And I had only met
(12:23):
him once or twice, and I didn't even know his name,
and I just met him sort of, And so I
ran up to him, and I said, uh, do you
remember me? And he goes yeah, And I said, will
you pretend you're my boyfriend? And he says okay. So
I bring him to the science fiction guy and I said,
this is my boyfriend. He's really mad. I gotta go goodbye.
(12:45):
And then I said to Robert, this is so stupid,
but I didn't. I said run, and Robert and I ran.
We ran, we ran, we ran away. And uh and
now the guy on the turtleneck with the medallion on
is the president elect of the United States. Boy, did
(13:10):
you play your cards wrong? You know? And then my
life began. Life began that night because Robert and I
just roamed around. We roamed around the East Village and
everywhere all night long till two in the morning, just
talking away. And finally, almost simultaneously, we both said, do
(13:32):
you have a place to stay? Neither one of us
had anywhere to live, We didn't have any money, but
the differences. Robert had knew some kids of Pratt and
he knew he knew how to get the key to
this one guy's apartment where his art was stored. So
we went there and we went to his place and
he showed me all his drawings and what he was doing,
(13:53):
and after that night we became inseparable, and that set us,
at least me on a path, you know where of
drawling and painting and evolving and writing poetry. And yeah,
we've we've yes through through many things. Yeah, well I
(14:17):
was going to get into that. But you're with him
for a long long time, and then things change for
you as well in terms of your career. Well, I
mean at first. I mean, the thing is is that
I never cared about a career. I have to say,
none of those things, um being in a business, music, business, career, money.
(14:38):
What what I always wanted, no matter how conceded it sounds,
is I wanted to do something great. I wanted to
write something as great as Pinocchio or The Scarlet Letter,
or you know, just do something wonderful, write a wonderful book.
I didn't really care about and still don't. I don't
care about having a career or any of that stuff.
(14:59):
I do my work and in the process I've had
some great successes. I've had things that have had me
banned from the world. I've had you know, I've I've
been in trouble, I've done you know, I've left it
all behind. It's not important to me. It's always important
to me. Is really just to do something good, to
(15:20):
do something that's uh duran Patti Smith talking about her
relationship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. If you're enjoying this
show from our archives, did you know we have over
two and fifty more available for your listening pleasure. Be
sure to check them out and Here's the Thing dot Org.
(15:42):
After the break, Alec and Patti Smith talked about her
marriage to mc fives bred Sonic Smith, and motherhood. I'm
(16:02):
Kathleen Rousseau and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Let's
get back to Alex's conversation with Patti Smith and what
her career really means to her. So when you started
to have success, was that something that was because it
was so unfamiliar to you? There are those people who
I'm not going to say the word failure. They're more
(16:23):
comfortable and anonymity than they are being successful and famous
because it's familiar. Did you find that when you were
becoming famous as a musician, because primarily you became famous
as a musician as well. At first in the beginning,
I had my first big success with this song I
wrote with Bruce Springsteen because the night I thought it
(16:44):
was thank you, I thought it was I thought it
was exciting to have a song on the radio. I
didn't think of it in terms of success or failure.
It was just really cool to be on the radio.
And back then, you know, having a single and meant,
you know, your kurds were in the window and and
you could, you know, you played bigger places and met
(17:05):
more people. But by nine seventy nine, truthfully, I could
see that success was to keep going. You I was
doing less work, less meaningful work, evolving less as a
person and an artist, and just get more successful. And
(17:27):
I thought, that's that's not why I was put on
the planet. I wasn't put on the planet to you know,
climb the ladder of success. I was here to do
certain kind of work. And so um I left. I
left the music business in seventy nine. You separated from
Maple Well. Robert and I separated as a couple in
(17:49):
like seventy two, but never as we were just the same,
only we weren't, you know, doing it anymore, you know,
But we didn't change how we were. We were always
just the same. We were just you know, had different
physical partners. So we never quite really separated and were
(18:10):
with him and still connected him even when he was
very second, when he was and when he died. Oh yeah,
I mean we you know, I'm still connected with him.
I still think about him every day, and the things
that I learned from him or that we we did
together inform the work that I do. I mean, we
(18:30):
we bonded so young through art. I mean, of course,
you know, we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We did all
the things young people do. But I think that is
as he felt freer and freer as an artist in
a human being his nature. First he had to come
out as an artist. Then the next thing that happened
(18:54):
is he blossomed and felt his sexual nature. We had
to weather that. We had to, you know, try to
navigate what this meant, what it meant to our relationship,
what it meant and and it was difficult, and it
took a few years because neither one of us wanted
to part, But eventually we had to part as boyfriend
(19:20):
and girlfriend because he had to be who he needed
to be. When did you meet your husband, you eventually
got married. I met my husband in nineteen seventy six
in Detroit, and I was on the road and I
met him in Detroit and I saw him. It was
it's like a it's really like a song. I saw
(19:43):
him across a crowded room. He was just standing there
and it blew overcoat. I didn't know who he was,
and I thought, that's the boy I'm going to marry.
I swear to you that's true. How old were you
at the time. I was about seventy six. I was
about twenty eight. I don't know. Did you walk up
(20:05):
and tell him that right? No, no, not at all.
But Lenny Kay actually introduced us and he said, Fred Smith,
Patti Smith. We just looked at each other and I
don't know, and we finally, Um, we had a long
(20:26):
distance relationship, in fact, because the night we had a
long distant relationship and neither one of us had a
whole lot of money, and to make phone calls was expensive,
long distance calls. I always to this day I hear
people my boyfriend only called me three times today, and
I think, Jesus, you know, it's like I'd have to
(20:47):
wait all week to get one phone call from from
Fred And um, actually, am I going off the course too,
there is no core, is no course. Yeah, you're my
kind of guy. I'm your kind of passage. I'm your
kind of passenger too, because the autopilot about thirty minutes ago. Now,
(21:08):
I mean, I'm we're not going anywhere in particular because
I don't know how to drive and I have no
sense of direction. I'm a really good passenger because I
can never tell if anybody's lost, you know, And I
apply that to all every part of life. But when
you met your husband, and what did he do? Was
he a musician? He's a He was a musician, He
(21:28):
played with the MC five. He was a master guitarist.
He was really one of our great guitarist and h
and he's just such a beautiful man. You know. We
just decided, you know, we we wanted to evolve as
human beings, and he wanted children, and we just we
(21:48):
just decided to withdraw from public life and really know
each other and when when we had children, they would
really know who we were. And and so we did.
How long until his he passed away in the end
of ninety four, so sixteen years, sixteen years? What was
it like did you paint? I know, I didn't paint
(22:13):
because um it was just the way our living quarters were.
I didn't really have the space to do something like that,
but I wrote every day. I could have never written
just kids or the books that I'm writing now, had
I not had sixteen years of enforced discipline, because I've
always been very undisciplined. And then unless I had a
(22:35):
job or something. But then having a children, um I had.
I had to learn to wake up at five in
the morning and from five to eight was my writing time.
Everybody was asleep, it was my time. And it was
really hard at first, but then after a while I
got in a groove and I still right early in
(22:57):
the morning, and I really learned how to develop my craft.
And uh, it was hard because there's no cafes around,
there was no bookstores, a lot of things. The biggest,
the most hardest thing is in New York, you can
walk out the door and get a cup of coffee
in about two minutes practically anywhere, but where I was,
(23:21):
the closest thing was seven eleven, which was about, you know,
half a mile away, so I'd have to every Saturday,
I'd walked to seven eleven, my cafe, get a glazed donut,
and the coffee, and I was I was in town,
you know. But but I love my life. It wasn't
easy because you know, I had to do all the
(23:44):
we we did everything. We didn't have nannie's or housekeepers
or even babysitters. We did everything. And I'm not the
most adept at stuff. You know, some of my poor kids,
you know, their school uniforms and stuff. My daughter's little pleaded,
you know, jumper was like always a little jagged e
and their blouses in their shirts were a little dingier
(24:07):
than the other because I didn't like using bleach and
things like that. But but I I love my kids,
I love my husband, you know. And it was a
lot of certain amount of sacrifice and and uh, you know,
but I was talking about you because I just find
this so interesting that was there much talk about you,
(24:30):
like getting back, getting back in there and getting back
into your life to make money as a breadwinner for
everybody's been well, when we really really need I always
always feel like I got to work all the time. Well,
when we really needed money, we lived so simply. I
mean when we really needed money. In eighty six, we
(24:51):
did one record together and that kept us going. And
but it's just you know, I um, I I liked
my life. I never I didn't expect to be on
the great Stages of Europe, you know. To me, it
(25:12):
was really fantastic that I got the opportunity. I never
thought I would do a record, but in doing so,
I got to travel, which in I never thought I
would ever have the money to travel and go to Finland,
you know. But uh, but I mean all the places.
I'm just joking, but I did get to go to Finland,
even though I had never dreamed of going to Finland.
(25:33):
But I mean I got to all the places. I
saw Paris and Rome and Vienna and all these places
because I had a band and sang and did records.
But it wasn't it wasn't my focus in life. It
wasn't my great great vision. And so when I didn't
do it, I was grateful that I got the opportunity.
(25:57):
But I wasn't mourning the situation that I wasn't doing it.
You know, I wasn't missing the applause. It wasn't like
a Judy Garland movie or something. I just you know,
I felt you know, really happy righting, you know, watching
my kids grow. I did what I needed to do.
I was happy. But you have the experience to be
(26:18):
a mother. Oh yeah, I love My kids are awesome.
And the funny thing is, I mean, I'm not embarrassed
to say this because my kids know. I never wanted kids.
I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't want
to have kids. And I came from a big family
and I helped raise my siblings, and I just wanted
to be free. And it was Fred who wanted children,
(26:39):
and I loved him so much, and I thought, well,
I can do that, you know I But I never
expected to just love my kids so much and just
love being a mother. And since Fred died when he
was forty five, you know, I have them. I have them.
I see so much of him in them, not just
(27:02):
in the way they look or certain gestures, but even
in their music. The tones of my son's guitar. He'll
be playing a guitar solo. He never heard his father
play guitar because they were quite young. It's Fred's tones.
Jesse at the piano, she is just his feel. Was
(27:23):
writing songs difficult and kind of laborious? Did they come
to you? Were both? Well? I I mean, writing songs
isn't my first vocation, and I I it's I'm not
as fastile at writing songs as other things. Also since
I don't really only I play a few chords on
the guitar, so I can figure out some things. But
(27:43):
sometimes songs come. Songs are so strange. Sometimes they just
come as a gift. I've woke up in the morning
and there's a song there and I quick write it down.
It just comes full with the music and the words.
And then there's other songs that have taken three years too,
you know, have a piece of music and write words,
(28:06):
but it's it's labor songwriting, and there's a lot of responsibility,
um responsibility to the composer because most of my songs,
the music was written by a band member or Fred
and uh and and so you want to please them.
But it also has to be something that I can sing.
(28:30):
But the easiest, one of the easiest things was to
write UM too because the night because Bruce, I had
a cassette with a it was a demo, and I
really didn't want to listen to it. You know. It
was given to me by my producer, Jimmy Ivan, and
(28:50):
he coax Bruce into let me finish it. Bruce couldn't
figure out he was having trouble writing verses to the song.
He had the chorus, and Jimmy gave it to me,
and I didn't want to listen to it because I thought, um,
I wanted to write. I wanted my band to write
their own songs. And uh. And Bruce is from like
(29:11):
a different part of New Jersey than me, and he's
sort of in the middle, and I'm from South Jersey
and it's like, I really, I just didn't want, you know,
and sort of a middle pollute your song in which
SAPs don't bring that middle Jersey. I know, I'm from
(29:33):
New Jersey, it's just I'm from like the cooler part
of Jersey. But I was That's what I was saying before.
But one night I was waiting. Jimmy had given me
this tape when we were doing this album Easter, and
every night Jimmy would say, hey, listen to the tape,
to listen to the tape, to listen to the tape,
and I said, uh, not yet, and he called me
(29:53):
up to listen to the tape, to listen to the tape.
Uh not yet. So you know, it was just sitting
there in my little apartment on McDougall Street. And uh so, anyway,
Fred was supposed to call me, and it was like
seven and I got already. I look cool, and I'm
sitting there and the phone sitting there, and I'm waiting
for Fred to call. And seven goes by seven thirty.
(30:18):
No Fred, you know, say eight o'clock. I'm pacing around,
and you know, I was like obsessive, you know, I wanted,
you know, the phone call, and I couldn't. I was
just pasting and pacing, couldn't figure out what to do
with myself. And I noticed this the darn tape, and
I thought, listen to that darn tape. So I put
it on my cassette machine and put it on and
(30:40):
I listened to it, and it's in my key, perfectly
arranged anthemic has a really great chorus, and I thought
it's one of those darn hits. It's just you know, yeah.
So I listened to it and it was, you know,
it was captivating, and I'm waiting for Fred and waiting
for Fred. Finally he calls me up like eleven o'clock
(31:01):
at night. But when he called me, because it took
so long, um, I had finished all the lyrics to
the song and uh. That's why in the second verse
that says, Lisie have idell when I'm alone, love is
a ring the telephone. I was waiting for Fred to
(31:23):
call so and uh, so I wrote the words and
uh and and thanks to Bruce, I had my my
first hit. Alex spoke with Patti Smith before a live
audience in two thousand sixteen. Now to one of my
(31:44):
most heartfelt teenage crushes, Peter Frampton. He arrived early at
the studio in two thousand twelve and I had the
privilege to sit down and talk with him before his
conversation with Alec. He was so down to earth and friendly,
and mostly we talked about his children. Both Alec and
I are huge fans, so we were so looking forward
(32:04):
to this interview, which began with Peter's obsession with sound.
Sound is very inspirational to me. I remember the reason
that I wanted to learn guitar was because I heard
the sounds of all these people on TV and on
the radio electric guitar very young and something. I have
(32:27):
a very acute sense of sound, and I've always had
that if I don't have a good sound, I can't
play very well, so I've always worked out what makes
a good sound? How do you get a good sound technically?
And then one of the first sessions I ever did,
Bill Wyman of The Stones produced it when I was fourteen,
(32:49):
and the first engineer I worked with was Glynn Jones,
who is if people don't know, he's one of the
most famous engineers of all Stones engineer, Yeah, Zapp and
Eagles that the band everybody yea humble by and then
being a gadget freak early on, I just was over
like a little birdie on their shoulder and I was,
(33:11):
what's that? What are you doing there? I just learned
how to engineer, So I really enjoy that part of
it as well, immensely. How do you end up as
a fourteen year old and Wyman wants to produce your
I started playing guitar just before I was eight years old,
(33:32):
and we're either your parents musical yes, um in England, Yes,
about twelve miles south of London and Bromley, Kent, and
my mother was definitely would have been an entertainer. She was,
but my grandparents wouldn't allow her to become an actress.
She wanted to be an actress. Her father was a singer. Yes,
(33:55):
we have a lot of musical jeans. And dad, my
dad played his teacher artist. He played guitar in a
college dance band before the war, before he was more
into his art, but he did. He was the one
that taught me how to sing Michael Rowe the boat,
(34:15):
you know, with two chords basically and then hang down
your head. Tom Dooley was another big effort. Then it
was Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly and our English the Shadows,
Cliff Richard and the Shadows. So that's how I started
playing guitar because of American music. Obviously, that's what we
all did, and we were all clamoring for American music
(34:36):
before the Beatles and then so I was known in
locally as this young, little upstart, good guitar player, very young.
Ended up in a semipro band still at school that
had the drummer that was the original drummer of the
Rolling Stones called Tony Chapman, who introduced Bill to the
Stones that he didn't end up staying in the Stones,
(34:56):
and Bill felt he owed him a a favor. I
would say said, look, put a band together and I'll
produce it. And he comes into the music shop. I'm
working on the saturdays when I'm about fourteen and restringing
guitars for the guy there. He said, I want you
to be in my band, you know. I said, well,
I have to speak to dad, you know sort of thing.
(35:19):
The first thing I know, we're in a van. We
pick up Bill Wyman and Penge who sits in the front.
The van goes very quiet. We've got a rolling stone
in the front seat. We go up to London and
I meet Glenn John's and we make a record like
everyone is talking about soul, did or you know what
I mean? Record? It was called A Hole in My
(35:43):
Soul and it was a cover of an American song
and what was the name of the band, The Preachers.
So that was it, and so music was your entire life. Yes,
you're in the guitar shop and Kent, Yeah, fixing strings
on guitars from people shining guitars, And the next thing
you know, build my mean's in the car and you're
off to go and do hold my soul at the Preachers. Yes,
(36:04):
I mean like you woked around us so much. Fiddle,
what year is this? This is sixty four? So the
stones were and the Beatles were in full swing by then. Yes,
we did. That year the Stones were given Ready Steady Go.
They took over the show Ready Steady Go for one week,
and each one of the Stones had their choice of
(36:25):
act to be on, you know, and of course Bill
chose us. So I'm on TV when I'm just before
I'm i turned fifteen? Is there If anybody's got it,
Bill's got it because he's he's the historian, you know.
But that was pretty amazing. Do you miss living in England?
You're such an American in so many ways. You lived
(36:47):
here for years. Han two years seventy seventy five, I
came to New York. Actually I missed my family, my
brother and his family. I miss friends and stuff, but
my children are here. When I first came to America
with Humble Pie and I turned on the radio, I said,
I'm moving here, it just seemed like this was the place.
(37:09):
It was all happening with the old and this is
the yeah. And I'd lived through the swinging sixties of London,
you know, and that was exciting too. And I love England,
don't get me wrong, I just don't think I would
ever live there again. I was just i'd be too
far from my kids. Yeah, so when you finish the
Hole in my soul on the show with Bill Wyman,
(37:30):
he's your selection there on the show. What happens then? Then, Um,
I'm sixteen. It's school holidays in the summer of big
local band The Herd come to me and say, we
saw you in the breaches and we're having a change around.
Would you come and and help us out for the summer?
(37:54):
So I said, okay. So it gets close to September
when I'm going to go back to school, and they said,
here's an offer. We want you to be the lead
guitarist and the lead guitarist going to play bass, and
we want to be a four piece out of five piece,
and would you join the Herd? I said, oh, I
had to hear. I've got to go back to school,
do my sixth form, get my A levels and go
(38:16):
to Guildhall School and the music That was my plan
to go to music college, you know Beard right at
least Yeah, I haven't even had a shandy yet, you know.
So I went to Dad and Mom and I said, look,
I really want to do. This is a professional band.
You know, they're great, They're a big band, and my
(38:38):
dad said, well, and they knew that this was on
the cards, you know, this was coming up that they
knew by this time I was going to be a musician.
And so he said, well, look, if you left here
and you've got a job at the post office, you
get fifteen pounds a week. I want to get an
assurance from this band that you're going to get fifteen
(38:59):
pounds of week. I said, well, if he can do
that deal, that that'll be great. I don't think they
earn enough to pay themselves sifting both. He said, well
that's what you I'm going minimum wage for you. So
that was the last deal my dad did for me,
because we started to become a little better and earn
more money. Beginning, they couldn't pay themselves fifty. Eventually it
was a bargain, yeah, because they paid me fifteen. They
(39:21):
got upstein. So that was the end of him as
a manager. Everything changed and the Herd became had like
three big top ten hits and and I became very
(39:42):
well known in Europe as a guitar player singer. Now
by the time you leave the Herd, you leave them
in what year the herd after the the these three
big hits and an album. We realized that we were
losing money still and there was no reason because we
saw the figures what was coming in and what we
(40:03):
were getting paid and all that. So we reached out
and Steve Merritt and Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces said, look,
we've been through this. We've been screwed, you know, by
management or business manager or whatever. They clued us in,
which was very nice to them, and said they help
us produce a track or two on on the next
album we were going to do, which they did. Meanwhile,
(40:24):
I'm sitting in with the Small Faces now at various
functions and and wanted to join the Small Faces. That
wasn't to be. Steve wanted me to join the Small Faces,
but they weren't so thrilled with that. So in the
end Steve called me up and said, look, I've left
the Small Faces, let's form a band. And that's how
(40:44):
Humble Pie basically formed in right at the end of in.
So you with Humble Pie and you're in England, yes,
and you perform with them for how many years? Four years?
So how would you characterize that period for stuff? Did
you enjoy it? Unbelievable? They were very popular. Yes in
(41:05):
the States as well. Yes, that band brought me to America.
That's where we started when I met I mean probably
one of the first gigs I met Bill Graham. You know,
you realized now when I look back, it was the
beginnings of the creation of rock and roll shows. Truly.
Bill Graham was the guy on how to do it live?
(41:29):
And why did Humble Pie? And a couple of reasons.
I was feeling claustrophobic in the band because we started
off very democratic and doing it all different types of music,
and now our our stage act was narrowing, and we
were just doing more more of that heavy rock and roll,
(41:49):
which I love, Don't get me wrong. That's my riff,
I Don't need no Doctor. That's me jamming the sound
check in Madison Square Garden, and Steve just jumped up
on the stage and started singing, I Don't need no
Doctor over that riff. He and I were very much singing. Yeah. Yeah.
(42:21):
He's the one that says it's been a gas. Yeah,
we go home on Mond on Monday. But what I'm
tell's the oh, he was probably a couple of years old,
and you feel claustrophobic, white because we want. I wasn't
(42:42):
being able to do the music, all of this music
that I wanted to do. Humble Pie started off really
split between acoustic and electric. And also I was coming
into my own and Steve and I fought like brothers. Yes,
that's which, which is why humble Pie was so fiery.
I think because musically it was phenomenal. You know, sometimes
(43:04):
we degree and sometimes we just wouldn't agree. It was
very sad for me because I knew it would upset them,
but I just felt that I had to. It was
time to go on. And did you know where you
wanted to go? No idea. I knew that I was.
I didn't want to form another band. I wanted to
become a solo artist. Why because I wanted to make
(43:25):
all the decisions because I'm a complete control freak. Did
you feel you wanted Yeah, you wanted wanted to try
things that Yeah, I wanted to try things that maybe
other people wouldn't want to try. You know, I wanted
to do it. And I have to say that it
wouldn't have been I wouldn't have had a solo career
had it not been for Humble Pie. I learned so
(43:48):
much from working with Steve Marriott. I have to hand
him a lot of the credit for the sort of
things that he introduced me to listen to as well,
music blues and Build Black Bow and stuff like that.
That was really influential to me. So that's why it
was a bitter sweet thing leaving. I wanted to leave,
(44:08):
but I didn't want to leave. And then, of course,
as soon as I left the live album that I
had a big hand in mixing, because I'm the gadget
freak in the engineer with Eddie Kramer rock in the
film or Comes Out, I've left right at that point
and it zooms up the charts. It's Humble Pie's first
gold record, and I'm going, holy crap, that's it. It's
(44:33):
the first big blooper of my career. You know, I
made a big mistake. It was like Dad's back on
the job in the office game. I frammed them this time, Yes,
absolutely so. Then it was four studio albums before we
did Comes Alive, you know, and a lot of a
lot of touring and where are you living then? You
(44:54):
still I was still living in England until seventy five,
and I finished the fourth solo record in England and
then moved over. I actually moved to New York and
stayed at the Mount Kisco Holiday Inn on New Year's Eve. Yes,
(45:16):
So basically the first day of seventy five was I
was now living in America. When you do comes Alive,
how much of the music on that is new music
on an album? How much of it was stuff you
mind from the previous four solo albums. It was basically
all stuff that came from the four studio albums. And
(45:40):
rock On from shine On was a humble Pie track
that I had written. It was actually from five albums,
So it's like six years worth of work mining that
went into that one live record. And for people who
don't know that live performance was recorded in multiple locations,
are in one. Most of it was one location, which
(46:01):
was winter Land in Sanrancisco, Bill Graham gig where The
Last Wars was filmed. Two nights before, we'd played the
Marine Civic Center, and we've done two shows there, so
we recorded that. I think a couple of numbers came
from there, do WI I think comes from there, maybe
one of the acoustic songs. But winter Land was the
(46:24):
first big headline show we'd ever done, I'd ever done
with my name on the ticket people were coming to
see me for because the album right prior to Comes
a Live Just Trampton was the biggest one so far,
biggest seller they had done, sold like three hundred thousand copies,
(46:44):
which was mega for me. That was better than all
the other things in that four album run. Prior to
the live album in winter Land, things were getting better
than that, they were, but that one was definitely setting
me up. It was setting me up for something. Peter
Frampton Alec Baldwin has interviewed a lot of rock legends
(47:06):
over the years on Here's the Thing, and you can
listen to all of them on the I Heart Radio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. After the break,
Peter Frampton talks to Alec about the making of Frampton
Comes Alive, one of the best selling live albums in history.
(47:30):
I'm Kathleen Russo and this is Here's the Thing. Frampton
Comes Alive has sold over eleven million copies worldwide. It's
a double album pulled from three venues, including winter Land
in San Francisco. Okay, so let's cut the bullshit. Let's
cut the bullshit. You're in winter Land and would you
(47:53):
say and the show goes on what time eight o'clock,
nine o'clock, nine o'clock, probably somewhere between. You pull up
to Winterland and you go out of quarter to nine.
The devil came in your room and made a deal
with you. Correct, you signed a deal with absolutely. The
devil showed up, poured himself a drink, sat down, said Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter.
Let's cut. Let's cut. It was Peter Cook. Actually it
(48:13):
was Peter Cook and he and the devil makes this
deal with you. Because what happened. First of all, there's
probably if I'm not mistaken, if there wasn't sent people
out there, then I thought there were set But it's
it definitely sounds like it. It's a big room. They
(48:35):
go nuts when we walk out, and it just takes
you to a different level. You know. It felt good.
It was one of those shows when you come off
and you look at the band and you just go,
I wish we'd recorded that. That was like so good man.
And then we went, oh, we did you know we
did recall that? We forgot we were do you see?
(48:55):
The event was so much more important than the recording.
I don't even remember the truck being there. The recording
(49:19):
is June of five minutes, released when we're still mixing,
right up before Christmas, and then it comes out, I believe,
on like January seventeenth or something like that, seventh, January
nine or what happens. Well, I knew we were going
(49:39):
to tour the whole year, so right after Christmas, I
went down to the Bahamas for ten days and relaxed.
Before I left, we had put one show on at
Cobo Hall in Detroit, which is a big rum and
that's all I knew. And so I go away and
(50:00):
I don't call anybody. I'm just on the beach and
snorkeling or whatever. I come back. We've sold four shows out,
and I said, what happened, you know? And the album
has just started to be on the radio, you know,
And that's when everything just went went through the roof,
you know, after all this time. People think it is overnight,
(50:23):
but it's not overnight in the scheme of things. But
but yes, but it's not overnight success, but it is.
It's a heady experience. Is just still the highest selling
live album of all time. It's in dispute, yeah, but
up there, yeah, because my record is only counted as
one one album. Certain other artists had it made so
(50:48):
that you could count, um, if you released six CD
live set, you can count it six times. Well, they
didn't do that retroactively, so in my mind it's still
the biggest selling. It was almost unbelievable the amount of success.
You get these phone calls in quick succession. Your number
one in in the charts, you know, and I'm going,
(51:10):
wait a second, say that one more time, and who
are you? And then within three or four weeks of that,
I get the call saying it's the biggest selling record
of all time. You've just outsold Carol King's Tapestry and
it's um. Was that the time you thought of you
had to start them in yourself? Yeah, it was crazy
(51:33):
because people just wanted to No, it was very don't
know how to deal with how people treat you differently exactly,
and being always being respectful, and and never really thinking
of myself as anything special because I've never been a
that's just not my character. I felt embarrassed that I
(51:54):
was that this entity became it was me over here,
you know. Yes, it was very hard to deal with.
But were you proud of the record? Oh my god, Yeah,
when something really big hits in the entertainment business, it's
like feast or famine. It's either it's not a hit, movie, record, whatever,
(52:15):
and nothing comes in, or it's like a blockbuster and
all this money comes in and it all comes into
one place. And when you see a pile of money
like this, it brings out thoughts that people didn't normally
have before. You know what I mean, it's the the
availability of all that cash all at once. You know that. Well,
(52:37):
especially in the music business, because nothing like the music
business for making money except for the fact that music
is free. Now well it's it is different now, yeah.
I mean you used to tour to promote the record.
Now you make the record to promote the tour. The
record is a giveaway, the c D is a giveaway.
(52:59):
The dollar you're on the live performing, Yes, that's how
it is for you. Well, yeah, that's all that's artists. Yeah,
and luckily my reputation is as a live performer. So
it's been phenomenal for me. But it's hard work touring,
but I love it, so that's not hard work for me.
You came into New York recently and you did that
at the Beacon here, in New York? Yes, how many
shows did you do? For most of thirteen months, we
(53:22):
were doing five shows a week and it's a three
hour show. So we were doing Comes Alive first, which
is an hour and forty, and then we were doing
excerpts from everything else in my career as well for
another hour and fifteen or twenty, you know, So it
was we were killing ourselves. How did it feel? Well?
(53:43):
It felt great. The place one nuts you know, they
just went't berserved. You know you're gonna do it again.
I don't know whether I'll do the entire thing again,
Comes Alive again? Not for a while anyway, damn it. No, No,
you've we filmed it and filmed it, yeah, at the
Beacon and in what are you do with that? Where
(54:05):
is that? Guy? It's gonna be a DVD. In fact,
that's where I'm going on Sunday to go back home
to my studio to mix the audio. What are you
gonna do when you're gonna release it as a dis
is a DVD? Now? Probably just be a DVD. And
I don't want to do this on TV. Oh i'd
love to. Yeah, have you got an in there? Maybe? Oh?
I can't believe if it's a doctor. Are there any
(54:26):
backstage footage? I've got the story and it's filmed of
when my guitar was returned. What happened to that guitar?
What's the story? Well, um, first of all, we're talking
about the guitar that's on the front cover of Comes Alive,
which I got given to me by Mark Mariana in
seventy when I was playing the film or West with
(54:47):
Humble Pie, and I was having a terrible time with
the guitar that I had at that that night, and
Mark said to me, you know, I could see you
having problems with that. You want to try my Les
Paul Tomorrow. I said, well, I'm not really big on
let's pause, but okay, all right, anything is better than this.
So he brought it to me. I played it. I
don't think my feet touched the ground the entire That's
(55:08):
the best guitar I've ever played. So then I played
that guitar on Rock On and also a Humble Pie
and also Rock in the film on. That's the guitar
I use on there. Basically I used that exclusively. It's
the only guitar I play all the way through all
(55:28):
my solo records and including Frampton Comes Alive and you
were never attempted to put that down, and that was it.
That was, yes, yes, it was just this one. I
had a fifty five strap that I would always use
for Show Me the Way because I needed a cleaner sound,
you know. So that was that was on Show Me
the Way. So then we get to touring South America.
(55:52):
We just finished playing Caracas, Venezuela and we had a
day off, and so we flew commercially to Panama waiting
for the gear to arrive on a cargo plane. While
it never got off the runway in Caracas, it crashed
on take off. My road manager came to me, I'm
having this huge meal on my day off with my
(56:14):
wife at the time, and he said, I got some
bad news and he says, the plane crashed on takeoff.
I said, my guitar, he said, and like six people
loading people, the pilot, co pilot, loading, inspector, all that.
So I mean, yeah, people died. So that took precedent
over everything. Then it put it in perspective, you know,
(56:36):
and there's the pilot's wife sitting at the bar who
doesn't know yet. It was horrendous. So anyway, we limped
through the end of that tour basically with borrowed equipment.
Sent someone down my guitar tech at the time a
week later to see what was left. Nothing was left, supposedly,
and what had happened. The tail had broken off. Guitars
(56:59):
were actually in a trunks in cases. And the way
the story goes is they had a god to guard
the crash side, the debris side. Util the insurance people
came down and he decided that the guitars would be
much safer at his house. Yes, and then Caracas. Yes.
In Caracas two years ago, which is thirty years thirty
(57:26):
years later, I opened my info at Frampton dot com
email because anybody can email me and I see them all.
I opened up this one and there's a picture of
photograph of my guitar slightly singed but but it's my
lastly right at the top, you know, slightly singed, but
(57:49):
but there it is. There's a picture, and I thought,
could this picture where in an email to me from
someone who would got ahold of the guitar. As it
happens in Kurasau, which is a little island off the
coast of Caracas, someone had sold it to this gentleman,
(58:11):
and he took it to someone who fixed guitars and
they knew what it was. And it took two years
of a very gray area and was he saying like,
I don't want to get proceed. I want to get
this guitariti, but I want to go to jail. That
was the thing. No one wanted to actually come money.
It wasn't about he wanted to There was money involved,
but he would have appreciated a gratuity. There was a
(58:32):
reward talked about, but every time it would get close
to someone coming in, they'd find something reason why they
couldn't come in. So that's why it took two years.
And then in the end the guy actually checked to
see if we had booked him a hotel because he
just saw himself in handcuffs at Miami Airport. You know,
he knew who had it, and the person who had
(58:53):
it needed some money, and so he went to the
tourist Bureau of Kurasau and said, look, if you and
me the money or give me the money to go
by this, I can find this. This is really great
tourism story for Curasao. And and they did, and they
came and the two of them, the tourism president of
the tourism board from the government, and the gentleman who
(59:16):
found the guitar, knew where it was, brought it to Nashville.
We had three cameras as soon as he waited in waiting,
and what happens while the two gentlemen walk in and
he's got it in this probably one of the worst
looking gigbags I've ever seen in my life, cheap, old
plastic thing. He puts it beside him, you know, and
(59:38):
he tells the story in broken English of how this
person had it and the whole thing. He hands it
to me and he goes Philip to Peter Philip so
and I know that he knows because it was the
lightest les Paul I'd ever played. So I just felt
it in the case and who this could be it?
You know, opened it up. I just looked at it
(59:59):
and I just feel it like that, and I go,
it's my guitar. How bad they was? It singed where
just round the very top it lost the binding around
the headstock. Did you get that replaced? No? I didn't.
I left it. I've left it with its battle scars.
Gibson made it playable so we re friended the Caracas
(01:00:20):
kiss and there is this sound the same. Does it
feel the same. Yeah, And when I first played it
at rehearsals with the band, everybody had this like cheshire
cat grin on their face because it has the sound
(01:00:40):
and it sounds like Frampton comes alive. You know, you
don't have to try too hard. And you got that
back when I got it back just before we started
touring in February and March for the last American leg,
I used it a little bit at rehearsals, and then
I brought it out for the first night at the Beacon.
(01:01:01):
I think the guitar is more famous than I am
now rock legend Peter Frampton. I'm Kathleen Russo. Thanks for
listening to my first attempt at hosting Here's the Thing.
Here's the Thing is brought to you by our Heart Radio.
We're produced by Carrie Donohue, Zach McNeice and yours truly
(01:01:21):
our engineers. Frank Imperial. Alec is back next week talking
with an amazing politician, California Democratic Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. And I'm Kathleen Russo and I'm
finally hosting Here's the Thing. Oh my goodness, Kathy, how
long have you and I worked on this podcast. It's
only been ten years, Alec, ten years. Well, of course
you should have a turn hosting one of our staff
(00:22):
pick shows from the archives this summer, but justice once, okay, Alec. Thanks.
One of the perks of this job as the executive
producer of Here's the Thing is you get to meet
so many people you admire in respect, including people whose
posters hung on your bedroom wall in Upstate New York
during the nineties seventies, and people whose LPs you listen
(00:46):
to on your turntable over and over so often the
vinyl warped or war thinned. My archival picks today are
two of these grades. Poet, writer, musician and the ultimate
punk rocker Patty Smith and one of the best guitarists
and vocalists in the world, rock legend Peter Frampton. Get
(01:07):
these phone calls in quick succession. You'll number one and
the charts. You know it's the biggest selling record of
all time. You've just outsold Carol King's tapestry. We'll hear
alex conversation with Peter Frampton in a bit, but first
let's hear from music icon Patti Smith. Alex Conversation with
(01:27):
Patti Smith was recorded live in two thousand sixteen at
the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey. When
I called Patty's manager to book her on the show,
I was surprised and frankly thrilled when Patty called me
back herself to tell me she was a huge fan
of Alex and of course she would be a guest.
(01:47):
I love when we record live shows for the podcast
because it brings a whole new energy and feel. As
you'll hear, this was a love fest with the audience,
and Patty, no stranger to live shows, was the perfect guest.
Alex started by asking if she'd have the same career
if she started out today. Actually, I have no idea
(02:09):
because I didn't really come into the music business. I was.
I came. I wound up in music by mistake. I'm
not really a musician. I didn't really want to be
a musician or a singer. I just wanted to I
wanted to be a poet and a writer, and it
was accidental. So would it accidentally happen now? I don't
(02:31):
think so. I think I would have to be more
focused on what I wanted. But also because I'm so
on technological and things, I mean, I'm just not really
suited for right now, So probably I would have to
be like a physicist the band in the game. You
don't even drive. No, I don't know how to drive,
(02:52):
so I couldn't do that. That's true. She doesn't have
a license. I said, you ever a live in l A.
She said no, I don't swim and I don't drive.
That's true. But if you came in now, you'd be
a scientist. Who said, well, I I don't know what
I would be, but I don't think I would have
a problem no matter where I came in. You know,
I would figure out something. I'm pretty scrappy now. But
(03:16):
when you say that you weren't a musician, how did
that begin for you? Well, I mean I came to
New York in nineteen seven wanted to be an artist,
and I also wrote poetry. And after I I just
started writing more poetry. And then uh was shepherded by
people like Alan Ginsburg and and William Burrows and Gregory Corso,
(03:40):
and they all read their poetry. So I wanted to
read poetry, but I didn't want to be boring because
I went to a lot of poetry readings and they
were snoresville, you know, they were like, sorry, but really boring.
So I just started like, at least have good wine. Wine.
I didn't even drink, and I don't anything interesting really,
(04:02):
but I mean, I'll have a shot at to kill everybody. No,
I mean no, I never had a drug problem. M
minutes on that I have a drug problem now. Actually,
I was such a sickly kid um that and my
(04:23):
parents worked so hard to keep me alive that you know,
when I when I came out into the world, the
last thing I was going to do is fuck that up.
You know, I just I'm not. I don't have a
self destructive event. But also when I was a kid,
my mother was a chain smoker, and she I mean
real true chain smoker, and when she ran out of
(04:46):
cigarettes and she didn't have money, she would pace all
night long. I get up at midnight and see my
poor mom pacing because she didn't have a cigarette. And
I thought then I'm never gonna be dependent on anything,
because I thought, what would happen if you got stranded
on a desert island you didn't have cigarettes, You'd like
fall apart. So it was like an early lesson in uh,
(05:10):
what I didn't want facing on a desert cigarettes have
to grow to back and then But I feel like
somehow I didn't answer one of some questions. Oh, I know,
because you're yeah, it doesn't matter. You do whatever you
want to do. How I wound up singing, I just
wound up singing, like to make up little singing, little
(05:32):
songs acapella between poems to make it a little more interesting,
and then sort of wrapping poems. And it was just
organic from somebody just did it on your own. You
didn't see anybody else doing that, No, I mean I
saw like beat poets or I mean just I think
of everybody that I was influenced by at that time
(05:54):
of my life, Johnny Carson was the one. I just thought, like,
you didn't have drug problem either. Yeah, I'm not surprised,
but I mean, but just the fact that Johnny Carson,
his his his ability to improvise or to get himself
out of any situation. That was always what I was
looking for. If I was on stage, gotten a bad situation,
(06:16):
find my way out of it. You grew up in
South Jersey, and you're kind of tough. The way you
grew up. Your dad. What did your dad do for
a living? He was worked in a factory. She's waitress.
And how many kids in your family? Three girls, one boy?
And I was the oldest, oldest, And it was tough.
(06:37):
Well yeah, I mean it was financially tough. We had.
It was in those ways very tough. But in another
way we had it was very magical because I had
really great siblings. I had a great imagination, read hundreds
of books. My parents. We knew that they had a
(06:57):
lot of strife and stress, but you know, it was
just the world seems so magical. It wasn't so bad
for us. Books were my salvation, and so I I
didn't think of things. The only bad thing was when
I'd be hungry. I mean, truthfully, I like to eat.
I was really skinny and a real I was always hungry,
(07:18):
and that was my big Yeah, really skinny. And then
when you left home, where'd you go? New York? I
left when I was twenty and Basically I left to
get a job because in uh South Jersey and Philadelphia,
the New York shipyard closed down and there were like
(07:40):
thirty thousand jobs overnight were lost and there wasn't any work,
no matter how low a factory job, nothing, And there
was no more work, and I needed a job. So
I went to New York City to get a job.
And where'd you get a job? Um? In a bookstore.
I got a series of bookstores until I really landed
(08:02):
a great bookstore job in Scribner's Bookstore, and I worked
there for about five years. Doesn't it really tells a
lot about you? That really pretty much sums it up?
Your home in Jersey, you can't get a job, you're starving.
You going to New York to get a job. I
thought you were gonna say in a restaurant, Well, no idea,
it soon as you go to a bookstore a different
(08:23):
kind of food. But no, you know what happened. My
mother was a waitress and she tried to give me
a job at her counter, but I was so clumsy
and such a day dreamer, and she fired me. And
so then she was upset that I was leaving home,
but she got she let me take my white uniform
(08:43):
and my wedgies. So the first day I got I'm
one Time Square and of course Time Square was all
different than you know. And uh, I got a little
a job immediately because they needed a waitress at a place,
a little Italian place called Joe's Um on Times Square.
And within like two hours I dumped one of the
(09:04):
I had a giant tray as tripped and the whole
tray of veal parmisanas went on this woman's tweed suit.
Not only was I fired, but my three hours pay
went to her cleaning bill. So I went back to
port authority, left the waitress uniform and the wedgies in
the girl's bathroom and thought maybe somebody can use them
(09:27):
and h Then I looked around for a better job.
How does art, poetry, music come into your life when
you're in New York when you're twenty years old. Well,
first it was just getting a job. I didn't get
a job the first or second day. I mean I
was sleeping in the subway, sleeping in uh Central Park,
sleeping at the cemetery and Flushing or Greenwood or wherever
(09:52):
it was, and near where Herman Melville was buried, and uh,
it took a little while, and truthfully, it wasn't really
until I met I met Robert Maplethorpe, and uh we
met a couple of times. But I was in a
(10:13):
bit of a jam because a grown up asked me
to go out to eat. He was probably forty, but
I was like twenty. To me, seemed like, you know,
he was a grown up, you know, And uh, I
was really afraid that my mother used to say, don't
go out with a stranger because you know, they just
want one thing. And I thought, I was so hungry,
(10:35):
and he said he would take me to dinner. And
he took me to the Empire State Building diner, and
I remembered to this day he ordered, uh we ordered.
He ordered me swordfish and it was five dollars, and
I thought he's going to want everything for five dollars.
And I was petrified, and so I I ate that
(10:59):
I couldn't even eat it. And I'm so angry, I'm
gonna eat. Maybe I should leave now, Yeah, exactly, not
that door. But these potatoes are so good of just
a couple of more potatoes that I'm going to write
out that door. He'll never know. No, I didn't know
what to do. Then when we walked, no, we didn't.
(11:19):
We didn't have any dessert. We walked all the way
down to uh Tompkins Square Park and we were sitting
there and then all of a sudden, he said, I
have an apartment right around here. Would and he asked
me if I wanted to. It was really creepy. He
actually had like it's like like a turtleneck, a white turtleneck,
(11:40):
I remember, and a medallion. I mean, it was really powers.
That's so funny. Now he was supposed to be a
science fiction writer, but I was. And when he said that,
I thought, oh my god, this is the moment, you know,
and everything my mother ever told me for like ten
(12:02):
years of my life. And I was sitting there paralyzed,
figuring out what to do. And I looked and I
see Robert Maplethorpe coming, you know, up through it just coming.
It's almost like a cloud parted and here he comes
with like long curly hair and a sheepskin vest and
you know, and his dungarees. And I had only met
(12:23):
him once or twice, and I didn't even know his name,
and I just met him sort of, And so I
ran up to him, and I said, uh, do you
remember me? And he goes yeah, And I said, will
you pretend you're my boyfriend? And he says okay. So
I bring him to the science fiction guy and I said,
this is my boyfriend. He's really mad. I gotta go goodbye.
(12:45):
And then I said to Robert, this is so stupid,
but I didn't. I said run, and Robert and I ran.
We ran, we ran, we ran away. And uh and
now the guy on the turtleneck with the medallion on
is the president elect of the United States. Boy, did
(13:10):
you play your cards wrong? You know? And then my
life began. Life began that night because Robert and I
just roamed around. We roamed around the East Village and
everywhere all night long till two in the morning, just
talking away. And finally, almost simultaneously, we both said, do
(13:32):
you have a place to stay? Neither one of us
had anywhere to live, We didn't have any money, but
the differences. Robert had knew some kids of Pratt and
he knew he knew how to get the key to
this one guy's apartment where his art was stored. So
we went there and we went to his place and
he showed me all his drawings and what he was doing,
(13:53):
and after that night we became inseparable, and that set us,
at least me on a path, you know where of
drawling and painting and evolving and writing poetry. And yeah,
we've we've yes through through many things. Yeah, well I
(14:17):
was going to get into that. But you're with him
for a long long time, and then things change for
you as well in terms of your career. Well, I
mean at first. I mean, the thing is is that
I never cared about a career. I have to say,
none of those things, um being in a business, music, business, career, money.
(14:38):
What what I always wanted, no matter how conceded it sounds,
is I wanted to do something great. I wanted to
write something as great as Pinocchio or The Scarlet Letter,
or you know, just do something wonderful, write a wonderful book.
I didn't really care about and still don't. I don't
care about having a career or any of that stuff.
(14:59):
I do my work and in the process I've had
some great successes. I've had things that have had me
banned from the world. I've had you know, I've I've
been in trouble, I've done you know, I've left it
all behind. It's not important to me. It's always important
to me. Is really just to do something good, to
(15:20):
do something that's uh duran Patti Smith talking about her
relationship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. If you're enjoying this
show from our archives, did you know we have over
two and fifty more available for your listening pleasure. Be
sure to check them out and Here's the Thing dot Org.
(15:42):
After the break, Alec and Patti Smith talked about her
marriage to mc fives bred Sonic Smith, and motherhood. I'm
(16:02):
Kathleen Rousseau and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Let's
get back to Alex's conversation with Patti Smith and what
her career really means to her. So when you started
to have success, was that something that was because it
was so unfamiliar to you? There are those people who
I'm not going to say the word failure. They're more
(16:23):
comfortable and anonymity than they are being successful and famous
because it's familiar. Did you find that when you were
becoming famous as a musician, because primarily you became famous
as a musician as well. At first in the beginning,
I had my first big success with this song I
wrote with Bruce Springsteen because the night I thought it
(16:44):
was thank you, I thought it was I thought it
was exciting to have a song on the radio. I
didn't think of it in terms of success or failure.
It was just really cool to be on the radio.
And back then, you know, having a single and meant,
you know, your kurds were in the window and and
you could, you know, you played bigger places and met
(17:05):
more people. But by nine seventy nine, truthfully, I could
see that success was to keep going. You I was
doing less work, less meaningful work, evolving less as a
person and an artist, and just get more successful. And
(17:27):
I thought, that's that's not why I was put on
the planet. I wasn't put on the planet to you know,
climb the ladder of success. I was here to do
certain kind of work. And so um I left. I
left the music business in seventy nine. You separated from
Maple Well. Robert and I separated as a couple in
(17:49):
like seventy two, but never as we were just the same,
only we weren't, you know, doing it anymore, you know,
But we didn't change how we were. We were always
just the same. We were just you know, had different
physical partners. So we never quite really separated and were
(18:10):
with him and still connected him even when he was
very second, when he was and when he died. Oh yeah,
I mean we you know, I'm still connected with him.
I still think about him every day, and the things
that I learned from him or that we we did
together inform the work that I do. I mean, we
(18:30):
we bonded so young through art. I mean, of course,
you know, we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We did all
the things young people do. But I think that is
as he felt freer and freer as an artist in
a human being his nature. First he had to come
out as an artist. Then the next thing that happened
(18:54):
is he blossomed and felt his sexual nature. We had
to weather that. We had to, you know, try to
navigate what this meant, what it meant to our relationship,
what it meant and and it was difficult, and it
took a few years because neither one of us wanted
to part, But eventually we had to part as boyfriend
(19:20):
and girlfriend because he had to be who he needed
to be. When did you meet your husband, you eventually
got married. I met my husband in nineteen seventy six
in Detroit, and I was on the road and I
met him in Detroit and I saw him. It was
it's like a it's really like a song. I saw
(19:43):
him across a crowded room. He was just standing there
and it blew overcoat. I didn't know who he was,
and I thought, that's the boy I'm going to marry.
I swear to you that's true. How old were you
at the time. I was about seventy six. I was
about twenty eight. I don't know. Did you walk up
(20:05):
and tell him that right? No, no, not at all.
But Lenny Kay actually introduced us and he said, Fred Smith,
Patti Smith. We just looked at each other and I
don't know, and we finally, Um, we had a long
(20:26):
distance relationship, in fact, because the night we had a
long distant relationship and neither one of us had a
whole lot of money, and to make phone calls was expensive,
long distance calls. I always to this day I hear
people my boyfriend only called me three times today, and
I think, Jesus, you know, it's like I'd have to
(20:47):
wait all week to get one phone call from from
Fred And um, actually, am I going off the course too,
there is no core, is no course. Yeah, you're my
kind of guy. I'm your kind of passage. I'm your
kind of passenger too, because the autopilot about thirty minutes ago. Now,
(21:08):
I mean, I'm we're not going anywhere in particular because
I don't know how to drive and I have no
sense of direction. I'm a really good passenger because I
can never tell if anybody's lost, you know, And I
apply that to all every part of life. But when
you met your husband, and what did he do? Was
he a musician? He's a He was a musician, He
(21:28):
played with the MC five. He was a master guitarist.
He was really one of our great guitarist and h
and he's just such a beautiful man. You know. We
just decided, you know, we we wanted to evolve as
human beings, and he wanted children, and we just we
(21:48):
just decided to withdraw from public life and really know
each other and when when we had children, they would
really know who we were. And and so we did.
How long until his he passed away in the end
of ninety four, so sixteen years, sixteen years? What was
it like did you paint? I know, I didn't paint
(22:13):
because um it was just the way our living quarters were.
I didn't really have the space to do something like that,
but I wrote every day. I could have never written
just kids or the books that I'm writing now, had
I not had sixteen years of enforced discipline, because I've
always been very undisciplined. And then unless I had a
(22:35):
job or something. But then having a children, um I had.
I had to learn to wake up at five in
the morning and from five to eight was my writing time.
Everybody was asleep, it was my time. And it was
really hard at first, but then after a while I
got in a groove and I still right early in
(22:57):
the morning, and I really learned how to develop my craft.
And uh, it was hard because there's no cafes around,
there was no bookstores, a lot of things. The biggest,
the most hardest thing is in New York, you can
walk out the door and get a cup of coffee
in about two minutes practically anywhere, but where I was,
(23:21):
the closest thing was seven eleven, which was about, you know,
half a mile away, so I'd have to every Saturday,
I'd walked to seven eleven, my cafe, get a glazed donut,
and the coffee, and I was I was in town,
you know. But but I love my life. It wasn't
easy because you know, I had to do all the
(23:44):
we we did everything. We didn't have nannie's or housekeepers
or even babysitters. We did everything. And I'm not the
most adept at stuff. You know, some of my poor kids,
you know, their school uniforms and stuff. My daughter's little pleaded,
you know, jumper was like always a little jagged e
and their blouses in their shirts were a little dingier
(24:07):
than the other because I didn't like using bleach and
things like that. But but I I love my kids,
I love my husband, you know. And it was a
lot of certain amount of sacrifice and and uh, you know,
but I was talking about you because I just find
this so interesting that was there much talk about you,
(24:30):
like getting back, getting back in there and getting back
into your life to make money as a breadwinner for
everybody's been well, when we really really need I always
always feel like I got to work all the time. Well,
when we really needed money, we lived so simply. I
mean when we really needed money. In eighty six, we
(24:51):
did one record together and that kept us going. And
but it's just you know, I um, I I liked
my life. I never I didn't expect to be on
the great Stages of Europe, you know. To me, it
(25:12):
was really fantastic that I got the opportunity. I never
thought I would do a record, but in doing so,
I got to travel, which in I never thought I
would ever have the money to travel and go to Finland,
you know. But uh, but I mean all the places.
I'm just joking, but I did get to go to Finland,
even though I had never dreamed of going to Finland.
(25:33):
But I mean I got to all the places. I
saw Paris and Rome and Vienna and all these places
because I had a band and sang and did records.
But it wasn't it wasn't my focus in life. It
wasn't my great great vision. And so when I didn't
do it, I was grateful that I got the opportunity.
(25:57):
But I wasn't mourning the situation that I wasn't doing it.
You know, I wasn't missing the applause. It wasn't like
a Judy Garland movie or something. I just you know,
I felt you know, really happy righting, you know, watching
my kids grow. I did what I needed to do.
I was happy. But you have the experience to be
(26:18):
a mother. Oh yeah, I love My kids are awesome.
And the funny thing is, I mean, I'm not embarrassed
to say this because my kids know. I never wanted kids.
I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't want
to have kids. And I came from a big family
and I helped raise my siblings, and I just wanted
to be free. And it was Fred who wanted children,
(26:39):
and I loved him so much, and I thought, well,
I can do that, you know I But I never
expected to just love my kids so much and just
love being a mother. And since Fred died when he
was forty five, you know, I have them. I have them.
I see so much of him in them, not just
(27:02):
in the way they look or certain gestures, but even
in their music. The tones of my son's guitar. He'll
be playing a guitar solo. He never heard his father
play guitar because they were quite young. It's Fred's tones.
Jesse at the piano, she is just his feel. Was
(27:23):
writing songs difficult and kind of laborious? Did they come
to you? Were both? Well? I I mean, writing songs
isn't my first vocation, and I I it's I'm not
as fastile at writing songs as other things. Also since
I don't really only I play a few chords on
the guitar, so I can figure out some things. But
(27:43):
sometimes songs come. Songs are so strange. Sometimes they just
come as a gift. I've woke up in the morning
and there's a song there and I quick write it down.
It just comes full with the music and the words.
And then there's other songs that have taken three years too,
you know, have a piece of music and write words,
(28:06):
but it's it's labor songwriting, and there's a lot of responsibility,
um responsibility to the composer because most of my songs,
the music was written by a band member or Fred
and uh and and so you want to please them.
But it also has to be something that I can sing.
(28:30):
But the easiest, one of the easiest things was to
write UM too because the night because Bruce, I had
a cassette with a it was a demo, and I
really didn't want to listen to it. You know. It
was given to me by my producer, Jimmy Ivan, and
(28:50):
he coax Bruce into let me finish it. Bruce couldn't
figure out he was having trouble writing verses to the song.
He had the chorus, and Jimmy gave it to me,
and I didn't want to listen to it because I thought, um,
I wanted to write. I wanted my band to write
their own songs. And uh. And Bruce is from like
(29:11):
a different part of New Jersey than me, and he's
sort of in the middle, and I'm from South Jersey
and it's like, I really, I just didn't want, you know,
and sort of a middle pollute your song in which
SAPs don't bring that middle Jersey. I know, I'm from
(29:33):
New Jersey, it's just I'm from like the cooler part
of Jersey. But I was That's what I was saying before.
But one night I was waiting. Jimmy had given me
this tape when we were doing this album Easter, and
every night Jimmy would say, hey, listen to the tape,
to listen to the tape, to listen to the tape,
and I said, uh, not yet, and he called me
(29:53):
up to listen to the tape, to listen to the tape.
Uh not yet. So you know, it was just sitting
there in my little apartment on McDougall Street. And uh so, anyway,
Fred was supposed to call me, and it was like
seven and I got already. I look cool, and I'm
sitting there and the phone sitting there, and I'm waiting
for Fred to call. And seven goes by seven thirty.
(30:18):
No Fred, you know, say eight o'clock. I'm pacing around,
and you know, I was like obsessive, you know, I wanted,
you know, the phone call, and I couldn't. I was
just pasting and pacing, couldn't figure out what to do
with myself. And I noticed this the darn tape, and
I thought, listen to that darn tape. So I put
it on my cassette machine and put it on and
(30:40):
I listened to it, and it's in my key, perfectly
arranged anthemic has a really great chorus, and I thought
it's one of those darn hits. It's just you know, yeah.
So I listened to it and it was, you know,
it was captivating, and I'm waiting for Fred and waiting
for Fred. Finally he calls me up like eleven o'clock
(31:01):
at night. But when he called me, because it took
so long, um, I had finished all the lyrics to
the song and uh. That's why in the second verse
that says, Lisie have idell when I'm alone, love is
a ring the telephone. I was waiting for Fred to
(31:23):
call so and uh, so I wrote the words and
uh and and thanks to Bruce, I had my my
first hit. Alex spoke with Patti Smith before a live
audience in two thousand sixteen. Now to one of my
(31:44):
most heartfelt teenage crushes, Peter Frampton. He arrived early at
the studio in two thousand twelve and I had the
privilege to sit down and talk with him before his
conversation with Alec. He was so down to earth and friendly,
and mostly we talked about his children. Both Alec and
I are huge fans, so we were so looking forward
(32:04):
to this interview, which began with Peter's obsession with sound.
Sound is very inspirational to me. I remember the reason
that I wanted to learn guitar was because I heard
the sounds of all these people on TV and on
the radio electric guitar very young and something. I have
(32:27):
a very acute sense of sound, and I've always had
that if I don't have a good sound, I can't
play very well, so I've always worked out what makes
a good sound? How do you get a good sound technically?
And then one of the first sessions I ever did,
Bill Wyman of The Stones produced it when I was fourteen,
(32:49):
and the first engineer I worked with was Glynn Jones,
who is if people don't know, he's one of the
most famous engineers of all Stones engineer, Yeah, Zapp and
Eagles that the band everybody yea humble by and then
being a gadget freak early on, I just was over
like a little birdie on their shoulder and I was,
(33:11):
what's that? What are you doing there? I just learned
how to engineer, So I really enjoy that part of
it as well, immensely. How do you end up as
a fourteen year old and Wyman wants to produce your
I started playing guitar just before I was eight years old,
(33:32):
and we're either your parents musical yes, um in England, Yes,
about twelve miles south of London and Bromley, Kent, and
my mother was definitely would have been an entertainer. She was,
but my grandparents wouldn't allow her to become an actress.
She wanted to be an actress. Her father was a singer. Yes,
(33:55):
we have a lot of musical jeans. And dad, my
dad played his teacher artist. He played guitar in a
college dance band before the war, before he was more
into his art, but he did. He was the one
that taught me how to sing Michael Rowe the boat,
(34:15):
you know, with two chords basically and then hang down
your head. Tom Dooley was another big effort. Then it
was Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly and our English the Shadows,
Cliff Richard and the Shadows. So that's how I started
playing guitar because of American music. Obviously, that's what we
all did, and we were all clamoring for American music
(34:36):
before the Beatles and then so I was known in
locally as this young, little upstart, good guitar player, very young.
Ended up in a semipro band still at school that
had the drummer that was the original drummer of the
Rolling Stones called Tony Chapman, who introduced Bill to the
Stones that he didn't end up staying in the Stones,
(34:56):
and Bill felt he owed him a a favor. I
would say said, look, put a band together and I'll
produce it. And he comes into the music shop. I'm
working on the saturdays when I'm about fourteen and restringing
guitars for the guy there. He said, I want you
to be in my band, you know. I said, well,
I have to speak to dad, you know sort of thing.
(35:19):
The first thing I know, we're in a van. We
pick up Bill Wyman and Penge who sits in the front.
The van goes very quiet. We've got a rolling stone
in the front seat. We go up to London and
I meet Glenn John's and we make a record like
everyone is talking about soul, did or you know what
I mean? Record? It was called A Hole in My
(35:43):
Soul and it was a cover of an American song
and what was the name of the band, The Preachers.
So that was it, and so music was your entire life. Yes,
you're in the guitar shop and Kent, Yeah, fixing strings
on guitars from people shining guitars, And the next thing
you know, build my mean's in the car and you're
off to go and do hold my soul at the Preachers. Yes,
(36:04):
I mean like you woked around us so much. Fiddle,
what year is this? This is sixty four? So the
stones were and the Beatles were in full swing by then. Yes,
we did. That year the Stones were given Ready Steady Go.
They took over the show Ready Steady Go for one week,
and each one of the Stones had their choice of
(36:25):
act to be on, you know, and of course Bill
chose us. So I'm on TV when I'm just before
I'm i turned fifteen? Is there If anybody's got it,
Bill's got it because he's he's the historian, you know.
But that was pretty amazing. Do you miss living in England?
You're such an American in so many ways. You lived
(36:47):
here for years. Han two years seventy seventy five, I
came to New York. Actually I missed my family, my
brother and his family. I miss friends and stuff, but
my children are here. When I first came to America
with Humble Pie and I turned on the radio, I said,
I'm moving here, it just seemed like this was the place.
(37:09):
It was all happening with the old and this is
the yeah. And I'd lived through the swinging sixties of London,
you know, and that was exciting too. And I love England,
don't get me wrong, I just don't think I would
ever live there again. I was just i'd be too
far from my kids. Yeah, so when you finish the
Hole in my soul on the show with Bill Wyman,
(37:30):
he's your selection there on the show. What happens then? Then, Um,
I'm sixteen. It's school holidays in the summer of big
local band The Herd come to me and say, we
saw you in the breaches and we're having a change around.
Would you come and and help us out for the summer?
(37:54):
So I said, okay. So it gets close to September
when I'm going to go back to school, and they said,
here's an offer. We want you to be the lead
guitarist and the lead guitarist going to play bass, and
we want to be a four piece out of five piece,
and would you join the Herd? I said, oh, I
had to hear. I've got to go back to school,
do my sixth form, get my A levels and go
(38:16):
to Guildhall School and the music That was my plan
to go to music college, you know Beard right at
least Yeah, I haven't even had a shandy yet, you know.
So I went to Dad and Mom and I said, look,
I really want to do. This is a professional band.
You know, they're great, They're a big band, and my
(38:38):
dad said, well, and they knew that this was on
the cards, you know, this was coming up that they
knew by this time I was going to be a musician.
And so he said, well, look, if you left here
and you've got a job at the post office, you
get fifteen pounds a week. I want to get an
assurance from this band that you're going to get fifteen
(38:59):
pounds of week. I said, well, if he can do
that deal, that that'll be great. I don't think they
earn enough to pay themselves sifting both. He said, well
that's what you I'm going minimum wage for you. So
that was the last deal my dad did for me,
because we started to become a little better and earn
more money. Beginning, they couldn't pay themselves fifty. Eventually it
was a bargain, yeah, because they paid me fifteen. They
(39:21):
got upstein. So that was the end of him as
a manager. Everything changed and the Herd became had like
three big top ten hits and and I became very
(39:42):
well known in Europe as a guitar player singer. Now
by the time you leave the Herd, you leave them
in what year the herd after the the these three
big hits and an album. We realized that we were
losing money still and there was no reason because we
saw the figures what was coming in and what we
(40:03):
were getting paid and all that. So we reached out
and Steve Merritt and Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces said, look,
we've been through this. We've been screwed, you know, by
management or business manager or whatever. They clued us in,
which was very nice to them, and said they help
us produce a track or two on on the next
album we were going to do, which they did. Meanwhile,
(40:24):
I'm sitting in with the Small Faces now at various
functions and and wanted to join the Small Faces. That
wasn't to be. Steve wanted me to join the Small Faces,
but they weren't so thrilled with that. So in the
end Steve called me up and said, look, I've left
the Small Faces, let's form a band. And that's how
(40:44):
Humble Pie basically formed in right at the end of in.
So you with Humble Pie and you're in England, yes,
and you perform with them for how many years? Four years?
So how would you characterize that period for stuff? Did
you enjoy it? Unbelievable? They were very popular. Yes in
(41:05):
the States as well. Yes, that band brought me to America.
That's where we started when I met I mean probably
one of the first gigs I met Bill Graham. You know,
you realized now when I look back, it was the
beginnings of the creation of rock and roll shows. Truly.
Bill Graham was the guy on how to do it live?
(41:29):
And why did Humble Pie? And a couple of reasons.
I was feeling claustrophobic in the band because we started
off very democratic and doing it all different types of music,
and now our our stage act was narrowing, and we
were just doing more more of that heavy rock and roll,
(41:49):
which I love, Don't get me wrong. That's my riff,
I Don't need no Doctor. That's me jamming the sound
check in Madison Square Garden, and Steve just jumped up
on the stage and started singing, I Don't need no
Doctor over that riff. He and I were very much singing. Yeah. Yeah.
(42:21):
He's the one that says it's been a gas. Yeah,
we go home on Mond on Monday. But what I'm
tell's the oh, he was probably a couple of years old,
and you feel claustrophobic, white because we want. I wasn't
(42:42):
being able to do the music, all of this music
that I wanted to do. Humble Pie started off really
split between acoustic and electric. And also I was coming
into my own and Steve and I fought like brothers. Yes,
that's which, which is why humble Pie was so fiery.
I think because musically it was phenomenal. You know, sometimes
(43:04):
we degree and sometimes we just wouldn't agree. It was
very sad for me because I knew it would upset them,
but I just felt that I had to. It was
time to go on. And did you know where you
wanted to go? No idea. I knew that I was.
I didn't want to form another band. I wanted to
become a solo artist. Why because I wanted to make
(43:25):
all the decisions because I'm a complete control freak. Did
you feel you wanted Yeah, you wanted wanted to try
things that Yeah, I wanted to try things that maybe
other people wouldn't want to try. You know, I wanted
to do it. And I have to say that it
wouldn't have been I wouldn't have had a solo career
had it not been for Humble Pie. I learned so
(43:48):
much from working with Steve Marriott. I have to hand
him a lot of the credit for the sort of
things that he introduced me to listen to as well,
music blues and Build Black Bow and stuff like that.
That was really influential to me. So that's why it
was a bitter sweet thing leaving. I wanted to leave,
(44:08):
but I didn't want to leave. And then, of course,
as soon as I left the live album that I
had a big hand in mixing, because I'm the gadget
freak in the engineer with Eddie Kramer rock in the
film or Comes Out, I've left right at that point
and it zooms up the charts. It's Humble Pie's first
gold record, and I'm going, holy crap, that's it. It's
(44:33):
the first big blooper of my career. You know, I
made a big mistake. It was like Dad's back on
the job in the office game. I frammed them this time, Yes,
absolutely so. Then it was four studio albums before we
did Comes Alive, you know, and a lot of a
lot of touring and where are you living then? You
(44:54):
still I was still living in England until seventy five,
and I finished the fourth solo record in England and
then moved over. I actually moved to New York and
stayed at the Mount Kisco Holiday Inn on New Year's Eve. Yes,
(45:16):
So basically the first day of seventy five was I
was now living in America. When you do comes Alive,
how much of the music on that is new music
on an album? How much of it was stuff you
mind from the previous four solo albums. It was basically
all stuff that came from the four studio albums. And
(45:40):
rock On from shine On was a humble Pie track
that I had written. It was actually from five albums,
So it's like six years worth of work mining that
went into that one live record. And for people who
don't know that live performance was recorded in multiple locations,
are in one. Most of it was one location, which
(46:01):
was winter Land in Sanrancisco, Bill Graham gig where The
Last Wars was filmed. Two nights before, we'd played the
Marine Civic Center, and we've done two shows there, so
we recorded that. I think a couple of numbers came
from there, do WI I think comes from there, maybe
one of the acoustic songs. But winter Land was the
(46:24):
first big headline show we'd ever done, I'd ever done
with my name on the ticket people were coming to
see me for because the album right prior to Comes
a Live Just Trampton was the biggest one so far,
biggest seller they had done, sold like three hundred thousand copies,
(46:44):
which was mega for me. That was better than all
the other things in that four album run. Prior to
the live album in winter Land, things were getting better
than that, they were, but that one was definitely setting
me up. It was setting me up for something. Peter
Frampton Alec Baldwin has interviewed a lot of rock legends
(47:06):
over the years on Here's the Thing, and you can
listen to all of them on the I Heart Radio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. After the break,
Peter Frampton talks to Alec about the making of Frampton
Comes Alive, one of the best selling live albums in history.
(47:30):
I'm Kathleen Russo and this is Here's the Thing. Frampton
Comes Alive has sold over eleven million copies worldwide. It's
a double album pulled from three venues, including winter Land
in San Francisco. Okay, so let's cut the bullshit. Let's
cut the bullshit. You're in winter Land and would you
(47:53):
say and the show goes on what time eight o'clock,
nine o'clock, nine o'clock, probably somewhere between. You pull up
to Winterland and you go out of quarter to nine.
The devil came in your room and made a deal
with you. Correct, you signed a deal with absolutely. The
devil showed up, poured himself a drink, sat down, said Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter.
Let's cut. Let's cut. It was Peter Cook. Actually it
(48:13):
was Peter Cook and he and the devil makes this
deal with you. Because what happened. First of all, there's
probably if I'm not mistaken, if there wasn't sent people
out there, then I thought there were set But it's
it definitely sounds like it. It's a big room. They
(48:35):
go nuts when we walk out, and it just takes
you to a different level. You know. It felt good.
It was one of those shows when you come off
and you look at the band and you just go,
I wish we'd recorded that. That was like so good man.
And then we went, oh, we did you know we
did recall that? We forgot we were do you see?
(48:55):
The event was so much more important than the recording.
I don't even remember the truck being there. The recording
(49:19):
is June of five minutes, released when we're still mixing,
right up before Christmas, and then it comes out, I believe,
on like January seventeenth or something like that, seventh, January
nine or what happens. Well, I knew we were going
(49:39):
to tour the whole year, so right after Christmas, I
went down to the Bahamas for ten days and relaxed.
Before I left, we had put one show on at
Cobo Hall in Detroit, which is a big rum and
that's all I knew. And so I go away and
(50:00):
I don't call anybody. I'm just on the beach and
snorkeling or whatever. I come back. We've sold four shows out,
and I said, what happened, you know? And the album
has just started to be on the radio, you know,
And that's when everything just went went through the roof,
you know, after all this time. People think it is overnight,
(50:23):
but it's not overnight in the scheme of things. But
but yes, but it's not overnight success, but it is.
It's a heady experience. Is just still the highest selling
live album of all time. It's in dispute, yeah, but
up there, yeah, because my record is only counted as
one one album. Certain other artists had it made so
(50:48):
that you could count, um, if you released six CD
live set, you can count it six times. Well, they
didn't do that retroactively, so in my mind it's still
the biggest selling. It was almost unbelievable the amount of success.
You get these phone calls in quick succession. Your number
one in in the charts, you know, and I'm going,
(51:10):
wait a second, say that one more time, and who
are you? And then within three or four weeks of that,
I get the call saying it's the biggest selling record
of all time. You've just outsold Carol King's Tapestry and
it's um. Was that the time you thought of you
had to start them in yourself? Yeah, it was crazy
(51:33):
because people just wanted to No, it was very don't
know how to deal with how people treat you differently exactly,
and being always being respectful, and and never really thinking
of myself as anything special because I've never been a
that's just not my character. I felt embarrassed that I
(51:54):
was that this entity became it was me over here,
you know. Yes, it was very hard to deal with.
But were you proud of the record? Oh my god, Yeah,
when something really big hits in the entertainment business, it's
like feast or famine. It's either it's not a hit, movie, record, whatever,
(52:15):
and nothing comes in, or it's like a blockbuster and
all this money comes in and it all comes into
one place. And when you see a pile of money
like this, it brings out thoughts that people didn't normally
have before. You know what I mean, it's the the
availability of all that cash all at once. You know that. Well,
(52:37):
especially in the music business, because nothing like the music
business for making money except for the fact that music
is free. Now well it's it is different now, yeah.
I mean you used to tour to promote the record.
Now you make the record to promote the tour. The
record is a giveaway, the c D is a giveaway.
(52:59):
The dollar you're on the live performing, Yes, that's how
it is for you. Well, yeah, that's all that's artists. Yeah,
and luckily my reputation is as a live performer. So
it's been phenomenal for me. But it's hard work touring,
but I love it, so that's not hard work for me.
You came into New York recently and you did that
at the Beacon here, in New York? Yes, how many
shows did you do? For most of thirteen months, we
(53:22):
were doing five shows a week and it's a three
hour show. So we were doing Comes Alive first, which
is an hour and forty, and then we were doing
excerpts from everything else in my career as well for
another hour and fifteen or twenty, you know, So it
was we were killing ourselves. How did it feel? Well?
(53:43):
It felt great. The place one nuts you know, they
just went't berserved. You know you're gonna do it again.
I don't know whether I'll do the entire thing again,
Comes Alive again? Not for a while anyway, damn it. No, No,
you've we filmed it and filmed it, yeah, at the
Beacon and in what are you do with that? Where
(54:05):
is that? Guy? It's gonna be a DVD. In fact,
that's where I'm going on Sunday to go back home
to my studio to mix the audio. What are you
gonna do when you're gonna release it as a dis
is a DVD? Now? Probably just be a DVD. And
I don't want to do this on TV. Oh i'd
love to. Yeah, have you got an in there? Maybe? Oh?
I can't believe if it's a doctor. Are there any
(54:26):
backstage footage? I've got the story and it's filmed of
when my guitar was returned. What happened to that guitar?
What's the story? Well, um, first of all, we're talking
about the guitar that's on the front cover of Comes Alive,
which I got given to me by Mark Mariana in
seventy when I was playing the film or West with
(54:47):
Humble Pie, and I was having a terrible time with
the guitar that I had at that that night, and
Mark said to me, you know, I could see you
having problems with that. You want to try my Les
Paul Tomorrow. I said, well, I'm not really big on
let's pause, but okay, all right, anything is better than this.
So he brought it to me. I played it. I
don't think my feet touched the ground the entire That's
(55:08):
the best guitar I've ever played. So then I played
that guitar on Rock On and also a Humble Pie
and also Rock in the film on. That's the guitar
I use on there. Basically I used that exclusively. It's
the only guitar I play all the way through all
(55:28):
my solo records and including Frampton Comes Alive and you
were never attempted to put that down, and that was it.
That was, yes, yes, it was just this one. I
had a fifty five strap that I would always use
for Show Me the Way because I needed a cleaner sound,
you know. So that was that was on Show Me
the Way. So then we get to touring South America.
(55:52):
We just finished playing Caracas, Venezuela and we had a
day off, and so we flew commercially to Panama waiting
for the gear to arrive on a cargo plane. While
it never got off the runway in Caracas, it crashed
on take off. My road manager came to me, I'm
having this huge meal on my day off with my
(56:14):
wife at the time, and he said, I got some
bad news and he says, the plane crashed on takeoff.
I said, my guitar, he said, and like six people
loading people, the pilot, co pilot, loading, inspector, all that.
So I mean, yeah, people died. So that took precedent
over everything. Then it put it in perspective, you know,
(56:36):
and there's the pilot's wife sitting at the bar who
doesn't know yet. It was horrendous. So anyway, we limped
through the end of that tour basically with borrowed equipment.
Sent someone down my guitar tech at the time a
week later to see what was left. Nothing was left, supposedly,
and what had happened. The tail had broken off. Guitars
(56:59):
were actually in a trunks in cases. And the way
the story goes is they had a god to guard
the crash side, the debris side. Util the insurance people
came down and he decided that the guitars would be
much safer at his house. Yes, and then Caracas. Yes.
In Caracas two years ago, which is thirty years thirty
(57:26):
years later, I opened my info at Frampton dot com
email because anybody can email me and I see them all.
I opened up this one and there's a picture of
photograph of my guitar slightly singed but but it's my
lastly right at the top, you know, slightly singed, but
(57:49):
but there it is. There's a picture, and I thought,
could this picture where in an email to me from
someone who would got ahold of the guitar. As it
happens in Kurasau, which is a little island off the
coast of Caracas, someone had sold it to this gentleman,
(58:11):
and he took it to someone who fixed guitars and
they knew what it was. And it took two years
of a very gray area and was he saying like,
I don't want to get proceed. I want to get
this guitariti, but I want to go to jail. That
was the thing. No one wanted to actually come money.
It wasn't about he wanted to There was money involved,
but he would have appreciated a gratuity. There was a
(58:32):
reward talked about, but every time it would get close
to someone coming in, they'd find something reason why they
couldn't come in. So that's why it took two years.
And then in the end the guy actually checked to
see if we had booked him a hotel because he
just saw himself in handcuffs at Miami Airport. You know,
he knew who had it, and the person who had
(58:53):
it needed some money, and so he went to the
tourist Bureau of Kurasau and said, look, if you and
me the money or give me the money to go
by this, I can find this. This is really great
tourism story for Curasao. And and they did, and they
came and the two of them, the tourism president of
the tourism board from the government, and the gentleman who
(59:16):
found the guitar, knew where it was, brought it to Nashville.
We had three cameras as soon as he waited in waiting,
and what happens while the two gentlemen walk in and
he's got it in this probably one of the worst
looking gigbags I've ever seen in my life, cheap, old
plastic thing. He puts it beside him, you know, and
(59:38):
he tells the story in broken English of how this
person had it and the whole thing. He hands it
to me and he goes Philip to Peter Philip so
and I know that he knows because it was the
lightest les Paul I'd ever played. So I just felt
it in the case and who this could be it?
You know, opened it up. I just looked at it
(59:59):
and I just feel it like that, and I go,
it's my guitar. How bad they was? It singed where
just round the very top it lost the binding around
the headstock. Did you get that replaced? No? I didn't.
I left it. I've left it with its battle scars.
Gibson made it playable so we re friended the Caracas
(01:00:20):
kiss and there is this sound the same. Does it
feel the same. Yeah, And when I first played it
at rehearsals with the band, everybody had this like cheshire
cat grin on their face because it has the sound
(01:00:40):
and it sounds like Frampton comes alive. You know, you
don't have to try too hard. And you got that
back when I got it back just before we started
touring in February and March for the last American leg,
I used it a little bit at rehearsals, and then
I brought it out for the first night at the Beacon.
(01:01:01):
I think the guitar is more famous than I am
now rock legend Peter Frampton. I'm Kathleen Russo. Thanks for
listening to my first attempt at hosting Here's the Thing.
Here's the Thing is brought to you by our Heart Radio.
We're produced by Carrie Donohue, Zach McNeice and yours truly
(01:01:21):
our engineers. Frank Imperial. Alec is back next week talking
with an amazing politician, California Democratic Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez
Host
Alec Baldwin
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