Peter Frampton Shows Us The Way Into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame: The Pollstar Interview

In the summer of 1976, there was not a bigger artist on the planet than British singer/songwriter/guitarist Peter Frampton. A seasoned musician in his teens, Frampton had been grinding away in various bands for more than a decade by that point, including chart and live success with outfits The Herd and Humble Pie before breaking off as a solo artist in 1971. After a series of studio records released to middling success, Frampton exploded on his fourth solo record, the live double album that changed everything in Frampton Comes Alive!, released in January of ’76.

Recorded primarily at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco (his first as a headliner) and promoted by Bill Graham, Comes Alive! seized the public’s rock ’n roll imagination and catapulted Frampton into global stardom. The album, which has now sold more than 8 million copies, produced radio hits “Baby I Love Your Way” and “Show Me the Way,” spurred sold-out arenas  and stadiums around the world, and expanded Frampton’s presence to multimedia saturation.

Then, seemingly as suddenly as it started, Frampton’s career faltered, a turn of events that has been endlessly pondered in the decades since as a cautionary tale. From Frampton’s perspective, he went back into the studio too soon, and was also recklessly marketed as a “pinup,” to use his word. Though he remained busy and creative, his carer languished for nearly a decade until receiving a major boost when childhood mate David Bowie invited him along as featured guitarist on the massive “Glass Spider World Tour.” Frampton has remained an active—and respected—recording and touring artist in the years since, culminating with his induction as part of the Class of 2024 for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Today, Frampton, at 74-years-young, is far from bitter and instead says he “has never been as happy” as he now is living in Nashville. Good humored, with proper British manners and a quick laugh, Frampton appears beyond grateful for both the loyalty of fans and his enduring fraternity with other artists past and present. A few years ago, Frampton revealed he had been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), a progressive muscle disorder causing weakness in the limbs, among other issues. Even so, Frampton continues to perform live, if seated, and had just returned home from a New York City parks benefit when he spoke to Pollstar.

In a lengthy interview, Frampton candidly discussed his long rock ’n roll journey, the serendipity of a remarkable career, and how he now treats each note as if it could be his last.

Pollstar: Are you in Nashville still?

Peter Frampton: Yes, yes. It couldn’t be a better place for me, the musician, with the studios and writers. It’s a writers’ playground here.

I was born and raised here, and we’ve always been real proud that you lived here.

I enjoy it immensely.  For about 11, 12 years I was living downtown in a condo, the Terrazzo, and then when I got my service dog he turned out to be a lot bigger than I expected, so I decided, “This ain’t good for us,” especially with my muscle thing.  So I moved to [REDACTED]. It’s so quiet here. My dog’s name is Bigsby, so I call the whole place Bigsby Park. It’s all about being quiet. Downtown just got so loud, with the influx of people and the bachelorettes.

Yeah. Well, there was probably a time where you would’ve loved that.

[Laughs] Well, yes, there was. Yes, yes. But we’re all over that now.

I know you’ve probably answered a lot of these questions a hundred times, so apologies in advance. Going back to the beginning, your first band, as I understand it, was The Little Ravens.

Yes. It was a school band, so it was not for long, it was for a year. We had that the last year I was at the school, so yes.

Were they any good?

We were pretty damn good, yeah. We were either Eddie Cochran or Buddy Holly at like 12 years old.

Most artists, particularly classic rock artists, would say their first band sucked.

No, no, we didn’t suck. Quality control has always been my thing.

You went to school with David Bowie, correct?

Yeah, my dad was the head of the art department there, so he introduced me to David and [illustrator] George Underwood. So it was the three of us at the school when I was there. George did these [album covers]…and he still does stuff for David, the estate. George I saw not too long ago, he was David’s best friend until he passed.

You listened to a lot of music together, correct?

Yes, we listened, and we actually brought our guitars to school. My dad hid our guitars in his office in the morning, and we got them out at lunchtime and would play on the stone steps leading up to the art room. George and I just talked about that.

You must have been serious about it even then, because that’s a hell of a progression to the Rock Hall all the way from school days.

Yeah, it’s surreal, to be honest. We’re making a documentary right now. It’s a long process. But we took a trip back to the homeland. We went to the house where my brother and I grew up, where I learned to play guitar. I went in my bedroom and stood there where I actually played my first chords. It was cathartic, to say the least.

Then we went to the school. My dad designed the badge that we all wore on our jackets, and it’s all over the place. It’s quite amazing to think back to those days, how it all started. I would never have imagined I’d be in the Hall of Fame, obviously.

Well, congratulations. So you had a series of bands, Trubeats, the Preachers, Moon’s Train, but what I’m curious about is where did you play?

We played in clubs. With those early bands, it would’ve been the Preachers, which kind of turned into Moon’s Train, it was the same people. But those were small clubs. When I joined The Herd, then we were playing bigger clubs. That was the first band I was in that had a hit record. We had three big hits.

Fourteen would seem a little young to be hanging out in clubs. And from what I can tell, it was pretty wild nightlife in those days, just in general.

I was very naïve. There was drinking going on. I didn’t drink, obviously, when I first went up to town with [Rolling Stones bassist] Bill Wyman—he was my guardian, or like my older brother, I just spoke to him, actually, a few minutes ago. So it wasn’t like what we’re finding out about right now, there were no drugs as far as I knew. It was just people were drinking a little bit too much at that point. But I met lots of great artists. I met Jimi Hendrix in the club and shook his hand. By then I was probably about 16 and still going to clubs with Bill. I was underage, I wasn’t supposed to be there. So yeah, it was a lot of fun, I have to say. I got shown the ropes.

And more importantly, you played and played and played. What better for an artist, especially a live artist, to just play in front of people?

Oh my God, yeah. That’s my comfy zone,  my comfy chair playing guitar, and my comfy zone is playing live and always has been. I’ve always enjoyed that, I guess because I was shy off-stage, but then when I got on stage it was like a whole other animal came out of me.

I realized pretty early on, probably with The Preachers, my first big semi-pro band, that I enjoyed [performing] so much, especially when I could play guitar and sing a little. I’m not a big fan of singing, myself. I like it, but it’s not what I do best. But I did enjoy the communication with the audience when I would step up to the mic and sing my one or two songs a night with whatever band I was in. Same with The Herd, I didn’t sing hardly at all, but things were to change.

I went back and watched those Herd songs on YouTube, there’s a lot of Herd videos on there, and it’s so much a statement of its time. But watching how you play, hold the guitar and move, you’d already settled into a style by that time.

On my way. I was doing a lot of stealing from every guitarist I could lay my hands on. But it wasn’t until Humble Pie that I realized that, “Wow, I think I’m playing…” It’s like Miles Davis said, “You’ve got to play a hell of a long time before you play like you.” It wasn’t until I formed Humble Pie, and our fourth record actually, Rock On, when I realized, having listened to a solo I just played, I said, “That doesn’t sound like anybody else I’ve ever heard.” Even though everybody I’ve ever heard is in that solo, because I’ve been influenced by them, I needed their playing to be able to create my own style. But I did realize during the making of Rock On, that I might have a recognizable style and I’m playing like me. Thank you, Miles.

Humble Pie was a leap forward, that band was really special. It rocked, it was very bluesy, and then you had what you did, the sort of jazzy, melodic stuff. And man, that band was great live.

Well, yeah, because Steve Marriott gave a hundred percent in the studio and on stage. I was such a fan of his before we even formed the band, when he was in the Small Faces. So to be able to be a juxtaposition in the band, the two of us on styles, which is what made it so interesting. 

I read that [Nashville picker] Pete Drake, the steel player, introduced you to the talk box?

Oh, that was when I was doing All Things Must Pass sessions with George [Harrison]. Yeah, Pete Drake. George said to me, “We’ve got Pete Drake coming in for the more country-type songs,” like “If Not For You,” that he wrote with Bob Dylan. And he said, “Bob told me about Pete Drake from Nashville.” So the next day he comes in and he sets up. Literally, I could put my foot on the other side of his pedal steel, that’s how close we were. We were facing each other. I was playing acoustic, and he was playing pedal steel. And then in a slow moment, as they were changing reels or whatever, he said, “Hey, Pete, did you want to hear something different.” And I said, “Oh, yeah.” So he got this bag, got this black book, put the box on there, and wires and tubes and all sorts of stuff. All of a sudden he put the tube in his mouth and the pedal steel started singing to me, and I went, “Eureka! Look at that.” And that was it.

We had a radio station when I was growing up called Radio Luxembourg. It was outside of England, so we picked it up. But from 7 to midnight they had a Canadian DJ who played lots and lots of American and great English rock that wasn’t on the BBC. So we all gravitated towards that at night. But their call verses were “Fabulous 208,” but it was, [imitates talk box] “Two-oh-eight!” And when I heard Pete Drake do that, just start singing to me with his pedal steel, that was it. It brought me right back to Radio Luxembourg. I said, “There it is. There’s the connection.”

So I said, “Where did you get that?” And he said, “I made it myself.” I said, “Oh.” I’d already heard Stevie Wonder use it on Music Of My Mind, he was using it for background vocals. And then Jeff Beck used it on “She’s a Woman.” And then in ‘73 for Christmas, Bob Heil, who made the Heil Talk Box, Heil mics, Heil PAs and everything, he gave me one for Christmas. I couldn’t wait to learn how to use it, which I did very quickly.

Man, that’s such a fascinating story, and so much of the times and the cross-pollination and openness to other styles of music and musicians. I don’t know if that happens today.

Well, the thing I do know is that [Nashville] is one of the very few cities I’ve lived in where you actually see someone out and you go, “Hey, we should write together,” and you actually do. I’ve lived in New York and LA and you say, “Yeah, sure,” but nothing ever happens. Maybe it’s me. I’m working on a new record, have been for years, and it won’t come out until I’m ready to release it. Vince Gill wrote a beautiful song with me. That kind of thing would not happen anywhere else. It’s just one of those things. And I’ve played on so many people’s records down here. A solo here, a solo there, a solo nearly everywhere. I just love it, because it keeps me playing every day, and I’m always working on a new project, even if it’s not my own.

I can see why you’d get those kind of asks and opportunities because you’ve got such a distinct style, and you’re so good in the studio. So I imagine it’s fun, and it puts your fingerprint out there everywhere.

Steve Jordan, the Stones drummer and great producer, played with Letterman, and I played with him on Letterman. And he sent to my office a version of “Baby, I Love Your Way.” And my office said, “There’s another version of “Baby, I Love Your Way” they want you to play on. Do you want to hear it?” I said, “Absolutely, let’s see what this one’s like.” I’d just done one most recently with Dolly Parton, which was fantastic to have her sing on that. So anyway, I get the [latest] version and I see on the label it says The Count Basie Orchestra featuring Deborah Silver, and it’s a complete jazz, big band arrangement of “Baby, I Love Your Way.”  Man, I couldn’t smile any bigger if I tried, almost cracked my face off. It was so good. So I said, “I’d love to play a solo.” “Oh, would you?” So that was it.

I can’t wait to hear it. So Humble Pie, you had a hell of a ride. I think it’s four studio albums, and then the live one after you left in ‘71, went solo. I think Humble Pie was playing the big rooms for most places, right?

We started off as the third act. Arena shows used to have three or four acts. And then we moved up to being the most wanted support on any show. Humble Pie was the middle act, and we started selling tickets for the headliner. So that was how we started. So we were playing huge venues to start with, supporting Grand Funk, ZZ Top, ELP, you name it. The Moody Blues. We opened for anybody and everybody. And that’s how we built our following. Not so much for our studio records as much, [until] the live album came out. But I had already left when that was released. I mixed it, most of it, with Eddie Kramer, but I left before it was released.

I understand why you did that, and it was the right move in retrospect, but it’s a pretty ballsy move, actually.

Well, yeah, when the live album came out, Rockin’ the Fillmore, I did think I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I said, “It’s all over, back to music college.” And I was barely old enough for that, at that point. I went back to square one. I wasn’t quite at the bottom of the ladder, because people knew me from Humble Pie, but it was a hard slog. And again, four studio albums and then the live album [Frampton Comes Alive!] was the one that put me over the top.

Whose idea to do the live record? For one thing, most people are pretty well known, at least in this country, before they do the live album. It’s almost like a “greatest hits,” in some ways, for some bands. It was obviously the career changer, but it wasn’t a typical kind of move, was it, to do a live album at that stage?

Not when you hadn’t had big hits. Yeah, I agree with you. But [then-manager] Dee Anthony had had success with J. Geils, their first hit album was their live record. He was a good manager for bands that were really good live, and did have success with that. And he said, “Well, why don’t we…” When we did the Humble Pie one, he said, “I think you are so different from the records.” Like The Who, Humble Pie were very different live than they were on record. We had so much more energy. So he said, “I think we ought to do a live record.” And he was right. The live album was the one that broke. I think when it came to our decision to do my live record, it was kind of a foregone conclusion, because I had come from this band that was all about live, and I’ve always been an “in the moment” player, I don’t like to plan anything in a show. I just don’t like to think at all, and then just let it happen. So we did speak. I think that [A&M Records founders] Jerry Moss and Herb [Alpert] and Dee Anthony and my agent, Frank Barsalona, all knew that I was most powerful live. So as I say, it was, let’s just use the Humble Pie template almost to a T, and do the same thing. Needless to say, it surpassed all our dreams.

Wow, what a team you had at that time. I would trust those guys’ opinions. Barsalona probably knew exactly where the heat was. And you knew what audiences you connected with best. And you ended up primarily at Winterland [in San Francisco] summer of ‘75, and the crowd plays a role in that album very much.

Oh, absolutely. I think the reason was that when we released the Frampton record in ‘75, and when we recorded at Winterland and other places, we were promoting the Frampton record. We were kind of in limbo. We were bigger than a supporting act, but we weren’t quite big enough everywhere to be a headliner. Well, San Francisco had eaten the Frampton record up, and it was spitting it out 24/7 on KSAN Radio. We kind of owned San Francisco that year, because it was on the radio so much. So that was our very first headline gig. Or, I think we’d done one in New York before, but nothing like this. So when we walked out, San Francisco knew what we were all about. In fact, promoter Bill Graham, after the album was such a big success, he sent me a vinyl record of just the audience and said, “This is the reason why it was such a big success.”

Of course, he did.

“My audience. My fans, not yours.” His audience.

Yeah, and his brilliant promotion.

Oh, he was the best. He invented the way to do a live show. He was phenomenal.

But acts could break regionally then in ways. You’d pop up here, and sometimes unrelated markets some DJ gets on you and plays your songs, and you can be hot in a market and you didn’t even really know it, or hadn’t been there, that’s a phenomena that we don’t see as much today.

No. Well, the phrase “regional breakout” doesn’t happen anymore, or as much. But as far as radio, I always used to say that if you parachuted me down in the ‘60s or ‘70s into a city in America, give me an FM radio, I’ll tell you where I am. Because it was all so different. New York was so different from LA was so different from San Francisco was so different from Atlanta, from Miami. Everywhere had their own region of music. And then of course, that wonderful man…who first started programming every station to play the same music everywhere.

I remember when I first came to America in 1969, and we got sent a limo, which was very nice, we didn’t deserve one, but we did get a limo. It was in New York, and they had the radio on NEW in New York, the biggest FM album rock station. And we couldn’t believe it. And then you flip the dial and it would be all jazz. And then you’d flip the dial and it’d be all R&B. And we went, “Oh my God, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.” We had the BBC who played five new records a week, if you were lucky. So yeah, we had come from a deprived musical country to the country that invented blues and jazz and rock ‘n roll, and here we were, and there was a plethora of all different types of music. It just freaked us out. It was wonderful.

That kind of regional program had everything to do with forming my musical taste growing up in Nashville. You’d hear Black Sabbath, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and then the next thing you’re going to hear Waylon or John Prine. They were very free to jump around like that. That’s when you form your musical taste at that age, in your teens and you’re still fans of those artists today. But I think we’ve lost something there a little bit.

Yeah, I think that the youngsters today, as you said, rightly, too, I never thought of it quite like that, is that they listen to one station of all the same type of music and they don’t get the output of all those different types of music. They have to find it, it doesn’t get given to you. So yeah, it’s very different.

The good news is, you can find it thanks to the Internet. But there were no other outlets, and rock wasn’t that segmented, right? Because now it’s 50 different kinds of rock, and back then it was just rock ‘n roll. One week it’s Grand Funk, the next week it’s Sabbath, the next week it’s Southern rock, and we went to see all of them in the Municipal Auditorium. It was a lot easier to get exposure through radio, because there’s very specific stations now.

Yeah. The one station that I’d recommend everybody to listen to, and I didn’t know it was on there until a while ago, is Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure. Oh my God! Every show is like a lesson to me. It’s like he’s teaching me what went into Tom Petty to make Tom Petty. And we go from blues to jazz to rock to… You name it, he plays it. Beatles, Stones, whatever. And I have to say, it’s heartwarming to hear his voice. I was such a huge Tom Petty fan. Got to meet him a couple of times, but never really got to know him. But what a nice man, and what great music he listened to.

Yeah, and made.

Oh yeah, don’t forget about what he made. It’s just incredible, incredible band, incredible music, incredible writing. I’m really good friends with Benmont Tench, and he said that Tom, if they’d have a track they were working on and he wouldn’t have any words, he’d just go up to the mic and they’d do a take and he’d write the words on the spot. Maybe it wasn’t the final take, but he would write the words as they were playing it. He was just too good.

So back to you, you went with a double album, which was, in retrospect, a big move. But again, for an artist at that stage and the double album and all the expenses that incurs with it for the label, and the price for the fans for that matter. Which is nothing compared to today, but it’s more than a regular album. Again, I’m sure there were discussions about whether to do a double or not.

Well, the way it happened was we realized we should be doing a single live album. So we mixed it. There were only five tracks on there, and “Baby, I Love Your Way” and “Show Me The Way” we’re not on the record at this point. And so Jerry Moss came to New York, Electric Lady(land) and he sat down in front of the console, so I couldn’t see him, and we played him both sides of the single album. And his head just came up over the meter bridge and he said, “Where’s the rest?” And we said, “Oh, you mean you want a double album?” He said, “Hell yeah!” So that’s when we went out and recorded more, because I didn’t like the versions we had. “Show me the Way,” “Baby, I Love Your Way,” and “Nowhere’s Too Far” were all too new to the act. They weren’t the definitive versions. So we went out and recorded more. But the thing about the double album is, Jerry came up with the best idea. He said, “We’re going to make it a double album, but we’re going to charge a dollar more than a single album.” So instead of $6.98 it was $7.98, or $8.98 if it was $7.98. That was a huge selling point.

So the unintended consequences of that, have you ever done the math on how many joints have been rolled on that album? Everybody had that record.

[LAUGHS] Yes. And there’s still seeds in the middle, I think.

I’m not kidding, you’d go to a party and it was almost guaranteed to hit the turntable. Everybody had it. There was no hotter album or artist in the summer of 1976. It was you.

Yeah, it’s amazing. It was quite surreal.

The tour on that record was phenomenal. And I think it was my first or second concert ever, July 4th at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds with Gary Wright. That was quite an experience for my 15-year-old self. I’d never seen anything like it. The fans were nuts. It was the Bicentennial, so that was a great gig. That was in-demand. There were big shows everywhere. How did you come to be in Nashville for that?

Oh, I don’t know. When the album came out and started selling quite well immediately, we were still supporting people and playing smaller venues that had been booked in the spring of ‘76. And then we started playing arenas and it was my name on the ticket, which was a big deal for me and the band. Basically, everybody wanted a piece of it and it was down to Frank Barsalona to book the tour. And as soon as we could, we were in the arenas. And then of course, we did stadiums, which I’d already done one with Bill Graham, again, in Oakland. I’d already done one Day on the Green there in ‘75. So yeah, it was just about to blow the top off.

So by the time we were playing JFK Stadium in Philadelphia… We just played Philly again, and we have the big screen now behind us. So I put up the picture of the stadium from the air when we had 120,000 people in there. I know people have played for many more thousands now, but for me that’s probably the most I’ve ever played for. So all that stuff was just, we couldn’t believe it. And we were doing 20 shows in a row, no day off.

That’s why you can still go out and sell tickets today. And all of those bands from the ‘70s, they toured like maniacs. And they went everywhere, and they could actually play. That makes a big difference, man. They made an impression. And when tickets get up to a certain level, you want a known entity. And you know that Steve Miller Band, who you just toured with, they can play and they’re going to give you a show, and it’s not a risk.

Well, yeah, Allman Brothers, same thing. Because they were such great players.

That touring band that you had (Bob Mayo, keyboards, second guitar; John Siomos, drums; Stanley Sheldon, bass), and I’m sure you toured and worked with a lot of them for many years after that, but they were great.

It was a special band, yeah. I have to say that the combination of the four of us was absolutely perfect. Bob Mayo, rest in peace, he was an incredible, incredible piano player and guitar player. Musicologist to the max. Knew everything, knew everybody, had perfect pitch. I hate him. No. [Laughs]

Talk about surreal, to hear you say his name after hearing “Do You Feel Like We Do” a million times, it’s a trip, man. Because everybody would say that. “Bob Mayo on the keyboards. Bob Mayo.”

[Laughs] Right, yeah. And his son Greg. This is wild. When Bob wasn’t playing with us, he was either playing with Hall & Oates or Foreigner. And Greg Mayo, his son, has now taken Bob’s seat in Daryl Hall’s band. That gave me chills. He’s just so wonderful. He’s a great player. But the other thing was, I’ve never played with a drummer quite like John Siomos. He’s playing on “Hello It’s Me” [Todd Rundgren], he plays on about three or four more tracks on that album. I spoke with Todd and he said he was so unique and he had so much feel. It’s hard to play with another drummer after you played with him. And it took me a long time to find players that, they weren’t John Siomos, but they could give me the same feeling because of their feel. He was very special. He was an orchestral drummer in as much as he orchestrated the tracks for the music.

That was a special band. But I’ve been blessed that I’ve had some incredible bands along the way. Right now my band is phenomenal. So I’m just very lucky. And I attract people that want to be in a band with a leader that’s not a diva, I think.

Yeah. I don’t think that’s luck, actually.

No. Well, I’m part of the band. And even though I’m “Peter Frampton” the solo guy, when I’m playing with my band I’m the lead guitarist and I sing. I’ve always been a band guy, I never set up in the middle. Because the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame sent my production manager a set and how we would be placed, and it’s me in the middle. I said, “I’m never in the middle. I’m always to the right or left, but usually stage left, which is the audience’s right.” And I said, “That’s because my gear’s over on that side.” And I said, “I wouldn’t feel right in the middle.” And then they had to adjust.

Well, at least they adjusted it. It could be, “You’re doing it our way or not at all.”

That can happen. I’ve known… It’s been a… Yeah. [laughs]

So you have the ebbs and flows of the career after Comes Alive!, though you’ve aways been able to work as much as you wanted. It’s more of a commercial ebb and flow, I guess, and after such a peak, who’s not going to? If you could have managed a career differently in the ‘70s into the ‘80s, would you have changed anything?

You can’t. And I’m where I’m at today because of the ups and the downs. So those [ebbs and flows] have figured into my M.O. and the way I work. Everything that I’ve been through, hey, I would’ve preferred not to have a blip when we went all the way down to nothing again, which I had to work back from. The thing that I would have changed, I would not have released an album for another year or two after Frampton Comes Alive!. Everyone thought, “you want to go and do another record straightaway, because you never know, fans can be fickle.”  You’ve sold more than [Carole King’s megahit] Tapestry, you’re now the biggest record in the world, in the history of rock music. Yeah, that’s what we need to do, is to just rush out and do another one. So that would be the only thing I would change, given myself a couple of years to understand what had just happened, and have time to write.

You had your whole life, or at least several years, to write what’s on that album, and when you’re working constantly touring, I don’t know if you can write on the road or not.

No.

I think a lot of artists learned from that. You don’t want to be a cautionary tale for anybody, but —

No.

You see big bands that can wait a year or two and be the better for it and put out better albums and better songs.

Well, I always bring up the Eagles at that point. You think they’ve had hundreds of studio records, and you can mostly count them on two hands. They’ve had a lot of compilations and “Best Of’s,” but they don’t go near the studio, because they don’t like each other anyway. [laughs] No, I’m sure they do now, but in their documentary, they didn’t. And they only go near the studio when they’ve all got great songs. They don’t bother with… “Why would we go in and try and force it when we don’t have…” We just had a huge record-breaking album, why won’t we go back in the studio like next week? No, let’s let this moment seep into the culture before we… I mean, Comes Alive! is still on the radio. It permeated for a while, and it still is.

The good news of it is you’re now known and respected for being an artist and musician exclusively. That’s how the public consciousness looks at you now.

Yes. Well, I have a lot of people to thank along the way, from Bill Wyman to David Bowie having me on the “Glass Spider Tour” [1987]. People have handed me some very nice presents along the way. David was a lifelong friend, and he gave me something that nobody else could give me. Here was David Bowie playing stadiums, and he asked me to play on his record [Never Let Me Down]. He reintroduced me as a guitar player. At that point, he could see that I was a pin-up, front cover shirt off, the whole nine yards. And David knew that I had been dropped like a hot potato, and he knew me as a guitar player. He could have had anybody on that record and tour, but he asked me. I’ve never been able to thank him enough, and I still do. By bringing me on board, things blew up for me right from that moment on again. And the credibility was back in the public eye.

I saw the Glass Spider tour and your playing was great, it was really cool to have you out there.

Oh, I loved it. I loved it.

You’re obviously still working, I understand you just got back. The farewell is a long farewell, I guess.

Well, this one was the “Positively Thankful Tour,” because I hadn’t planned on doing this tour, but then I looked one day on the tabulation of what the public were voting for on the nominations, and I saw that over 500,000 people had voted for me, and I said, “We have to go out and thank everybody for this. This is unbelievable.” I ended up number two in the list. So that completely blew my mind. So from David to now is an incredible period for me.

Is your health okay?

It’s OK. [The muscle disorder] is progressing, and it’s definitely affecting my legs and my arms, but it’s still affecting my hands. But I have adapted, and I really enjoyed playing on this tour. It might not be as many notes, but every note has a lot of soul in it, it has a lot of heart in it, because I know deep down that one day I’ll be playing my last note. So I treasure every note I can play right now. And I have a ball, because that’s my comfy chair.

I’m thankful we can put you on the cover of Pollstar. We’ll make sure you got a shirt on in the cover photo.

Please! All right!