“I
feel I’m a guitar player who sings but the general public thinks I’m
a singer who plays guitar,” Frampton said. “The pre-conception
of me after Frampton Comes Alive! came out was the boy singer/pop star. But
my passion has always been guitar. If you look at my first four solo records
the focus is on guitar. Post-Frampton Comes Alive! was a confusing period
for me.”
Stylistically, Fingerprints is all over the place and that’s just the
way Frampton likes it. “The goal of this record was to please myself
and raise my own personal bar by challenging myself on every track. I finally
put my fretboard where my mouth has been all these years. I really delved
into the project tackling blues, jazz, South American music and grunge as
well. It’s a trip through my influences with friends I’ve made
along the way,” he stated. “I took myself back mentally to pre-Beatles,
when I started. Most of what we played in my first band was instrumentals.”
Fingerprints features a host of special guests such as Charlie Watts and
Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones, Mike McCready and Matt Cameron of Pearl
Jam, Hank Marvin and Brian Bennett of The Shadows, Warren Haynes of The Allman
Brothers Band and Gov’t Mule, John Jorgenson, and many others. Frampton
was reinvigorated by the project and welcomed the challenge.
“They all put me on my toes. The reason they are on the record is because
I admire them and tried to play like all of them. There’s a part of
all those players in me somewhere,” he declared. “Having guests
on the album made the process so enjoyable. It adds a spark to your creativity
and forces you to step out of your own comfort zone.”
In many ways, Fingerprints helped Frampton reevaluate his career and future direction. “I will never repeat myself again. I have learned that the key is to mix it up,” said Frampton, who is already working on his next record where he plans on gathering guest singers. “I’m writing like a maniac. Receiving that Grammy gave me a real kick up the backside. A nice pat on the back makes anybody’s creative juices flow.”
Frampton concluded, “This album is something I should have done a long time ago. In a way I’m glad I waited because I’m a much better guitar player now than I was in the seventies,” he said. “I wake up every day and say to myself, ‘Today I’ve got to learn a new lick’ because they’re always 50 to 100 people around the corner who are better than me. Never rest on your laurels – that’s the way you get better. I let that slip for a while but now my focus is back.”
Peter Frampton will be performing on June 30 at Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay as part of Friends of the Arts’ L.I. Summer Festival.
