In the second part of our Steve Marriott feature, Iain McGonigal chatted to Peter Frampton in 2017 about their relationship, Humble Pie, and beyond…

Sadly, Steve Marriott only lived for three and a half months of 1991. During this time, he spent two months in Los Angeles with Peter Frampton, so naturally no analysis or summary of this time could be complete without Peter.

When Peter graciously agreed to do an interview, I thought it important, in order to put 1991 into context, to also track the history of Peter’s relationship with Steve through the years

Iain: You’ll never guess what I was looking at just before you called. The Mary Frampton Rock n Roll Cook Book !

Peter: Oh my goodness – yes I have one of those. We’re still great friends and I still see her. In fact I just saw her when we last played LA at the Greek.

Iain : It’s a good read, even if you don’t like cooking. The other thing I was going to mention. I got quite friendly with Steve Marriott’s mum Kay in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, as you know we lost her last year.

Peter: Oh absolutely yes

Iain: She did talk very fondly about you. She said that Steve taught you a lot. That’s probably true, but she would say that wouldn’t she?

Peter : Yes, ha ha ha

Iain : Anyway if I could go right back to the beginning – I never really figured out when you first met Steve. I wondered if it was those gigs at The Marquee where The Herd were supporting the Small Faces or if it was something different?

Peter : It was sometime around that time because The Herd were refuting all their contracts, because someone was screwing us and we couldn’t figure out who. And then Steve and Ronnie Lane heard about the fact we were going through what they’d been through, being screwed basically.

So they invited myself and Andrew Bown down to Marlow in Buckinghamshire where they were both living at the time. Andy and I went down and they were telling us all about what they had been through, and maybe Andrew Oldham could help us or whatever and what we could do.

We started jamming, and I think Andy then went back and I stayed because I already wanted to be a member of the Small Faces. My dream, my fantasy was to be a member of The Small Faces. So I was a pig in shit, as it were and enjoying myself and that led to friendship with me, Steve and Ronnie.

Then it went on to me sitting in with the Small Faces at various shows, then going to Paris to so the sessions with Johnny Hallyday. We were backing him up, I was basically the 5th member of the Small Faces, which was beginning of the end of The Small Faces. Because Steve wanted me to join the group and the others didn’t think that was a terrifically good idea.

So anyway, when we came back from Paris, they had one last gig to do at the Alexandra Palace and I was at Glyn John’s house listening to Side One of this new band he had just produced – Led Zeppelin. My jaw was on the floor.

I was literally sitting on the floor in front of the record player and Steve phoned and asked Glyn if I was there. He said “Well Pete, I’ve just left the Small Faces. ” I said “you’re kidding me”. He said “Well that’s it. Can we form a band together ?”. He was already helping me form my own band and had found Jerry Shirley as well. “I’ve got Greg Ridley from Spooky Tooth. He’s willing to jump ship and join us” he said “whaddya think ?”. I said “well that’s fantastic – I’m in”.

Literally within 48 hours the rest of the Small Faces, the three of them, came to visit me at my seedy basement flat in Hammersmith and asked me to join The Small Faces. I said why couldn’t we all have done it together.

Instead of splintering we could have all been in the same band, But I’ve already said yes to Steve and we’re starting a band ourselves. You know it was very hard ‘cos I was such good friends with all of them. It was such a tough time – to see their disappointment, But it would have been a very large pair of shoes to fill – well small pair of shoes – a large pair of shoes to come anywhere close

Iain : And it took two big pairs to eventually fill with Rod and Ronnie ! There are a couple of urban legends I was going to ask you about, and you’ve cleared up one already. Mac denied in later years that they had approached you to join – but its clear that it did happen ! The other question was did you hesitate at all when Steve asked ?

Peter : Oh no

Iain : Oh good – LOL

Peter : No, no as soon as he asked me I said yes. The first time he asked me. Who would say no ? I wanted to be in a band with him for years, at least 2-3 years. As soon as I saw them on Ready Steady Go playing “Whatcha gonna do about it” I said to myself “I want to be in a band with THAT guy”. So that is definitely the wrong side of the myth!

Iain : OK that’s very clear. I saw a report of you playing at a place called Bubbles in Brentwood, Essex with the Small Faces.

Peter: I don’t remember exactly when it was but I think it happened a couple of times. That was probably before we went to Paris to work with Johnny Hallyday. A lot of good music came out of that session with Johnny Hallyday, a couple of them ended up on the first Humble Pie album – “Bang” was one…

Iain : Yes, “Bang” was one and “What You Will” too, and “That Man” from The Small Faces was another. If we move on a month or so. You guys were very influenced by The Band and was the first song you tried in rehearsal “We Can Talk” ?

Peter : I believe it was, cos we had all been round at Steve’s individually before Humble Pie had formed and whenever I got together with Steve in the beginning “Big Pink” would be put on and we would, you know, sit down and listen to the whole album. No TV in those days, it was all albums and that was definitely high on the list, and Dr John the Night Tripper.

Iain : Absolutely, and there’s video footage of you that year playing several pieces of Side One of that Dr John album. You play “Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” and of course the phrase “Wham Bam Thankyou Mam” comes from that album too.

Peter : Ah that’s right, yes, yes, yes and I think I actually played on that track, which was a live track and we were in the studio, Steve and Ronnie were helping us with The Herd next album which never came out – so that’s somewhere.

Iain : They produced “Sunshine Cottage” around that time ?

Peter : Yes exactly, and I remember Steve brought out one of the live tracks and it was “Wham Bam Thank you Mam” and said “put some guitar on this”. So I did, you know, on a live record ha ha, which was very strange but I did play on it after the fact.

Iain : I think you rehearsed in one of the little villages near Steve – Magdalen Laver Village Hall

Peter : Magdalen Laver Village Hall – YES

Iain : I think they’ve knocked that down – they have a new one these days. But it must have been quite idyllic in Essex during the six or seven months that year you were writing and rehearsing until contracts were sorted out. I’ve visited Beehive Cottage a couple of times. I guess you remember it well.

Peter : Oh yes.

Iain: I did manage to visit the little building with the studio in later years

Peter : That was before the studio. I don’t remember the studio but I do remember Ronnie was living where the studio was, in the guest cottage. Steve and Jenny were in the main house.

Iain : Let me ask you, around this time there were rumours of Brian Jones coming around to rehearse. So you recall anything ?

Peter : Yes I do remember that at the very very beginning. Nothing came of it. I was obviously open to it – we all were. But it came and went, we never really did meet up.

Iain : A more detailed question – on the Changes 69 tour where David Bowie was the support act, apparently you would open the show with “Take Me Back” but when Steve came onstage he sang a song called “I Worship The Ground”. I can’t find anyone who remembers clearly what that song was.

Peter : I remember I started with “Take Me Back”. Yeah I don’t remember that. All I remember is doing “For Your Love”. I think it was me first, then Greg – I know I played one with Greg. Jerry did one then Steve did and we all did “For Your Love”.

Iain : Lost in the mists of time I think. My first ever gig, as a 15 year old, was the night Humble Pie recorded “Eat It” in Glasgow. You were the opening act on that tour. It must have been strange, leaving a band and then finding yourself on tour with them?

Peter : Yeah, I thought it was a good idea. I was nervous to say the least. It was just a good idea to show that there was no animosity, and, you know, I had no ego at that point and was willing to open for Humble Pie. I had no problem even though they stood at the side of the stage the first couple of shows and blew raspberries at me! I am joking. It was a little tense but I got through.

Iain : My memory – I went to the gig with two friends – it was the first time I heard you play “Do You Feel Like We Do”. I see you looking over and you sing “Well you three feel like we do” so we must have been visible from the stage!

Peter : (hearty laugh) brilliant !

Iain : In those days, to me, Steve’s stagecraft was second to none. What was it like to play with him live ?

Peter: I learned a lot from Steve. Steve’s mum was correct. We wondered how far we could take an audience and Steve took them there. There was that bravado he had, to seek, to search where he could take an audience.

I just mutated that myself and saw a lot of other artists how they handle audiences. But I noticed most of it he did with humour and that’s something that comes very natural to me and so now I have the audience in the palm of my hand.

I have to say working with Steve and Humble Pie was like going to college for a band. There was so much experience with Greg, myself and with Steve, obviously Jerry was just starting out.

That was an apprenticeship-and-a-half I call it, being in that band, and it set me in good stead for the future!

Iain : But I think there was a kind of dichotomy going on with Steve – he wanted to be a front man but he didn’t want to be a front man ?

Peter : Yeessss. I’d seen it before Humble Pie formed, before Small Faces split. I was staying at Beehive with Steve and Ronnie and our partners. The phone rings. It’s obviously Management or something, and Steve takes the call and all I hear is “Nah I don’t wanna do that. Nah, not doing that”.

So he gets off the phone and everyone says “what’s going on” and he says we just got offered the opening slot on Jimi Hendrix’s US tour”. Ronnie said “Fack, you said no ??” Steve said “we don’t wanna do that, we want to go as headliners”. In other words he wanted to make it but he didn’t want to make it. That dichotomy was going on.

Going to America, post-Ogdens and with Jimi Hendrix, I can’t see a downside there at all. And they already had a big hit there “Itchycoo Park” to build on which Steve probably wouldn’t have wanted to play! The only time I played “Natural Born Bugie” with Steve onstage was in 1991 at the Half Moon! He never played it live ever (before 1991). Steve was anti-commercial.

Iain : From afar I saw that trait right through his career – many examples. Now tell me about Greg Ridley. I got to know Greg quite well in his last few years. A true gentleman! I had a lot of time and respect for Greg.

Peter : He was a good man. He looked after me in that band. You said it, he was a gent, a great guy, a good friend. Bad to lose him. I spoke quite a bit with him before he passed. It was good to speak with him.

I could see that things were changing. Steve started out – brilliant as you can be – I will always be the person to say I will be the last standing to say how incredible he was, his talent was overflowing. But he kind of sucked the oxygen out of the air and it was all about Steve. And it gets to the point where you think “I have to breathe – I need to do my own thing”.

Iain : I’ve never really got to the bottom of your reasons for leaving Humble Pie. I have imagined that perhaps there were limits to the outlet for your songs, plus Humble Pie were going in a much heavier direction, and Steve was really being pushed to the front. Was it those kind of reasons, or were there other reasons?

Peter : You pretty much put the nail on the head there. There was no longer an outlet for OUR acoustic side – all the band members. The way we started was acoustically even before we even had a stage act. So it was that – that got mixed in. So there were songs that we were ALL writing that weren’t applicable for Humble Pie. It wasn’t just me.

And even though I was very instrumental in songs, for example ” I Don’t Need No Doctor” which came from a soundcheck at Madison Square Gardens.

Iain : Legend has it you played it that same night?

Peter : We did I think. “Stone Cold Fever”, my riff and quite a few others. It wasn’t that I was the one who was the more sweeter acoustic side – so was Steve, as you know but we both came up with heavy riffs. Which came to be what Humble Pie was – heavy rock n roll with Steve singing R&B on top of it. That was how unique we were. He was such an incredible blues R&B singer. He would probably have preferred to sing in a gospel choir

Iain : With Mavis Staples !

Peter : Yes. You know the thing is, the main reason for me to leave, I needed to be in charge of my own destiny. As you say Humble Pie started up democratic and ended being pushed in a direction that even Steve didn’t want it to be pushed. And as things developed different drugs were around and I wasn’t involved in that at all. It just got a little heavy for me.

Dee Anthony came over to show me the cover, show all of us the cover. I was living in London, the rest of the band were in Essex. And he showed me the cover I said “it’s fantastic but I’m leaving the band”. He said “you’re not ?” I said “yes”.

Then I phoned called Steve from Dee’s hotel room and told him I was leaving. And it was a very sad occasion for me, for them, and he got mad, which I would have done too. But going back to that thing before he wanted to be the front man but he didn’t want to be the front man.

He loved being the front man but he loved someone else doing it when he didn’t feel like it and that was me ! And now it’s back to, I imagine, him thinking “it’s all on me now” – like back in Small Faces.

Iain : This is another thing I notice in Steve’s career – he was always quick to push others to the front and it allowed them to shine – Honeyboy Hickling, Jim Leverton and others.

If I could move on with a little anecdote from the 70’s – regarding the only exam I ever failed at University, “I’m In You” came out two days before and I played it solid for two days instead of preparing for the exam and I failed it!

Peter : Oh dear I’m sorry, LOL

Iain : I mean I loved “I’m In You” but I often wonder what would have happened if “Breaking All The Rules” had come out at that time.

Peter : I didn’t like “I’m In You”, I didn’t love it. I liked the title track and a couple of others. Basically I was forced into making an album way too quick, way too soon and it was the wrong move. “Breaking All The Rules” would have been a perfect album to come out at that point.

Iain : Moving on to 1991, you went to visit Steve in Arkesden, I think you had called him first?

Peter : Yes I was trying to form a band in LA, Every time I tried to find that person I realised I was looking for Steve Marriott and no one was going to match up to the original.

So I called Steve, he said “come on over and we’ll see if we can still write a song together”. So I came over and we did meet at his house – it was the one where he passed away.

Iain : Given that Steve convinced himself that he loved the unpressured lifestyle and playing the pub circuit, why did he come to LA? Was there something unfulfilled still in him do you think, or was it just too big an opportunity to turn down?

Peter : I don’t know!! I was amazed he wanted to do it !! We wrote a song the first day and it was great. He was excited. I was excited. Then I said “maybe you should come to Los Angeles – something different – let’s do an album, one last album together. See how we do. Maybe do a bit of touring to promote it. I’m not saying this is a lifelong deal. I’m saying let’s see what we can do with one project – just one album, one tour. I’ve got a couple of musicians who are really great, a bass player and a drummer”.

So he came over. He rented a place in Santa Monica, and that’s when I had a room in LA and I eventually built a studio within that space. So Steve and I would hang out there during the days, during the week and started working, writing together and we came up with the first four, and then rehearsed with the other two guys, and it was sounding really good.

So that’s when we went to see different record labels. And I was the one, you know, selling it. People would say “how is it?” and I would say “well I think it’s better than ever, Steve and I working together, better than ever before”.

And Steve would say “Oh really !”. he would always play it down y’know in front of these people. And he knew I was telling the truth, that’s the thing and he would say to me “You really want this to work, don’t you”.

And I would say “We’ve got a project – why wouldn’t we want it to work ?” . When I’m working on something I put my mind to it. I do it from the beginning to the end. If it fails it fails but if its gonna work let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Light all the fires, you know what I mean.

And we had the top lawyer talking to us about different deals and stuff. The only thing we weren’t going to call it Humble Pie. They all wanted us to call it Humble Pie. That was not going to happen. This was a different project. You know Marriott/Frampton or Frampton/Marriott whichever one of us you spoke to, and it would have been a kind of duet with a band. So that was it, and of course things started to crumble from that point forward.

Iain : I always figured because of the circumstances the song you worked on that first day was “Out Of The Blue”?

Pete : Oh it was.

Iain : Throughout his career Steve always kept notebooks, with lyrics, proposed album track listings, setlists for gigs etc. He has some tracklists written down in 1991 but they include “Itch You Can’t Scratch” which I thought was from an earlier period ?

Peter : Yes, I liked it though. I loved those demos.

Iain : Yeah, they’re called The Bedroom Tapes.

Peter : Yes exactly. I was a fan of that track. I loved it, It might have been me who said we should do that one, and also my fave was “Phone Call Away”

Iain : Funnily enough, that’s also on one of the lists, on what looks like a running order for an album. It has all the known tracks, “I Won’t Let You Down”, “Out Of The Blue”, “So Hard To Believe” and so on, but it also has three I don’t recognise “Golden Spike”, “My Door” and “I Know Better Than That”.

Peter : “I Know Better than That” I know that one. We worked on that a little bit.

The reason we were able to work together, I was upfront with Steve and I said fine whatever either one of us wants to do in the weekend. But I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs or anything. I said “Steve why don’t we just keep straight during the week at rehearsal when we’re working, and when we’re not working that’s fine and everyone can do whatever they want”. “That’s fine by me. That’s good. I like that”. So anyway it started off good.

Then I realised he had this Perrier Water bottle with him, in fact two bottles – and I realise it wasn’t Perrier Water in those bottles, it was white wine. I just felt like, I dunno, It pissed me off because when we were both straight it was fine, great, no problems at all. We were having the time of our live, just messing about, like the old days, when we first met. There was the excitement again, cos, you know 1+1=5. The two of us together it was just so special.

So that was the beginning of the end for me, and then he would arrive a little bit out of it and stuff that wasn’t going to work for me.

Iain : Steve’s wife Toni said that Steve really couldn’t deal with the Management whose style was “my way or the highway”

Peter : Nah, I don’t know about it. He hated all Managers, and what he’d been through I don’t blame him. For me, you could pass it off onto Management if you want, but the unfortunate thing is Steve was getting high. I didn’t want that to be the basis of our working day – and proven by the fact that our first few weeks together had been stupendous. Then things just started to drift off. There was that mistrust again.

Iain : Maybe back to that dichotomy and sabotage?

Peter : Uh, probably. He could see that this was potentially going to be a big thing so I guess that other side of him kicked in at that point.

Iain : Peter let me share with you a copy of a letter I have. It’s from Steve, dated March 23rd in Santa Monica. It has no addressee, but it’s Steve’s handwriting. He says “I always had my doubts about living a pressurised lifestyle for money again. Now I know I don’t want or need it “

Peter : Yes! So the smoking gun! A button he could press at any time to dislodge everything.

Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott appeared together at the Half Moon venue in Putney on January 12 1991, less than four months before Marriott’s death. This was their first gig together since Humble Pie. (Picture source: X)

Iain : I believe there was one more call from Steve – a kind of fishing type call – when he telephoned and asked, like if he had missed a call from you.

Peter : Yes he did. Yeah, I was still very hurt by the fact that he’d messed it all up that I wasn’t going to say how’re you doing. Anyway I could tell how he was doing and it wasn’t good.

But I feel something so strongly about Steve on so many different levels. Someone who gave to me such an incredible amount of knowledge, about songwriting, singing, guitar playing, recording, playing live, you name it – the whole ball of wax.

It’s hard to say stuff that isn’t 10/10 for Steve but we all have our issues. But that was outweighed by the fact that his talent was so huge. Awesome, using the word in the right way.

He had an awesome amount of unique talent and I have a very very warm heart for Steve even though we had tough times, fought like brothers. One of the most important people in my life.

Iain : Your love and respect for Steve shines through – everyone knows that Steve had his demons.

Peter : And I know he said some awful things about me and I know he didn’t really mean it. Because I believe there was a love from him for me and I let him down!

And in the song we wrote together “I Won’t Let You Down” there is a moment when we double or triple tracked the chorus. When we sang together, if you solo the multi-track in between the lines and you solo the vocals, you just hear us going “oh my god- sounds so good”.

You hear all that, and that’s what I want to remember. I’ll never forget when the two of us sang together, and he’s a much better singer than me, but the two of us together on that track it just gave me goosebumps. That’s the way I want to remember Steve.

Iain : It’s quite magical.

Peter : Yeah

Feature by Iain McGonigal. Originally published by ‘Vive Le Rock’ magazine and reproduced exclusively with the author’s permission.

Part 1 (Steve Marriott retrospective)

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