Peter Frampton

The talkbox-toting guitar legend talks new covers album, modded Marshalls and being reunited with his prized Les Paul custom after 30 years

- By Amit Sharma

“I used [the Phenix 1954 Gibson Les Paul Custom] for the solo at the end of ‘Reckoner,’ ” Frampton says. “It’s all over the album, actually”

PETER FRAMPTON’S NEW album — brilliantly titled Frampton Forgets the Words — sees the British guitar legend tackling songs by Radiohead, Lenny Kravitz, George Harrison, and David Bowie, using his instrument to replace the well-known vocal melodies of the originals. As he explains, there’s an art to making the guitar talk. And he should know; it is, after all, what he’s been doing for decades.

One of the covers is “Isn’t It a Pity” from George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, an album you played on. Harrison, along with Pete Drake, is sort of responsible — even indirectly — for introducing you to the talkbox.

That’s true. It’s on YouTube, actually, the audio from when Pete Drake put that tube into his mouth after setting it all up, and the pedal steel started singing to us. You can hear George talking and me laughing, I think. It was just jaw-dropping. When I first heard Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind, he was using The Bag, made by a company called Kustom, for background voices and ad-libs. I thought, “Now there’s a sound!” Then I heard Jeff Beck do a Beatles number [“She’s a Woman”] with it, and after that, I was sitting in front of Pete Drake at Abbey Road — and I see it. He completed the circle for me. And of course, the next thing out of my mouth was, ‘Where do I get one?’”