Peter Frampton finally finds Rock & Roll Hall of Fame doors open to him

NEW YORK — At the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last year, Sheryl Crow was about to sing her hit “Everyday Is a Winding Road” when she invited a rock icon up on stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have to bring out one of my heroes — Peter Frampton,” she said as he appeared to huge cheers, slid on a Gibson electric guitar and made musical sparks immediately curl from the instrument.

Frampton was still jamming away when he got a hug from Crow and then Stevie Nicks. When he went into a blistering solo, there was a wide smile on his face. “That's how you do it, Peter Frampton!” Crow screamed.

Call that electric performance a dress rehearsal. This year, Frampton finally will be inducted into the rock hall himself, an honor his fans believe is long overdue. The ceremony is Oct. 19 in Cleveland.

He thanks Crow for sharing her spotlight. “I don’t think I would have been nominated had it not been for Sheryl pushing me out there,” he tells The Associated Press from his home in Nashville. “I will always be indebted to her for a wonderful opportunity she gave me.”

Frampton earned his way into the hall in large part on the strength of his 1976 live double album “Frampton Comes Alive!” — buoyed by the hit songs “Show Me the Way” and ″Baby, I Love Your Way” — that Rolling Stone magazine listed among the 50 greatest live albums of all time.

The guitarist-singer-songwriter has been eligible for the hall since 1998. “I thought it just wasn’t going to happen and I got on with my life,” he says. “I never expect awards. Whatever comes my way, I’m honored and thrilled about.”

The opening of the door for Frampton coincided with a change in hall leadership in 2023 that led to key legacy acts getting invites, like Foreigner and Cher.

They'll join Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest, Kool & The Gang, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Matthews Band, the late Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick, Alexis Korner, John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton in the class of '24.

“I’m absolutely thrilled for Peter. He’s given his whole life to this business and he deserves as much as anyone does,” said bassist Rick Wills, who is going into the hall with Foreigner and who played with Frampton for years, including co-writing “Do You Feel Like I Do?”

In her acceptance speech, Crow revealed that in 1976 when she was 14, she and six teen friends caught Frampton in concert in Memphis, Tennessee. “I got to sing along with tens of thousands of strangers to ‘Do You Feel Like I Do?’” She called it a pivotal moment.

Perhaps more than any musician, Frampton was associated with the talk box, a guitar effect that runs a tube from an amplifier to the mouth, creating a sound both psychedelic and robotic, a technique that has been used by everyone from Mötley Crüe to Pink Floyd.

“I’ve never been about the bravado of being a star. I’ve never thought of myself that way. I'm a lifelong musician and I just want to be able to play as long as I can," he says.

“I speak through my guitar I think more than I do with words. I think more emotion and soul comes from my notes that I play and than anything I could ever say.”

Major awards until recently have eluded Frampton, who had his music played in films like “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” “Dazed and Confused” and “The Banger Sisters.” Redemption came in 2007 when Frampton’s instrumental album “Fingerprints” won a Grammy Award, his first.

“There’s two things, that I always had a dream about: One was the Grammy, which I got from my instrumental album, which I’m so proud of because I didn’t sing a note. It was just about my guitar playing, so that was thrilling. And then, you know, obviously a dream was maybe one day I’ll be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But I never felt like, ‘Well, I deserve it more than anybody else.’”

He revealed in 2019 that he had a degenerative muscle disease called inclusion body myositis, but plans a tour leading up to his induction — The Positively Thankful Tour, which hits South Carolina, New York, Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Washington, D.C. — and is working on songs for others as well as another album.

“I can’t say when it’s going to come out because I’m such a perfectionist. I want every track to be like the best track I’ve ever written,” he says, laughing.