Why did Peter Frampton turn down an offer to join The Who?
For a period of time, Peter Frampton was the most successful solo artist on the planet. After he released the 1976 double live album Frampton Comes Alive!, his success entered a different realm thanks to the poppy singles ‘Show Me the Way’, ‘Baby, I Love Your Way’, and ‘Do You Feel Like We Do’ all reaching the top 15 in the US. The record shipped over 14million copies worldwide, becoming a world record for the time.
However, the album’s success would also be the temporary undoing of Frampton. In addition to it setting expectations too high for the future, the issue was that Frampton’s hipster credibility had taken a considerable hit as he was now the era’s definitive teen idol. Compounding the situation, drugs, financial mismanagement, and other factors took their toll.
He would eventually re-emerge from this extended period in the cold over a decade later thanks to his old friend David Bowie, a man who once found himself in a similar spot. However, in the interim years, Frampton surprisingly turned down the chance to join The Who.
In 1978, after starring alongside The Bee Gees in a failed film adaptation of The Beatles’ album, Sgt. Pepper’s, Frampton’s career started to tumble rapidly. Strung out on the morphine he had been prescribed to recover from a near-fatal car accident in the Bahamas, as well as other recreational drugs, the rug was then pulled from beneath him.
Frampton’s American manager, Dee Anthony, who had been with him since his days in Humble Pie, had been embezzling funds. Further rumours came out of the criminal investigation touting that Anthony had connections to New York’s criminal underground. Personally and economically, this managerial connection ruined Frampton. “I had less than nothing,” Frampton told The Guardian in 2020. “I owed hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Although he revealed that he now takes responsibility for trusting the wrong people, Frampton maintains that Anthony had been instructing people not to discuss his finances with him. “I was kept away from those things,” he claimed. “I was kept high. If I needed weed, he made sure I had weed. If I needed cocaine, he made sure I had cocaine. He didn’t want me thinking about what was going on. It was criminal. I could have put him in jail.”
After firing Anthony, Frampton was in dire straits. During one particularly low patch, there appeared to be a ray of light. The Who’s creative mastermind and guitarist, Pete Townshend, called him out of the blue, informed him he was leaving the band and wondered if he wanted to take his place. “It was the most bizarre thing I ever heard,” Frampton laughed. “Three men couldn’t fill his shoes!”
Frampton initially declined, but a few days later, after mulling his unique quandary over, he called Townshend back due to his financial situation. However, the guitarist had no memory of the conversation, acting as if it had never happened.
It wasn’t until 1987 that things would finally look up for Frampton. His old friend David Bowie asked him to be a guest player on the massively successful ‘Glass Spider Tour’ in support of Never Let Me Down. Back from the brink, Frampton’s next album, 1989’s When All the Pieces Fit, was the first he was proud of in years. Since then, he’s continued to tour and release records.
