“We said, ‘F**k England, let’s move to America’”: Peter Frampton reveals that he left the UK because Humble Pie hated having screaming girls at their gigs
Every band wants their music to be heard – but what if the attention gets a bit too intense? When Humble Pie’s 1969 single, Natural Born Bugie, peaked at number 4 in the UK charts, the rockers quickly grew tired of the screaming fans that began to attend their gigs.
In a new interview with Uncut, vocalist and lead guitarist Peter Frampton admits that he particularly hated the fangirls that Natural Born Bugie lured in. “It was a hit, so of course we had to play it on Top Of The Pops,” he recalls. “Steve Marriott [vocalist] really didn’t want to do it. He wasn’t thrilled. Of course, the first time we did it, as soon as we did our next gig we got screamed at.”
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Prior to being in Humble Pie, Frampton and the late Marriott were keen to shake off a “popstar” image. Record labels weren’t treating them seriously, and Humble Pie was there way of gaining a bit of respect – however, when exposed to a mass of female fans on Top Of The Pops, the pair of singers were yet again treated like “pin-up” boys next door.
“I looked at Steve, Steve looked at me and we said, ‘They’re screaming?’” Frampton says. “That’s why we had formed Humble Pie, to get away from that! So that’s when we said, ‘Fuck England, let’s move to America.’”
But it wasn’t just the singers who noticed the screaming. Drummer and keyboardist Jerry Shirley chips in, adding: “We wanted to get away from the screamers. We even started our set with an acoustic section, so Peter was sat there with an acoustic guitar and all these girls were screaming at him. It was not normal.”
Frampton goes on to admit that Marriott hated the response so much that he wanted to cut Natural Born Bugie from the set entirely. “Steve didn’t want to play the single at concerts,” he explains. And, for a short while, the band would indeed leave the track out of their set.
However, Humble Pie have since learned to love the single once again. The track has even been remastered for a shiny re-release of the band’s 1969 debut, As Safe As Yesterday Is.
The remastering of As Safe As Yesterday is out now.
The post “We said, ‘F**k England, let’s move to America’”: Peter Frampton reveals that he left the UK because Humble Pie hated having screaming girls at their gigs appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
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