Peter Frampton bonus Q&A: 'David Bowie reinvigorated my career incredibly'

A: Cameron called me, and — after we caught up a little — said: "I'm going to make a rock movie." I responded: "Cameron, we've always talked about how every rock movie is so bad, because they are so unrealistic. Like, it's supposed to be 1950 in the movie and they are singing in a microphone that wasn't invented until the 1970s." He said: "That's why I want you to help me get it right." So, I was able to double- and triple-check that everything was accurate and true to the times in "Almost Famous" — the drums, the guitars, the microphones, all the way down to what the (crowd) barricades at an early 1970s Black Sabbath concert were made out of! I called up my old stage manager, and asked if the barricades back then were made of plastic or wood. And he said: "Wood. It was always wood in those days."

Q: What about the actors who portrayed the band Stillwater in "Almost Famous?"

A: Billy Crudup, who played the lead guitarist in Stillwater, had several weeks of lessons on guitar before he met me. I sat down with him to teach him my solos on the songs we had done in preparation for the movie. Nancy (Wilson of Heart, who was Crowe's wife at the time) had written most of them, and I did a couple of more with Nancy, so that (in the film) they would all sound like the same band.

That was my job. And I remember Cameron asked me, before we did the big live concert scene where Stillwater was opening for Black Sabbath: "What would make a musician — a guitarist — be convinced that Billy was (playing as well as Jimmy Page or (Free's) Paul Kossoff, somewhere between the two?" I answered: "When his fingers are on the right notes as he's playing a solo and he tosses his head back, closes his eyes and doesn't have to look at what he's playing to play it right."

When we got to the live concert shoot, there was one solo where Billy tossed his head back, closed his eyes and soloed, and it was perfect! Cameron and I high-fived and did a chest bump!

Q: How did you come to be in the poker game scene in "Almost Famous" in which you played Humble Pie's road manager, Reg?

A: It was Cameron's idea. That's when I had to go to Billy Crudup, and ask: "Will you read my lines with me?" I wanted to be as authentic as an actor as I wanted him to be as a guitarist when I was teaching him. That was a funny scene.

Mitch Hedberg, the comedian, was in that poker game scene as the road manager for the Eagles. He passed away, unfortunately, in 2005. He had a line in his (stand-up) act where he said: "I did this scene in 'Almost Famous' with Peter Frampton. We played cards and smoked fake weed for a whole day of shooting. The only thing that would have been better than that would have been smoking real weed with a fake Peter Frampton!" Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, God!