Peter Frampton Says Manager Kept Him High to Hide Fraud
Peter Frampton said a former manager made sure he was always high on drugs in order to hide the fact he was ripping off the guitarist.
By the time he discovered the truth, Frampton said he was left with “less than nothing” and struggled to rebuild his career in the ‘80s.
In a new interview with The Guardian, Frampton said manager Dee Anthony, who died in 2009, told people never to discuss financial matters with him. “I was kept away from those things,” he explained. “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. ... I had less than nothing. I owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. … It was criminal. I could have put him in jail.”
In his upcoming memoir, Frampton said Anthony persuaded him to take part in the ill-fated Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie by telling him Paul McCartney was going to appear in it – knowing that wasn’t true. “There was barely a script,” he said of the 1978 production. “It just said, ‘Walk in here, someone will yell ‘playback’ and then you lip-sync. Everyone thought we were too big to fail.”
David Bowie helped rebuild Frampton’s career by taking him on tour in 1987. “I knew I would make it back,” the guitarist said. “It just took a lot longer than I thought."
Frampton's book, Do You Feel Like I Do?, will be published on Oct. 20.