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The forthcoming Peter Frampton documentary has thrown up another fascinating ‘What if?’ moment in rock history, revealing that the guitarist was once offered a spot in the Who.
Frampton’s namesake documentary debuted at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City yesterday, June 4, and People has reported on an exchange that’s detailed in the film.
As the story goes, the talkbox-loving musician was down and out. His label had dropped him, and he was broke. Pete Townshend, hating life on the road, made a proposition.
Frampton recalls: “He said, ‘I’ve got this idea. I don’t want to tour anymore, but I still want to write and be in The Who. I’ll write the songs, and I wonder what you thought if you took my place in The Who on the road.”
In 1976, the live album Frampton Comes Alive! had turned Frampton into a legend, but his fortunes were waning by the turn of the decade. Needless to say, Frampton was tempted.
“I said, ‘Really? Have you spoken to Roger [Daltrey] and John [Entwistle] about this?” Frampton then says in the film. Townsend’s response was, “I’m gonna talk to them tomorrow about this.”
Then Townshend went quiet. Weeks went by without a call passed, so Frampton took the initiative.
“It took me about five or six calls… and I found him at the studio,” he recounts. “I said, ‘You never called me back, I got nothing going on in my career…you left me in the lurch.’ I berated him. I was feeling so perturbed at the fact that it was there, right in the palm of my hand, and [then it was] gone.”
Yet, hindsight is a funny thing. Looking back at that strange low point in his career with Guitar Player, Frampton seems glad things didn’t work out.
“I didn’t think it was a great idea,” he admits. “I was laughing as he was talking about it, to be honest. I wanted to say, ‘You must be kidding! First of all, I can’t jump that high. Secondly, I’m not you, and you’ve got an awfully large pair of shoes to fill, live.’
“I really didn’t think it would happen,” he adds. “But when the leader of the Who says, ‘I think I want you to play with the Who now,’ you go, ‘Well, that’s crazy... But I don’t have anything going on, so maybe it is a good idea.’”
Frampton has been detailing his desires to keep on playing as long as his body allows, with a new album and a tell-all documentary both soon to be released.
