Peter Frampton receives the Icon Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival

Just before the new documentary “Frampton” opened the 2026 Newport Beach Film Festival on Thursday, Oct. 15, the festival honored its subject, singer-guitarist Peter Frampton, with its Icon Award.

It was presented by the Stone Temple Pilots‘ Dean and Robert DeLeo, and just as Frampton‘s peers spoke warmly of him throughout the film that followed, it was given with love, admiration, and a joke or two.

“In the days of vinyl, a double album meant one thing, and we know what you were doing with that record cover – smoking doobies,” Dean DeLeo said, referencing Frampton‘s 1976 smash “Frampton Comes Alive!” as Frampton and the audience laughed.

“It was self-contained, man,” he continued. “We were able to partake, and then sit back and listen to the great live album ever.

“After this, we were moved deeply by all of your work,” DeLeo said. “For musicians, we study you. You do it all, Peter. Incredible vocals. Your tone and how to craft a song. Your playing, sheer elegance.

“And you look good doing it too,” he added, to more laughter from the crowd filling all of the 1,000-some permanent seats in the Big Newport Theatre and overflowed into folding chairs.

“That’s amazing,” Frampton said after Robert DeLeo handed the glass icon – which Frampton promptly pretended he was about to drop. “I did hear a little bit about this. And so I read up on who got this before, and I am overly honored to receive this.”

Past recipients include Mark Hamill, Diane Lane, Brendan Fraser, Patrick Stewart, Robert Forster and many more.

“Thank you so much, everyone here, the film festival, and thank you for coming,” Frampton finished. “This is wonderful.”

Before the award presentation, I led a conversation with Frampton and Rob Arthur, his longtime musical director who directed the “Frampton” documentary, as the audience settled in before the screening.

In a conversation edited for length and clarity, we talked about Frampton’s own vintage Super 8 films which are seen for the first time here, why so many of his rock and roll peers were happy to sit for interviews, his new album “Carry the Light,” and more.

Q: So tell us what made you want to put your story up on the screen?

PETER FRAMPTON: Well, I’ve done the book [2020’s “Do You Feel Like I Do?”] and we were doing what was the farewell tour of six years before I stopped touring. And Rob was well into filming because we’d done some stuff way before that. So it was a combination of myself, Ken Leviton, my manager, and Rob, and we all said, “Well, why don’t we do a documentary?

Q: What made you decide to film the farewell tour in 2019, which predated the decision to do the film?

ROB ARTHUR: Peter had told us about his illness, which you’ll find out about in the film. He suffers from IBM [inclusion body myositis], which is a muscle degenerative disease. And when he told us this, I’m like, “Well, wait a minute. I guess this is going to end.”

I thought it was going to go on forever. I thought it was time we show what we do on the road. This is fun, this is awesome. I love this guy. It just began kind of organically.

Q: But at some point, you had to sit down and talk, Peter.

FRAMPTON: The book helped, definitely. But I wanted, if we’re going to do this, I wanted it to be the good, the bad, and the ugly. I wanted it all in there. And it’s difficult. It’s difficult for me to watch. Obviously, certain parts, with my children and stuff like that. But it’s just something I really got into.

I was actually, in between doing the interviews, I was making “Carry the Light” [His first new album of original songs in 16 years], which came out this year. So Rob would be doing the doc. He’d call me about editing, and I’m talking to him about mixing. We were doing both projects at the same time.

Q: One thing I think people are going to love is the Super 8 filming you were doing from 1970 on maybe?

FRAMPTON: Oh no, way before that. My dad, we would go to the same place for summer vacation every year. And we couldn’t buy one, so we rented a camera and my dad gave it to me. So all of a sudden I’m the cameraman for the family.

Then it just morphed, and I always had a camera in my hand. So yeah, I did a lot of filming.

ARTHUR: It’s funny, I remember you said, “I’ve got this Super 8, I don’t know if you can use it or whatever. It’s on a hard drive.” And I open it up, and it’s like, “Oh my God, it’s history right here. This is amazing.”

Q: It includes your first trip to Southern California, yeah?

FRAMPTON: Yes, that’s right. With Humble Pie. [Some fans cheer for Humble Pie, the band Frampton was in before going solo in the early ’70s.]

Q: So what was your impression of Southern California on that first trip here?

FRAMPTON: Well, I landed in New York with Humble Pie, which was very London-like but a little faster. So by the time we worked our way across to the West Coast, we flew in, and A&M Records [whose co-founder Herb Alpert is in the new film], sent us a limo, which I’d never been in a limo before, you know.

And I just felt that it was like, “Hol-ly-wood!” [he sings the classic song bit]. Everything I’d ever heard about and seen on British TV. So here we were, and it was just very, very exciting.

Q: Where was your first gig here?

FRAMPTON: Oh gosh, we were supporting people, so it would have been Long Beach or something like that –

FAN IN THE CROWD: Ten Years After, Long Beach Arena!

FRAMPTON: That’s it, Long Beach. I’ve got a good memory and so do you.

Q: I know a lot of people here had or still have a copy of “Frampton Comes Alive!” [Shouts and applause from the audience] Talk a little bit about the success that brought, and the downside of it too.

FRAMPTON: Well, I don’t want to say what’s in the movie. I pretty much explain that in the movie, what I felt at a certain point where I was the biggest rock act in the world for a couple of years. And so my life completely changed.

I mean, it was super exciting, and then there were very lonely moments as well, where I got separated [Frampton’s first wife Mary Lovett Lindes is interviewed in the film]. There were bodyguards, and you couldn’t come out of your room and all that sort of stuff.

Q: One of the great things is how many of your musical peers are in the doc – Bill Wyman, Ringo, Tom Morello, and a person who was 14 when her first-ever concert was the “Comes Alive” tour.

FRAMPTON: Yeah, Sheryl Crow.

Q: So maybe I’ll ask Rob this: How’d you get everyone, superstars or not, to sit for interviews?

ARTHUR: I need to thank Lisa Jenkins, Peter’s longtime manager. She was a producer on the film, and she had relationships with all these people, so she just set up all of them.

What struck me, though, was – and this is what I love about the film – everybody had the same feeling about this guy. They love this guy, you know. And it was remarkable to me ’cause I love this guy.

FRAMPTON: [In a dramatic, funny impression] And I love you, too, I really do!

ARTHUR: It was just remarkable to see just this warm – I feel like the movie might have been called “A Series of Friendships,” because all these people who signified different parts of your life, they came and were, “Oh, I can’t wait to talk about Peter, I love Peter.”

And you see this throughout the movie. It’s like, wow, it says a lot about a life well lived.

Q: Peter, I want to ask you about “Carry the Light,” and the decision to use the title track over the credits at the end of the film.

FRAMPTON: Well, I feel the documentary is everything up to a certain point [in his life]. And then it stops, but there’s a future. There’s my future, our future. And that track is basically about making the same mistakes over and over.

So I just thought it would be a good thing to have. Everyone’s watched the movie; now the credits come, and this is what’s coming from now on. This is the future.

Q: The new record has some guests on it – Graham Nash, Sheryl Crow, Tom Morello, H.E.R. It struck me that you have always loved being part of a band. We see you touring with one of your old school friends – 

ARTHUR: Shhh!

Q: I know, I won’t spoil it. But it struck me that you might enjoy being one guy in a band more than the face in front of the band.

FRAMPTON: Yes, that’s all I ever wanted to do – be Hank Marvin from the Shadows, who were Cliff Richard’s backup band. I wanted to play guitar and have a singer. I’ll do a few “oohs,” you know. “Shoo-be-doo-bee-do.” And then that’s it. That’s all I was doing in the Herd [his band before Humble Pie] and then as you’ll see, things changed.

Q: You mentioned that you finally finished your farewell tour last year. You have the new record out. Any chance there might be even limited shows at some point?

A: I would never say never, no, absolutely. [Fans cheer and applaud] It’s just a little harder for me to get around [because of the IMB disease]. It’s a little bit more dangerous to travel and stuff like that. We just take care of it, though.