Imagine being a 14-year-old guitar player and having one of the Rolling Stones escort you to parties and rooms full of other famous English musicians. On a regular basis. Imagine making studio recordings and stage performances with not one, but with two members of the Beatles ... more than once. Imagine being serenaded by Stevie Wonder, who sings original songs to you over the phone, on one of your particularly low days. Original songs, that you never hear again, on any formal recording. Peter Frampton doesn't have to imagine any of it. He lived it.

Of course, this world-famous musician is most connected with the overwhelming success of his 1976 double live album, Frampton Comes Alive! But where was Peter before then? How did that miraculous album come about? What happened to a 26-year-old man who suddenly skyrocketed to fame and fortune with a record that sold millions? (You can probably guess.) What came afterward? And how is Frampton now coping with his recent diagnosis of inclusion body myositis (IBM), that caused him to lead a Finale Tour in 2019? Start reading this first-person stream-of-consciousness memoir, and you can soon tell that Frampton has spent a great deal of time figuring out some of these answers for himself, as well as for the rest of us.

His ruminations mostly follow a chronological order. We tag along as he talks about his family and his childhood in South London, England. Almost as soon as he became attached to the guitar, he started performing in public. We see his musical transitions from the Herd, to Humble Pie, to Frampton's Camel, and then into a solo career with a close-knit set of band members. Peter did his best to avoid being labeled as a 1970s teenybopper, even while photographers kept shooting him with his shirt either open or off. Oh, well. And Frampton Comes Alive! generated enough expectations to fuel Peter's tendency toward addiction. This in turn contributed to a near-fatal car crash in 1978. And yet: he found his paths back.

In a number of moments in rock music history, you have to say that Peter Frampton was in the right place at the right time. But he was also the right person, too. Many musicians over the years have been savvy enough to recognize his talent and to invite him to join them in the studio or on the stage. His list of friends, acquaintances and connections is extensive. And parts of his narrative here are homages to those close friends and musicians who have tragically gone on before, including David Bowie, whom Frampton knew early on as Dave Jones. This is the nature of life and the music business.

The story is presented in Frampton's conversational style, as though he's telling you his memories in person. (Kudos to co-author Alan Light for making the monologue seem seamless.) A quiet framework appears from time to time: one that focuses on the aftermath of the 1980 plane crash in Venezuela that destroyed all of Frampton's instruments and stage equipment. The timelines of the Venezuela story and of Frampton's life story eventually converge into a finale that seems almost fictional in its likelihood. If you don't know the outcome already, stay tuned. It's worth waiting for.

When we read memoirs of such musicians, we finally learn what was happening behind the curtains, off the stages, and in the studios, for all of those years. We fans unfortunately have a limited view and a narrow perspective of the performers and their performances. Usually a whole lot more was going on than we could even imagine. It's fun to find out the rest of the stories, even years later.

I saw Peter Frampton in concert in 2008, 2011 and in his acoustic tour of 2015. I passed on seeing a Finale concert of 2019. I didn't want the music to end. What you learn from watching Frampton perform live is just how talented a guitarist he is. How have folks like the Rolling Stone writers ignored him on their lists of best rock guitarists? (I see that Total Guitar ranked him at #24 in "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." This is as it should be.) I expected him to be both talented and professional, when I finally got the chance to watch him in person. He turned out to be much more. He is more than one huge-selling album. He is more than one interesting and gimmicky piece of musical equipment. You may not even be prepared for how much "more" Peter Frampton really is.

What you learn from reading his memoir is just how familiar Frampton is with the guitar. Even after he claimed the music business and the guitar as his own, he still spent a lot of time listening to other performers, figuring out what they were doing, and experimenting on his own. He still does this. He's been a student of the guitar for his entire life. You have to come away with a lot of respect for someone with such a singular focus.

Some people are perfectly matched for what they turn out to do and to be in life. You watch them at work, whatever it is, and while they are firmly in their element; and you quickly comprehend that they are doing exactly the very work they are supposed to do. Through his music and through this memoir, Peter Frampton proves himself to be a guitar man, through and through, and a superb one at that. And to hear him tell the story: he could show us no other way.