Gary James' Interview With The Bassist For Peter Frampton, Tommy Bolin And Delbert McClinton
Stanley Sheldon



Stanley Sheldon certainly comes with some impressive credits to his name. He was Peter Frampton's bass player as well as Delbert McClinton's bass player. He toured with Warren Zevon. He recorded with Tommy Bolin. When Stanley Sheldon spoke with us he was getting ready to do a tour of Japan with Waddy Wachtel, Rick Marotta and Dan Dugmore, collectively known as Ronin.

Q - Stan, what is this trip to Japan all about? You're going to Japan with a group called Ronin.

A - This is a group that we formed back in 1980. I had a hiatus with the Frampton band. One of the drummers, he brought us in and he brought in a lot of drummers during that period, and I met a lot of great drummers, and I met Rick Marotta, the famous session drummer. He had just completed Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boys" album along with Waddy Wachtel, and Jackson Browne was involved. So, it's kind of like those session players, Rick Marotta, Waddy Wachtel and Dan Dugmore, this was our band. We were on the road with Warren Zevon. Rick had called me 'cause I wasn't working at that point and said, "Hey man, Waddy and I are putting together a band for Warren." That's when "Werewolves Of London" was the big hit. It was his (Warren Zevon's) greatest album many people think. I'm convinced it is. So, I learned the songs, flew to L.A. and met Waddy. Rick I already knew. And while we were touring with Warren we decided we were going to assemble our own band. Since those guys were also playing with Linda Ronstadt, we had management with Peter Asher. He exclusively managed Linda and James Taylor. Since most of those three other guys, all of the other three guys were playing with Linda at the time, so Asher said, "Sure, I'll sign you guys." So, he took us on as the only other band he ever managed besides Linda and James Taylor. We were a short-lived band. We made one album called "Ronin". It's very rare. It's hard to find. I'm telling you a nutshell version. It's kind of convoluted. Waddy had been over in Japan on a yearly basis in the last couple of years, touring with another group of elite session stars on the West Coast that went under the name The Section back in the day. They were James Taylor's rhythm section. They are the second generation of The Wrecking Crew. They're making a documentary as we speak on The Section, but they're not called The Section anymore. That's Waddy Wachtel, Danny Kortchmar, who was James Taylor's long time sideman and Carole King's, and Russ Coco, who was the drummer, are now called The Immediate Family, along with Leland Sklar, who was James Taylor's bass player. Those guys, when they were in Japan last year, at a press conference somebody approached Waddy with our "Ronin" record and the promoter was there and he goes, "Waddy, is there any possibility you can put Ronin back together?" So, I'm leaving for Japan in one week. I'm going to fly to L.A. first and we're going to rehearse 'cause we haven't played together in forty years. (laughs) We need a little rehearsal. We're going to rehearse for five days and then just all get on the plane to Japan. It's a short tour. We're only going to do four performances over there. It's great because it's really given us a chance to get back together. It's a great band. Waddy Wachtel, Rick Marotta, myself and the legendary pedal steel player Danny Dugmore. So, that's our band.

Q - And when you come back, you teach bass. Are you teaching bass to young kids? Adults?

A - I haven't been teaching that much lately. I did teach. I probably will again. I do like to teach young kids particularly. I don't discriminate. I'll teach old guys too. (laughs) I like teaching younger students 'cause they're so malleable and ready to absorb. A good teacher might want to take 'em. So I kind of enjoy that process of really taking kids who seem to have the spark and put 'em in the right direction.

Q - Do the people you're teaching know your background?

A - In this town, Lawrence, Kansas, it's a university town and everybody knows me here, so everybody knows my history. But I haven't been teaching kids that much lately. I'm kind of busy doing other things. I was in Colorado last year, living temporarily to put together a tribute band for my late friend Tommy Bolin who was just inducted into the Colorado Music Hall Of Fame on December 3^rd (2019). It was the anniversary of his death. Chuck Morris of AEG, our good friend in Colorado when Tommy and I were coming up, we all timed it to coincide with Tommy's death. It was beautiful. We got Warren Haynes. Joe Bonamassa showed up as a special guest.

Q - I actually saw Tommy Bolin in concert with The James Gang in the early 1970s.

A - Tommy and I moved to L.A. together in 1975. It's right after the Billy Cobham album he did, "Spectrum", which was in '72 or '73. Then he started getting big notice from everybody and that's when we were all living in Colorado and Joe Walsh was too putting his band Barnstorm together. He recommended Tommy to play in The James Gang 'cause Tommy had sacrificed his bass player to Kenny Passarelli, another great Colorado player, to Joe Walsh's new venture. So, Joe Walsh and Kenny Passarelli and Joe Vitale formed Barnstorm and then I got to play with Tommy because Kenny had left. So all this stuff was happening so rapidly. It was crazy. A crazy time.

Q - You grew up in Ottawa, Kansas?

A - Correct.

Q - What kind of a place was that when you were growing up?

A - Oh man, Ottawa was just one of those Norman Rockwell little towns with the town square and the band shell and ice cream socials. It was right after World War II. So, me and my cousins all grew up in the '50s. I was born in 1950. It was a very idyllic time. It was just a beautiful place for a young kid to grow up. Most of the kids I know, not all of us, but some of us couldn't wait to spread our wings and get out of there. Our earliest band, we started playing when we were twelve or thirteen when The Beatles were inspiring everybody.

Q - Seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan changed your whole life.

A - It sure did. My cousin Tom and I, our mothers were sisters and he was kind of a gifted prodigy on the piano and we were listening to Little Richard and Elvis and the early Blues records 'cause his dad was a Blues lover. This was pre-Beatles, but I already knew I loved the sound of that Rock-a-billy stuff, especially Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, that early Rock 'n' Roll that inspired The Beatles as well.

Q - Your first band was called The Lost Souls?

A - Correct. The core players were really myself, my cousin, and a couple of other guys on drums and guitar. My cousin and I went on to have real careers. My cousin Tom and I are just in the process of working on another project. We haven't worked together in decades. We may start doing some stuff together, but Tom and I moved to Colorado about the same time when we got out of high school. That's when we both met and started playing with Tommy Bolin, in 1970.

Q - Back up for a minute.

A - Sure.

Q - The Lost Souls were probably playing the places bands would usually play, church dances, school dances, fraternities.

A - Exactly. We started out playing proms and fraternity parties, exactly. As we got older, we were only fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old... In Kansas you can drive when you're sixteen. By that time we had a trailer and were pulling our equipment around and our parents would let us go to the next town over. But the circumference kept getting wider and wider as we were more and more fascinated with this world of traveling around and playing music. It was such a great time and still is. But that's when we started playing those fraternity parties and proms as far away as we could get. Then we'd go, we got this gig in Nebraska, and then another guy in the band became our mentor. He was a little older and booked us in other places further away where they had been, maybe Texas or Nebraska, Missouri, which is right next door. So, we really started going on the road at that point. We were only sixteen, seventeen.

Q - And your parents allowed it?

A - They allowed it. As I said, we would get the map out and they would draw like a one hundred mile circumference in a big circle. They just didn't want us going too far. But the circle kept getting bigger and bigger. (laughs)

Q - How did The Lost Souls lead to you getting that gig with Peter Frampton?

A - Well, when we met Tommy Bolin, my cousin and I in Colorado, that changed our lives 'cause Tommy was just a phenomenal player, probably one of the greatest guitar players on earth and we knew it when we heard it. We were playing such bizarre music, Fusion. There wasn't a big market for that music until Billy Cobham invited Tommy to be his guitar player on the famous album "Spectrum". Billy Cobham was the fantastic Jazz drummer from the Mahavishnu Orchestra. So, he (Tommy) was enlisted to play on that record. That's what changed our world. All of a sudden, Tommy was being acknowledged by the greatest guitar players on earth. "Who is this kid with Billy Cobham?" So, that being said, we were just riding Tommy's coat tails pretty much. My cousin left the band in Colorado, the Tommy Bolin band called Energy. After we'd been there for a year or two, since Joe Walsh was putting his band together, my cousin kind of got enticed at the thought of becoming more famous and so he made it his business to meet Joe and get involved in that band 'cause he knew the other piano player that Joe had fired. So, my cousin left Bolin and went with Joe Walsh. Then I and Tommy continued on and we moved to L.A. together. I'm skipping some stuff, but we moved to L.A. at the end of '74, Christmas Eve. Two months later, through Kenny Passarelli who Peter Frampton called to see if he was available and was told, "No, I'm not. I'm playing with Joe Walsh and I'm about to go on the road with Elton John." He said, "You should try this guy, Stanley Sheldon." So, I got Peter's number, who happened to be in L.A. too, and called him up and got an audition. Now, just a month after that Tommy got a call from Deep Purple. So that's when Tommy and I parted ways. I got the audition with Frampton and went on the road that following summer in 1975. "Frampton Comes Alive" was recorded about two weeks after the beginning of that tour. Then I met Tommy back in New York to start working on the "Teaser" album. We did get back together briefly after we both had our gigs respectively with Peter Frampton and Deep Purple and we recorded the "Teaser" album. I played on most of those tracks. Half of it we recorded in L.A., the other half in New York. It's interesting, I always tell the story I was working on the two projects that define my career pretty much, the "Teaser" album with Tommy Bolin and "Frampton Comes Alive!". It was going on simultaneously in Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland studios. I was doing both projects, going back and forth from Studio A to Studio B. We were mixing "Frampton Comes Alive!" 'cause we already had that recorded, and then we were cutting basic tracks for Tommy's album "Teaser". (laughs) It's crazy. It was happening all at the same time for me.

Q - What was it like to be a part of Peter Frampton's band at that time? When that album was released he was probably at the height of his career.

A - Well, that album created the pinnacle of his career. Before that he was just kind of bubbling under. People had known him from Humble Pie.

Q - Which was an opening act, correct?

A - Well, actually they made a famous live album too called "Rockin' The Fillmore". Peter stepped away from Humble Pie right as they started headlining. That's when he decided he was going to go on his own and he and Steve Marriott split up. That's when Peter started doing solo recordings. I would say between 1972, that's about the time Peter left, and '75, when I'm in. Those three years he made an album each year in the studio back in England. The songs from those three records were the repertoire I learned right before we went on the road that summer of '75. So, we had three albums of songs to choose from. That's what became "Frampton Comes Alive!" A compilation or Peter's entire solo work.

Q - At one time Peter Frampton was performing for $200 a night.

A - Yeah. He would go everywhere. I saw him playing in a club in Colorado. My friend Chuck Morris owned a club back then. He would bring these bands into the clubs. They were called Frampton's Camel back then. One of his records was called "Frampton's Camel". Peter has always been a hard worker. He loves to play on the road. He did have some serious backing with management and a talent agency. These guys in New York, Frank Barsalona and Dee Anthony, Peter's manager, and Frank Barsalona, the head of Premier Talent were booking all the shows for him and paying all his expenses. They were gambling that Peter was gonna be a huge star and then he became one. (laughs)

Q - Frank Barsalona had a terrific insight into the Rock business.

A - So, you know a little bit about Frank?

Q - Oh, I know a whole lot about Frank Barsalona.

A - He was our guy. He and Dee Anthony worked together.

Q - Frank Barsalona changed the Rock industry.

A - Absolutely.

Q - He treated Rock musicians with respect.

A - And you know why? Early in his career he wanted to be a singer molded after Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett.

Q - He worked for G.A.C. (General Artists Corporation) and he didn't like the way the agency treated their Pop and Rock 'n' Roll singers.

A - He was sensitive to the artist because he wanted to be one. When he decided he wasn't that great of a singer, he decided he'd go on the other side of the business.

Q - And here Frank Barsalona was rivaling William Morris and in the end, William Morris bought Premier Talent.

A - I didn't know they'd been absorbed by William Morris. The people we're using these days, Vector Management, is who Peter uses now. That's a big, national based talent agency.

Q - Is it true that Peter Frampton was ripped off by Dee Anthony?

A - (laughs) Oh, yeah.

Q - Can you talk about it?

A - Yeah. It was no secret. Everybody knew.

Q - Peter Frampton never talks about it.

A - You know why? Because they cut a deal that they could not disparage each other in public, but Peter sued him and won a settlement. I don't know how much he got. That's a detail I don't know. And now that Dee is dead, Peter will talk about him. "Now that he's dead, he can't take our money anymore." I heard him say that. If you want to hear him say that live, get on YouTube and look at Leslie West. He was our guest star with us. Peter did a tour called Frampton's Guitar Circus and we had thirty or forty guitar guests. Each city we'd have a different one. But when he and Leslie got together, since Dee used to manage Mountain too, they talk about it onstage and joke about it. If you search YouTube, Frampton and Leslie West, it'll pop right up.

Q - I recall a publicist back in 1979 talking to me about Peter Frampton being ripped off by Dee Anthony. And I hadn't heard a thing about it.

A - It was well-known to us as a band. Join Siomos, our drummer, would threaten to not show up and what's why we had to have extra drummers there all the time. (laughs) John knew we were being ripped off. John was a little more seasoned than the rest of us. He'd been ripped off by Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels already, back in the '60s.

Q - How could a thing like that happen to Peter Frampton? Didn't he have an attorney or somebody, anybody look closely at his business affairs?

A - Well, here's how it happened: Dee convinced him that he should use his attorney and his accountants. So, you can see how that would work.

Q - Nobody on the outside looking in.

A - No outside. Peter trusted Dee like a father and Dee just raped him. He's dead now, that's why Peter doesn't give a shit. He'll talk about it now.

Q - You toured with Peter Frampton until 2017?

A - Correct. There was thirty years in-between when I didn't. I left in 1980 when we put Ronin together. Peter and I parted ways. I did three albums with him, "Comes Alive!", "I'm In You", and "Where I Should Be", before I left. I was a little bit disillusioned with the money Peter was paying me, so I kind of played a hand. I bluffed and said, "Hey, I got this other thing. If you can't pay me I'm gonna go with this." So he decided to let me go. Now, we didn't get back together until about 2004 when John Siomes and Bob Mayo both died, two guys who were on that record. ("Frampton Comes Alive!") They died within a month of each other. Pretty young, both of them. That's a whole other story. At that point Peter and I started talking again. "What's going on? Shit, Bobby and John both dead." At that point he invited me to play on his album he was currently working on called "Fingerprints". It was an all instrumental album. I contributed one song that he and I worked on. Then it was released and won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Of The Year in 2005 and the first Grammy that Peter ever won. And then a year later I got a gig with Delbert McClinton and moved to Nashville where Peter was. We started talking even more often. I guess it was 2009 he called me up and said, "Hey, do you want to come back in the band?" So, from 2010 to 2016 I toured with him.

Q - Besides Peter Frampton, you also worked with John Lee Hooker, Albert King and Chuck Berry. Were you in the studio with those guys? Did you go on tour with them, either in a band you were in or their band?

A - No, no, no. That's back in the earliest days in Boulder when I had just moved to Colorado, me and my cousin. So, it would be 1970, 1971, 1972. We befriended a club owner in Boulder, Chuck Morris, who I mentioned earlier. Chuck is now the head of AEG Productions. They book The Rolling Stones. They're based in Colorado, Rocky Mountain West. They book the biggest bands in the world now, but back then he was just a club owner. So, at this club in Boulder, another university town, Chuck was bringing in the great Blues artists. He brought in John Lee Hooker and the the next week, Albert King. Those guys, when they get to a town they ask the promoter, since they weren't making that much either, they would hire pickup musicians. We were called in whatever town they're in. Chuck was giving those gigs to Tommy Bolin and our band, Energy. So, that was one of the greatest periods of my life 'cause I was playing with these Blues legends who weren't even being appreciated in our own country until later on. The Rolling Stones. Bands like Fleetwood Mac were telling us back here, across the water that, "Hey, you guys have your own great artists there, but you're not paying attention." (laughs) It took The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton before people in America figured it out. Of course I was listening to Blues. Musicians with ears weren't missing it, but the general public just didn't get it with these great Blues stars. They do now, now that they're dead.

Q - When Chuck Berry would come into town, you knew all the material?

A - Well, with Chuck or with any Blues artist, once you know one Blues song you know 'em all. I've been playing Blues since I was fifteen or sixteen. It's basically what The Beatles did. They just copied the twelve bar Blues. Songs like "Kansas City", "Long, Tall Sally". All the songs Lennon wanted to cover by Chuck Berry. McCartney wanted to cover the Little Richard songs. They're all just twelve bar Blues.

Q - Did you ever get to see one of The Beatles up close?

A - Yeah. McCartney would bring his kids to see us in Frampton 'cause they were fans, his little kids, back in '76 when we played Wembley Stadium. So, I met Paul. I never met John. I had friends who were playing with John when he died, when Lennon was shot outside his apartment. Ringo I met 'cause he and Frampton are really good friends. Ringo played on Frampton's earliest solo album, "Wind Of Change". I never met George.

Official Website: www.StanleySheldon.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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