Peter Frampton: Frampton Comes Alive! (1976)
Who CARES what I think???
Heck, I don't even care enough to toast or roast this milquetoast monolith of '70s stadium rock, and I certainly won't malign one of rock's all-time nice guys -- Peter Frampton -- for committing the capital sin of enjoying some fame and fortune after years of hard work and toil.
After all, I was far too young and far away to have my ears indecently molested by Frampton Comes Alive! 50 years ago, when it ruled the airwaves alongside fellow multi-million sellers like the Eagles' Hotel California and Fleetwod Mac's Rumours.
One of the best-selling live albums of all time, with over eleven million units moved at last count, it quietly debuted at No. 191, in January of '76, and then kept on climbing ... and climbing ... and climbing, all the way to No. 1, where it spent ten non-consecutive weeks.
And then it just kept on selling ... and selling ... and selling (while Peter kept on touring ... and touring ... and touring) in the Top 200 for 97 total weeks, so that it still ranked No. 14 on Billboard's 1977 year-end album sales chart, almost two years after its release.
Perhaps even more famously, Frampton Comes Alive! followed four underperforming studio LPs for the erstwhile Humble Pie guitarist, whose lackluster solo career may well have had its plug pulled earlier if Peter hadn't been signed to artist-friendly A&M Records.
And yet, even A&M co-chairman Jerry Moss had to be convinced to sign off on four full sides of live recordings that turned average studio fodder like "Something's Happening," "Show Me the Way," and the M.O.R. staple "Baby, I Love Your Way" into pure, on-stage gold.
The same magic infused secondary favorites like "All I Want to Be (Is by Your Side)," "Wind of Change" (note the firecracker blast midway through), "I Wanna Go to the Sun," "Lines On My Face," and the old "piece of Pie,' "Shine On" -- everything worked!
Including Peter's decidedly dorky talk-box effect (a gadget used in various forms by numerous musicians since the 1940s), which blew stoned '70s minds when it let him mimic fans' mush-mouthed mumbling for an epic, quarter-hour jam on "Do You Feel Like We Do."
(The song's radio single, edited down to 7:19, is one of the longest ever to reach the top 40, along with The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (7:11), Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" (9:08), Guns n' Roses' "November Rain" (8:57), and Taylor Swift's "All too Well" (10:13).)
And though this LP's iconic gatefold sleeve already portrayed Peter (and his famous, three-pickup 1954 Les Paul custom) as a larger-than-life 'Golden God,' the fact is he didn't start packing stadiums until AFTER Frampton Comes Alive! made him a star.
More importantly, as Peter's stardom faded over the next few years, Frampton Comes Alive! continued to stand above objective analysis and impervious to subjective opinion because, like all true monoliths that capture the zeitgeist, it just ... IS.
I mean, so many decades later my wife turned "Baby, I Love Your Way" into her reading at her dedicated Frampton fan friend's wedding!
"Shadows grow so long before my eyes; And they're moving across the page; Suddenly, the day turns into night; Far away from the city;
But don't hesitate ... 'Cause your love won't wait;
Ooh, baby, I love your way ... every day; Wanna tell you I love your way ... every day; Wanna be with you night and day-ay."
Not bad for an overrated singer and underrated guitarist who is now battling a cruel degenerative disease with courage, grace, and typical optimism; reminding even those who may not appreciate his music to appreciate that rarest of rock star qualities: being a decent human.
So again, who cares what I really think about the music, the man, that awful Sgt. Pepper movie with the Bee Gees, or the recent Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame induction?
Frampton Comes Alive! was never my music, but it's probably some of yours and that's just fine.
More Peter Frampton: Humble Pie's As Safe as Yesterday Is, Humble Pie, Rock On, Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore.
