Frampton Comes Alive! hit #1 for first of 10 weeks

Frampton Comes Alive! Peter Frampton

Recorded: live: March 24, 1975 to November 22, 1975 Released: January 6, 1976 Charted: January 31, 1976 Peak: 110 US, 6 UK, 117 CN, 8 AU, 11 DF Sales (in millions): 8.0 US, 0.1 UK, 17.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Something’s Happening Doobie Wah Show Me the Way (2/21/76, 6 US, 10 UK) It’s a Plain Shame All I Want to Be Is by Your Side Wind of Change Baby, I Love Your Way (6/26/76, 12 US, 28 AC, 43 UK) I Wanna Go to the Sun Penny for Your Thoughts I’ll Give You Money Shine On Jumpin’ Jack Flash Lines on My Face Do You Feel Like We Do (9/18/76, 10 US, 39 UK) Total Running Time: 78:06

Rating: 4.295 out of 5.00 (average of 19 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: “If you were challenged to name five rock albums that epitomized the ‘70s, Frampton Comes Alive! should probably top the list.” AZ After stints with Herd and Humble Pie, Frampton had ventured out on his own. He made “four solo albums with little commercial success.” WK It wasn’t until a collection of some of those tracks were recorded live “and released as Frampton Comes Alive! that he became a household name.” AZ In fact, there’s a joke in the movie Wayne’s World 2 that if you lived in the suburbs at the time, you were automatically issue the album. WK It was recorded during the summer and fall of 1975, primarily at San Francisco’s Winterland venue and New York’s Long Island Arena. Recordings from four different shows went into the making of the album. WK Consequently, “one must take this all with a grain of salt as a concert document.” AMG Not only did work have to be done to splice the songs together into seemingly one show, but “there was considerable studio doctoring of the raw live tapes, a phenomenon that set the stage for such unofficial hybrid works as Bruce Springsteen’s Live/1975-85 and countless others.” AMG When initially released, the album “was an anomaly, a multi-million-selling (mid-priced) double LP by an artist who had previously never burned up the charts with his long-players in any spectacular way. The biggest-selling live album of all time” AMG offered “buoyant pop, sentimental ballads, arena rock – this album has it all.” AZ It’s easy to see why the album did so well. Frampton “packed one hell of a punch on-stage – where he was obviously the most comfortable – and, in fact, the live versions of Show Me the Way, Do You Feel Like I Do, Something’s Happening, Shine On, and other album rock staples are much more inspired, confident, and hard-hitting than the studio versions.” AMG The 1999 reissue offered “a considerable improvement over the original double CD or double LP in terms of sound – the highs are significantly more lustrous, the guitars crunch and soar, and the bottom end really thunders, and so you get a genuine sense of the power of Frampton’s live set, at least the heavier parts of his set, rather than the compressed and flat sonic profile of the old double-disc version.” AMG “Frampton and the band sound significantly closer as well, even on the softer songs such as Wind of Change, and the disc is impressive listening even a quarter century later.” AMG

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Peter Frampton AMG Bruce Eder, All Music Guide AZ Lorry Fleming, Amazon.com WK Wikipedia First posted 1/6/2012; last updated 11/30/2022.

Peter Frampton “Show Me the Way” live version released this month

Show Me the Way Peter Frampton

Writer(s): Peter Frampton (see lyrics here) Released: June 1975 First Charted: July 12, 1975 Peak: 6 US, 4 CB, 6 HR, 5 RR, 1 CL, 10 UK, 4 CN, 25 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 40.6 video, 114.98 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Guitarist Peter Frampton was born in England in 1950. He was in a band called the Little Ravens by the age of 12. By 18, he had joined forces with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces to form Humble Pie. That group had a #4 hit in the UK with “Natural Born Bugie” in 1969 and a couple of minor hits in the U.S. After four solo albums with Humble Pie, Frampton went solo. He released three albums with minimal success. His fourth album, simply called Frampton, reached #32 in the U.S. and went gold. “Show Me the Way” was released in June 1975 as a single, but – like the rest of Frampton’s solo output up to that point – failed to chart. His fortunes changed, however, with a live recording released the following year. It soared into the top 10 and made the guitarist a superstar. Suddenly, “girls across the globe were gazing upon the bronzed, shirtless blonde that was pinned up on their bedroom walls.” UCR The song was lifted from his 1976 live album Frampton Comes Alive, which spent 10 weeks atop the Billboard album chart on its way toward being the biggest album of the year. It went on to sell more than 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. “Show Me the Way” is marked by vague lyrics about a protagonist seeking guidance – “a drowning man looking for someone to throw him a life preserver.” SF Frampton kept it vague on purpose, but did admit he’d met someone who gave him confidence and his life “completely changed. All the lyrics in that song are about me and her.” SF The song was also characterized by its use of a talkbox, “a device hooked up to his guitar that allowed him to create amplified, distorted vocal sounds with his mouth.” SF It created a sensation and many musicians bought or made talkboxes as a result. SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Peter Frampton SF Songfacts UCR UltimateClassicRock.com (6/20/2013). “Top 100 Classic Rock Songs” WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 7/27/2022.