The One and Only Peter Frampton
Los Angeles — Peter Frampton eased himself gently onto his bed in his luxurious bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He’d spent a week there, venturing outside only to do his last concerts of 1976 — four sold-out nights at the 18,000-seat Forum in Inglewood.
“Howard Hughes used to stay here,” Frampton informed. He was immediately apologetic: “I don’t know if I’m quite comfortable in all of this,” he said. “It’s still real new to me.”
About one year new, in fact. Frampton, 26, began his career at 16 with the Herd, a much-screamed-after British pop band of the late Sixties. The group broke up, penniless, in 1969. Frampton and Steve Marriott of the Small Faces then formed Humble Pie. Frampton lasted through the band’s third U.S. album, Rockin’ the Fillmore. He tried his hand as a session guitarist (on Son of Schmillson and All Things Must Pass) and then as a solo artist. Frampton always consoled himself with the knowledge that, should he bomb on his own, he could always return to session work. He considered that a very real possibility right up until the January 1976 release of Frampton Comes Alive!
Within a month, the LP was in the Top Ten. In March it hit Number One for a week. The next three months, Frampton Comes Alive! lingered in the Top Five, making room for The Eagles’ Greatest Hits, Presence, Black and Blue and Wings at the Speed of Sound, until June, when it seized Number One again and refused to budge throughout the summer and early fall. He became the top attraction of the highly competitive Bicentennial summer. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life finally dethroned Frampton Comes Alive! in late November, after a record 17 weeks at the top. Frampton’s album has sold 7 million copies in America and another 3 million worldwide; in the same period, Frampton sold nearly 2 million concert tickets. At a royalty rate of “approximately” 67¢ per album (according to A&M Records), this makes for a prodigious one-year income. People magazine captioned a photo of Frampton with:”… His GNP? 50 million.” The figure upset Frampton: “I’d like the people to know that figure is nowhere near what was actually earned,” he said. “A lot of people came up to me and said, ‘Do you really have that much money?’ And I have to say, ‘No, not on me, no.’ They don’t realize that Gross National Product is income generated in the music business, in the photography business, with posters, the T-shirt business… for other people, including myself.
“I don’t really realize how much there is,” said Frampton. “I don’t phone up every five minutes and say, ‘How much have we got now?’ I don’t want to know.” In afterthought, he added: “It’s a staggering amount, unfortunately….”
Along with the money came the accolades. Everybody loves a winner. Frampton was named “Rock Personality of the Year” by Billboard last June and on the Rock Music Awards in September; he’s “Artist of the Year” in Rolling Stone‘s Music Poll. At last year’s end he signed to star in Robert Stigwood’s film of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“I will remember this year as like… well, it meant relief in a way,” said Frampton. “But only inasmuch as I can pay my bills. I try not to think about it. I pile up the press clippings and send them off to my mother. She’s got a scrapbook going back to when I was, like, eight years old. It’s just starting to sink in, what’s happening. The longer it takes to really sink in, the better.”
I have a clear memory of Peter Frampton from the winter of 1975: a pale, thin, childlike figure in wrinkled green satin pants, hunched over a mixing board at A&M Studios in Hollywood listening to the live recording of a 17-minute song he had played practically every night since early ’73 — “Do You Feel like We Do?” Frampton was grinning. I asked him why.
“Listen to them!” He was replaying the sounds of an adoring audience up so loud that they challenged the other instruments. Which was exactly the idea. “They are as much a part of this record as anybody,” he said.
The album had gone through a myriad of changes, coming right down to the wire. First it was to be a single album, all rock & roll and recorded at Winterland Auditorium in San Francisco. Then came the decision to include acoustic material. After a listening session at which A&M president Jerry Moss quipped, “Now can we hear the other album?,” Frampton Comes Alive! became a two-record set. A remote recording truck was dispatched at the last minute to tape Frampton shows in Long Island and Plattsburg, New York.
Ten days later he was back in the A&M studios, checking the final mixes and listening to Frampton Comes Alive! in its entirety for the first time. When the last side had finished, Frampton was not particularly euphoric. He was tired, eager to just get it out. I wished him luck. He said — what else — that he needed it.
The One and Only Peter Frampton, Page 1 of 3