There’s a scene in the movie Wayne’s World where Wayne is with the character played by Tia Carrerra and they’re playing around in her bedroom/loft. He finds a stray copy of Frampton Comes Alive! and makes note of it.I’ll paraphrase the scene: If you lived in the suburbs, you were automatically issued a copy of Frampton Comes Alive!
I love that line because it’s true.
Frampton Comes Alive! is one of those records that’s synonymous with everything that’s good and bad about the music of the seventies. Its presence was so widespread that it does seem like every home in the suburbs came equipped with one copy along with the Joe Namath Butter Up Popcorn Maker, a Merlin, and a Fonz “Sit on it!” t-shirt.
It’s the album that turned me into a Peter Frampton fan overnight, along with the rest of the United States. Most of us had never even heard of Peter Frampton before that record, even though he was member of Humble Pie-a fairly popular touring outfit of heavy blooze rock and too tight denim.
Frampton left the Pie and sought out fortune on his own. With several solo albums under his belt, Pete sold his wares on the road, building a small following but essentially was still a minor act in the scheme of things.
A lot of those early solo records had some decent material, but sounded stiff and watered down in the studio. Some genius-and I say that in all seriousness without a hint of irony or even knowing who the person might be-thought it would be a good idea to capture a Pete Frampton show and collect all of those decent songs from those albums that he’d released up to that point.
Whatever the reason for this decision-a final contract obligation to fulfill with the label or the realization that Peter’s material just seemed to sound better in a live setting-more people related to that double live record than anything else he’d released.
It was a double album with a gatefold sleeve, the kind that people joked about how they would use the open cover to roll joints on. I was too young to use it for something that elicit, so instead I would put on the record and intently study the cover. Fold it out, and you’d see Frampton bent at the knees, mouth open, as he appeared to be in mid-guitar solo. Inside, shots of the other musicians in action, giving the record a larger than life feel.
I probably should gleam to bright about my fan-boy devotion of Frampton, because while I was collecting bits of his older material (Frampton and Frampton’s Camel) he was recording the God-awful follow-up I’m In You and completely defacing The Beatles with the movie (and soundtrack) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
All of this came in the wake of Frampton Comes Alive! though. It’s doesn’t reflect anything negative about that album and upon a recent re-examination of this live recording, I found it to hold up surprisingly well and to be a great document of Frampton’s work and the notion of a live album itself.
Sure, there were live albums before it (including his old band Humble Pie’s first hit Rockin’ The Fillmore) but the out of control sales of Frampton’s record made a double live record an obligatory part in every major band’s career.
You could even make the argument that it initiated the entire arena rock genre, the influx of one-named bands like Journey, Styx, Kansas who’d release a ten-song lp and hit the ice arenas in markets across the country like a longhaired circus.
You could also say that Frampton’s entire career is based upon that weird sounding device called the Talk Box, a nifty device that he used for not one, but two of his most popular songs on that record.
In the end, neither one of these speed bumps of uncouthness can negate the fact that Frampton Comes Alive! is a splendid document. The musicians are tight, the set list nicely tempoed, and even the audience seems wonderfully inebriated. One of the moments on the album that always intrigued me was when someone sets off a firecracker during one of Frampton’s acoustic songs. For a kid not yet in puberty, it made the whole notion of a rock and roll concert downright dangerous.
Looking at it now, Frampton Comes Alive! seems innocent enough. It also seems like a record that couldn’t be made today-not to suggest that it’s sonically tied to a particular era. It isn’t; all of the instrumentation is clear and intricate. But in this day of hyper-compressed signals and tin-eared delivery methods, Frampton Comes Alive! possesses such a natural authenticity that it sounds positively novel.
The brilliance is in how subtle Frampton and the band transition between singer-songwriter folk to melodic pop rock to hard rock anthems. It all sounds legit, and it sounds like they’re all having a ball too.
No wonder the kids used the gatefold cover for other purposes besides reading the liner notes.
3 comments:
I still have my Merlin, still works!
First and foremost, props for giving FCA! its due. Especially on its 35th anniversary.
Some thoughts:
- I always use Humble Pie as an example of one of those acts that were pretty big in their heyday yet are almost completely forgotten these days. As opposed to some who had little to no commercial success but who retain the interest of a relatively significant number of diehards. When I saw Frampton on the 15th anniversary of FCA! (see below) it saddened me to see him play for a crowd of about 1,000 when he’d played for crowds 20 times larger back in the day. “Yeah, but he still has a following”, said my buddy who went to the show with me. He was right.
- The story goes that Jerry Moss—the “M” in A&M Records—heard the recordings intended for a single LP, felt there was enough strong material and decided it should be a double album. He is the genius you speak of.
- Few albums capture the essence and joyous vibe of a concert like this one does. (Nevermind the rockers, the crowd reaction and participation during an acoustic tune like “All I Want to Be” says it all.) Yet, over the years there have been accusations of studio doctoring on FCA! (There are some background vocals here and there that sound a bit like Frampton’s to me, but I have not uncovered any real shenanigans in 30+ years of listening to it, so…)
- FCA! is the Star Wars of music: the game-changing blockbuster whose massive sales alerted those within and outside of the industry of how much loot could really be made in the music biz. Which basically led to the bean-counting, attorney-led major labels of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Not that folks like Moss didn’t pay attention to the bottom line: of course they did. But they were more like fans/salesmen who, once they decided to sign an artist, weren’t so much about conforming them to some preconceived notion but all about figuring out how to sell this music they were digging. And not via some focus group nonsense either. Maybe I’m romanticizing things but the “great record men”…we will never see their likes again.
And now the obligatory fanboy comments:
- I have always loved Frampton’s tone on the guitar solos he plays on this album, to the point of experimenting w/different sounds and even toying w/the idea of purchasing the Gibson Signature Peter Frampton Les Paul guitar, but the $6K price tag quickly made me reconsider.
- In 1991 I saw Frampton perform w/his band at NYC’s The Ritz—which like Long Island’s Commack Arena, in which part of FCA! was recorded, no longer exists—and he played a big chunk of FCA!, of course, with the late “Bob Mayo on the keyboards! Bob Mayo!”
Regarding the firecracker on Penny For Your Thoughts. I was there. That was my friend Bradley who dropped it over the edge of the balcony at Winterland. The timing was right on beat. I imagine that's why they left it on the album. When I heard the record the first time I was astonished. There we were, indelibly etched on the biggest seller of the day.
Not many people know that.
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