Peter Frampton tells how he finally found success with ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ (1976)

Peter Frampton, rock’s rolling star (1976)

By Cameron Crowe for Rolling Stone, as published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Honolulu, Hawaii) April 14, 1976

It’s like stepping into a scene from “Blow Up.” The white walls of Francesco Scavullo’s Manhattan photo studio are covered with black and white portraits of blank-expressioned models. Young male assistants scurry to act more hassled than the next.

“I am not smiling,” whines one. “Streisand’s new hairstyle? Please.”

In another room, looking very much out of place, 26-year-old Peter Frampton waits to have his picture taken for the cover of Rolling Stone. He squirms while a makeup man dabs colors on his cheeks and eyelids, readying him for a session with one of the world’s most renowned fashion photographers.

It’s all happening so fast. Three months ago, Frampton was just another hard-working British rocker, crisscrossing the country with a four-album repertoire.

Today, he is the brightest new star of ’76. If it is Peter Frampton’s year, this must be his month.

He recently returned from a 10-day vacation in St. Thomas — his first rest from the road in three years. His fifth album, “Frampton Comes Alive!”, was Number One (with a bullet) in two out of three trade listings. Bill Graham had to add a second Frampton concert at the 50,000-seat Oakland Coliseum. The first sold out in several hours, as did most dates of his current tour.

I wonder if I’m dreaming
I feel so unashamed
I can’t believe this is happening to me
– “Show Me the Way”

Peter Frampton pries himself away from the makeup man to greet his visitor. “You mean you still recognize me?” he jokes a little uneasily. “I’m in such a daze. Do you believe all that’s happened? Number One? Do you believe it? What a giggle.” He is quickly led before the camera and the blitz-clicking is on.

“He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?” marvels another Scavullo assistant. “Helen Reddy flies us all to Los Angeles, pays a fortune and begs Francesco to make her look beautiful. This kid waltzes in wearing Levi’s and beats them all.”

Photo sessions, especially ones where he is made up and ordered to “look sexy,” drain the slight guitarist. A few days later, Rolling Stone’s art director would decide against using the glamorous Scavullo photos on the cover because he felt they were not quite compatible with Frampton’s personality.

“I don’t walk around like this, not even onstage,” Frampton says. He embraces himself and juts out a pouting lower lip. “What’s wrong with smiling? Especially now…”

Number 1 and some hard-won happiness

AFTER SEVEN YEARS of tireless touring (two of them as second guitarist in Humble Pie, five as a solo artist), Frampton deserves to wear his infectious smile more than ever. He’s finally struck pay dirt, and cannot find a big enough superlative to tell you how knocked out he is, how incredible it feels, how much his head is spinning. It must be the high point of his life.

Frampton agrees. “I was asleep when Dee (his manager, Dee Anthony) called up to tell me we’d gone to Number One. He usually calls up and says, ‘Peta, it’s Dee,'” imitating an English accent. “But this time he didn’t say anything except ‘We’re Number One’ in this cracking, emotional voice I’d never heard before.

“I was really moved. It was so fantastic. I called my parents in England and woke them up because of the time difference. I didn’t cry… but I sure came close.”

He looks down at his spindly hands. “I’m shaking just talking about it all now. It’s very, very emotional… but then people are… people are buying my life when they’re buying those records. I hate to sound bigheaded or something, but that’s the reality of it. Suddenly, everything you’ve been doing means something.”

Success completed Peter Frampton

ALL THOSE AROUND him feel that success has completed Frampton in many ways. Most noticeable is his newfound self-assurance.

“It’s so good to see him this happy,” says a friend. “He was putting so much of himself on the line, between the records and the concerts, that when he didn’t quite break through very big, you could see it was getting hard for him not to take it personally. Such a sweet guy. . .”

“Sweet guy”… “nice kid”… “great person”… nobody has anything bad to say about Peter Frampton. He is extremely easy to like. An already endearing personality combined with the automatic courtesy that comes with all the second-billed years on the road have made him expertly charming.

In conversation, he remains light and breezy, but his personal life comes out in the albums.

I write about what happens to me,” he says. “It’s all there. I couldn’t do it any other way.”

“Wind of Change,” for example, was a pleasant slice of life from the time of his first marriage. Frampton’s “Camel” was a depressing look at the marital breakup. “Somethin’s Happening” marked the arrival of his current girlfriend, Penny, and “Frampton” was a joyous testimony to their success together.

Before the now platinum “Frampton Comes Alive!” none of his albums had gone beyond the 200,000 sales mark. Why the sudden fever? Peter isn’t about to question his explosion to the top: “Dylan, Chicago, Paul Simon… and me?” Rather, he shrugs in wonder.

“I’ve figured it out,” he laughs. “There’s no way anybody could like that album and hate my guitar playing. That takes care of a lot of my insecurities.

“I’ve always wanted to be the best guitarist in the world, ever since 1 was eight years old. Ever since I saw Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers and… anybody else with a Stratocaster. But between you and me, I’ll settle for just being listened to.”

Shooting for superstardom

HOWEVER ENTHUSIASTIC, Frampton is actually in the throes of his third blast of superstardom.

His first came with the Herd, a short-lived and overly-eulogized pop band from the ’67-’68 British boom. After years of juggling studies at Bromley Technical High School, where his father was a teacher and the pre-Bowie David Jones was a fellow student (they both played Buddy Holly songs at the school talent show), 16-year-old Peter accepted an invitation from a classmate, bassist Andrew Bown, to play lead guitar for the Herd — a welcome alternative to being packed off to music school, the preference of his parents.

The band started out playing jazz. “It was great for a while,” Peter recalls, “but even then I realized, uh oh, I’m appearing on TV every week with my guitar slung over my back, most of the guys in the group aren’t playing on the records, and I’m out there singing, which isn’t exactly what I do best.

“Whenever we played live, I got screamed at so much that nobody could possibly hear the guitar. That’s when I began to realize that my face could get in the way of the music.”

It did, and after a run of hit singles, the Herd was a full-fledged band with teen idols. Young Peter, with his innocent schoolboy looks, was named the Face of ’68. It drove him to alcoholism.

“I joke about it now,” he says, “but it was getting pretty serious at the time. Between Bown and myself, we’d down 19 triple scotches a night at the Marquee Club. Maybe not that much, but we never could stand up too well when we were playing.

“All those girls screaming — they didn’t know we were smashed. And the same guys every week for 18 months just got a bit nervy. Nervy is definitely the word. We used to reverse the numbers, do them backwards — anything to break the monotony.”

Frampton’s early career

A YEAR LATER, though, the Herd broke up to find they had been “royally screwed.” As minors, there was little they could do about their due monies except learn a lesson. Until recently, Frampton never passed up a chance to malign his former managers, but now his attitude has softened.

“I’m tending these days not to regret anything. If it had anything to do with reaching the point I’ve reached, it was worthwhile.” Frampton laughs heartily. “And believe me, I never thought I’d be saying that.”

Although the name was coined by Steve Marriott, it was Frampton who formed Humble Pie. The two singer-guitarists had become soul mates and jamming buddies in the disillusioned months after the Herd.

Steve understood. His group, the Small Faces, had gotten caught in the same teen treadmill. When Peter started forming a new band with drummer Jerry Shirley, it took less than a month for Marriott to decide he wanted in. Bringing with him ex-Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley, the quartet was solidified.

“It was incredible in the beginning,” Peter remembers. “Even though Steve and I were completely different in our approaches, we were really out to beat the game together. Here we were — ultraserious musicians — and both of our bands had turned into pop outfits. We all grew beards to hide our faces. All we wanted was to make it on our own terms.”

Peter Frampton’s work with Humble Pie

THE FIRST TWO Humble Pie albums suffered for exactly that reason. Giddy with their newly acquired freedom, the band wanted to do it all — rhythm & blues, folk, jazz, ballads, rock & roll. “Town and Country” and “As Safe as Yesterday Is” sold reasonably well, but in the end, it became obvious that the audiences wanted only rock & roll. The more free-form elements of Pie’s stage show were hooted.

“Humble Pie” and “Rock On,” the group’s first two records for an American label, firmly established that Humble Pie had gone heavy metal, a fact that had already become obvious on their unending concert trail. A live album was recorded during a two-day stint at the Fillmore East.

The minute Frampton heard the tapes, he knew. The Pie would be huge. He warted no part.

“Once again,” Peter explains, “the audience had chosen our direction. The heavy stuff… that always went down the best, so there we were, doing it all the time. And there was no turning back. We would have to remain that way for the remainder of the band. I was the only one in the group who really didn’t want to do that heavy riffing all the time. I don’t write those types of songs.

“So I figured I’d leave then, before the album came out. It would give them a chance to get somebody else who would be readily accepted. I mean, if there ever was a best time for leaving, that was it. So I did.”

The other members of Humble Pie found Frampton’s decision mystifying, of course, but there was little bitterness. Dave “Clem” Clempson quietly took his place, and Rockin’ the Fillmore shot Humble Pie into the big leagues.

Working as a session musician

DEE ANTHONY, Humble Pie’s manager, retained Frampton as a client even though the artist had no immediate career plans.

Peter watched his former band skyrocket while working diligently as a session man on George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass,” Harry Nilsson’s “Son of Schmilsson,” John Entwistle’s “Whistle Rhymes” and a number of advertisement jingles.

Frampton recalls being extremely content and relaxed, taking his time about wandering back into the limelight. Fellow session men volunteered their invaluable services should he choose to make a solo album.

Finally, in ’72, he booked studio time and started work on his first album, “Wind of Change.” To Peter’s surprise, session men like Billy Preston, Klaus Voorman, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Price, Bobby Keyes and Ringo Starr flocked around. It was an especially fruitful time for Frampton. Songs like “All I Want to Be Us by Your Side” and “It’s a Plain Shame” were written and recorded in a number of hours.

The album was well received but sold modestly (particularly in comparison to Humble Pie’s “Smokin’,” which had been released shortly beforehand). But after a brief flurry, it plummeted to oblivion, leaving Frampton to map out a new strategy. It didn’t take long for him to find it.

“I knew I wasn’t going to sell any records sitting at home, so… I took to the road.”

In three days, his first tour to break into the black would open in Orlando, Florida. All the roadwork, he says, has simply managed to pay for itself. But, in fact, he’s often had to borrow money to continue his career.

Peter Frampton’s low points

“IT GOT TO THE point where I couldn’t afford to borrow any more money to lose. Know what I mean? That was just before Frampton, my fourth album. As we were recording it, I was very down and depressed. At the time, the thought of a tour was a puzzle. I didn’t really want to get into any more debt. But did. And it worked.”

Originally, it had been Peter’s third album, Somethin’s Happening, that was groomed for mass appeal. The title track would catapult him to his present status. “This is my plum,” he told an interviewer at the time. “If anything does it for me, it’s this song.”

The single bombed. Miserably. The album slunk off the charts.

“Looking back, I can see the weaknesses, but watching that album fizzle out and disappear was so painful. That was the most disheartening of anything. That was the point where it was almost back to being a session man. I definitely thought about it.” He adds the afterthought: “Heavily.”

“The minute the ‘Frampton’ album came out, it all started to happen, slowly but surely.

“There you have it, the album done out of desperation… maybe that was exactly the kind of pressure I needed.”

Whatever the reason, Frampton came closest to fully capturing the artist on record. The album fell just short of gold, and a single (“Money”) did well. Frampton began headlining more regularly, playing for audiences that were more familiar with his songs.

Frampton comes alive!

SENSING THE momentum, Peter Frampton decided to play his trump — the live album.

“I knew it was the right thing to do,” he boasts. “I was the one in Humble Pie who wanted to do a live record. I wasn’t the only one, but I was certainly the one who felt it the most. I could feel the same sort of confidence in my own career when I said, ‘Dee, let’s do it. The next one’s got to be live.’ But it was a long time between the two.”

“Frampton Comes Alive!” was originally meant to be another single album. “I was told to keep it to a one-record package,” Frampton recalls, “’cause the day of the double live album is gone. I agreed, you know. So I mixed and cut together the whole thing, with ‘Lines on My Face’ and ‘Do You Feel’ on one side, and ‘All I Want to Be’, ‘Something’s Happening,’ ‘It’s a Plain Shame’ and ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ on the other. That’s all.

“Then Jerry Moss (president of A&M Records) came into the studio, and there was this great moment when, after I’d finished playing the single album, everybody looked at me and said, ‘Can we hear the other album?'” Frampton says, laughing.

“Just another great moment in rock & roll,” he snickers. “I felt very small because… ‘double album?’ But, but… I thought that you… one double album, coming right up. I’m happy it’s a double, obviously. I like the stuff that I didn’t think we would get to use — ‘Money’ and all the acoustic ones.

“And Jesus, I sure didn’t think I’d get such a big ‘Yes we like you’ out of the whole project.

“I enjoy playing onstage more than anything,” says Peter backstage. “It doesn’t really matter to me that I’ve probably played every place with a stage in this country. I’ve seen a lot of tiny holes…”

Headlining huge concerts

THE ORLANDO Sports Arena, it would be safe to say, is one of the larger holes Frampton has headlined. Tonight, the golden combination is pot and beer, as 12,000 stoned Floridians have gathered here at this glorified airplane hangar to see the first show of Peter Frampton’s current tour. Dee Anthony is here, too, having flown in just to lend support on the eve of his newest superstar’s biggest season yet.

After Gary Wright, another Anthony act, has warmed up the crowd with a set built around his current hit. “Dream Weaver,” Frampton wanders out onstage to tumultuous applause.

There is a collective sigh from the many young girls in the audience. Peter looks great, still well tanned from his vacation and wearing tight green velvet pants with a white, unbuttoned shirt. “I’m not that self-conscious anymore about the way I look,” he confided earlier, “I figure f— it, why deny yourself…”

Hit with a single spotlight, Frampton receives an acoustic guitar, seats himself on a stool at center stage, and begins strumming the opening chords to “All I Want to Be (Is by Your Side).”

After the applause dies down, the audience becomes as quiet as a sold-out party crowd can get. They remain miraculously respectful, booming their approval only at the end of each of several soft songs like “Do It Again One More Time,” “Penny for Your Thoughts” and “Baby, I Love Your Way.”

Frampton cuts a sincere figure onstage. Fresh and vibrant in voice and action, he appears to mean it. Which makes an audience like this one feel wanted.

Behind Frampton’s musical breakthrough

EVEN THOUGH he has always performed an extremely melodic solo act, he has only recently added the acoustic numbers to his stage show. Dee Anthony figures this is one of the big factors in Frampton”s breakthrough.

“Peter has played on the bill with a lot of heavy-metal acts,” Anthony says. “They waste an audience down, physically wear them down. What is a beautiful, lovely little guy like Peter Frampton going to do when he comes out? Is he going to try to go over their energy level, saying, ‘I’m going to rock right over them?’

“Of course he can’t. So we just reversed the process and started him wide open, from nothing, just acoustic guitar. And he builds. He goes in like a lamb and out like a lion.”

When Frampton straps on his black Les Paul, there is genuine hysteria. “Somethin’s Happening,” his first electric song of the evening, has everybody shouting the words. They roar like a football crowd.

I know it’s my year
Ain’t got no fears…

His face buried in a towel after the show, Frampton still can’t quite believe it all.

“I know I keep going on about it,” he apologizes, “but isn’t it amazing how much things can change with one album? Even a couple months ago, it was nowhere near this. Now…”

He is interrupted by a teenage vendor, a sneak-in from backstage. “Hey Peter, you were great: Keep it up, buddy.”

This is interesting. There is no fawning fan-to-demigod interaction. The vendor clasps Frampton’s limp playing hand for a hearty handshake. “Lemme tell ya. You really got it together for 25. All right. You got it.” It’s as if Frampton had just batted in a few runs. “Twenty-five. All right…”

“Almost 26,” Peter offers. “Over a quarter of a century, you know.”

“I know, pal.” The vendor slaps a hand on Frampton’s bare, sweaty back. Frampton is too stage-numb to feel it. “How long you on tour for?”

“Ever,” Peter replies without even thinking. But he quickly brightens. “I’ve got May and June off, though. Two months.”

“Outasite. You’re doing all this and you’re only 25?”

Peter nods.

“All right.” The vendor shakes his head and slips out the dressing room door.

Once outside, his girlfriend has a million questions. ‘Did you talk to him? What’s he like?”

“Like us, if we were rock stars.” The vendor pauses. “Wendy? What the f— am I doing selling Pepsi?”

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Peter Frampton: “People are buying my life”

“People are buying my life when they’re buying those records… suddenly everything you’ve been doing means something.”

Peter continues, “For me, lyrics are the most difficult part of what I do. I can’t fabricate them. I can’t sing about something I don’t believe in or that hasn’t happened to me.”

As Peter Frampton’s latest album passes the five million mark (unprecedented for a two-record set), he comments on the phenomenal success of “Frampton Comes Alive!” with an objectivity that comes from having spent 10 years on the road.

“I could never compete with the LP. Or with who Peter Frampton is supposed to be. Inside, I’m still marveling at it all from 1000 feet high. It’s not me I see.”

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Peter Frampton: He gives music new directions

By Wayne Robins, Newsday – as published in the Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Florida) October 19, 1976

NEW YORK — Nobody quite knows why Peter Frampton has the top-selling album of the year, and has become nearly as unparalleled as a concert attraction.

Frampton’s journey to the top of the rock heap has been so gradual as to have appeared to be almost without momentum. He began his career as a teenybopper idol with an English band, The Herd. In 1968, an English music paper dubbed him “The Face of 1968,” an appellation that took Frampton years to live down in his homeland, where he remains relatively unpopular.

FRAMPTON HELPED to form the band Humble Pie, which achieved moderate success in the United States. But Frampton left the band just before it peaked when he felt his soft-focus songs were out of place in the band increasingly devoted to heavy material.

Frampton took on work as a studio session man, and among his credits are work on George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and Harry Nilsson’s “Son of Schmilsson.” When he recorded his first “solo” album, “Wind of Change,” in 1972, he attracted stellar session players like Ringo Starr, Nicky Hopkins, Billy Preston and Klaus Voorman.

But neither “Wind of Change,” nor the following albums, “Frampton’s Camel” and “Something’s Happening” sold more than 200,000 copies, which is meager for a veteran artist who is spending most of his time touring.

“Frampton,” the fourth studio album, is starting to sell strongly, mostly on the coattails of “Frampton Comes Alive.”

One of the many extraordinary things about the success of “Frampton Comes Alive” is that there isn’t a single song on the $7.98-list price double album that wasn’t released on an earlier Frampton or Humble Pie album.

WHY THE SUCCESS? Jack Ford, son of the President, has been quoted as saying that Frampton is his favorite artist, that he “put the magic back in rock and roll.”

Frampton’s music, in fact, is almost the antithesis of magic. There is nothing mysterious, unseen, other-worldly or very original about Frampton’s music. He is a good, not great, guitar player. He is an adequate, not inspired, songwriter, and a competent, not superior, singer. Even Cameron Crowe, who wrote the liner notes for “Frampton Comes Alive,” speaks of Frampton’s “earnestness and competence.” It sounds as if he were describing Jack Ford’s father.

What Peter Frampton has done is discover a new kind of middle-of-the-road music. His guitar playing makes the sound heavier than John Denver or America. Yet his songs are far more melodic than Aerosmith or Kiss.

WHAT CREATED an atmosphere for something to happen was the work of manager Dee Anthony, booking agent Frank Barsalona, and A&M Records promoted the album, using television advertising in markets where Frampton might not have toured for a while to keep his visibility high.

Manager Dee Anthony, a gregarious 50-year-old who has been in the business as long as 26-year-old Frampton has been alive, feels it was his performance that made “Frampton Comes Alive” such a phenomenon.

“My game plan has always been performance,” Anthony said. “Going out and working the boards, playing the markets, expanding the audience.” Since January, Frampton has played before 1,511,000 fans. “A lot of the kids that came to see him bought the album,” Anthony said, perhaps wryly.

“It’s a goddamn good album,” Anthony said. “You go into a concert to see Peter Frampton. He turns you on. You can then go out and buy the very same thing you saw in great quality.”

It’s pretty much that simple. Frampton isn’t charismatic in the Jagger sense, but he is enormously attractive to look at. The girls go crazy over him, but there is something about him that the guy’s don’t find threatening. It’s almost as if Frampton could be hanging out with his fans rather than hovering over them, even after he cashes the first royalty check he’s just received for “Frampton Comes Alive.”

The check is for slightly more than $1 million.