Frampton comes alive -- again -- at House of Blues

It was just a fleeting moment in one man's life, a split second frozen in time by the camera. But Peter Frampton has been living with it for 23 years now.

"That picture!" Frampton said, feigning horror. "It's either the '(Frampton) Comes Alive!' with the out-of-focus, blurred stare and the red hair, or it's the cover of Rolling Stone with the puffed-up hair, too much makeup, and a bad chest. They have that image burned in their memories."

Any of the 8 million fans who bought a copy of "Frampton Comes Alive!" the year it was released would not expect to the see the same person in the mirror that they saw in 1976. Yet Frampton, 49, is still barraged with questions about those famous flowing locks. He performs tonight at Mandalay Bay's House of Blues.

"I ask them, 'How many times have you changed your hair in the last 25 years?' They go '(mumble mumble mumble).' They don't have an answer for that."

Time waits for no one, not even for the rock star with the best-selling live album of all time. "Frampton Comes Alive!" has sold 16 million copies to date and continues to sell more than 100,000 units annually.

"They say it has earned me millions of dollars, but to be honest, I'm still trying to find out if that's true," he said.

The double-LP album, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, contained romantic, hummable pop-rock tunes such as "Show Me the Way" (noted for its use of an electronic "voice box" that gave his vocals an electronic tone), "Baby, I Love Your Way" and "Do You Feel Like We Do."

It was one of the first times that Frampton, who had been in the stellar guitar-rock band Humble Pie with Steve Marriott from 1969 to '71, found himself headlining a concert as the leader of his own band. The group had been playing 50-minute opening sets and worried that it didn't have enough material for a 90-minute concert.

Yet the feeling onstage that night was magical, Frampton recalled. The resulting success catapulted him to the top of the rock world, getting constant radio play and landing the photogenic singer-guitarist on every major TV show and magazine cover.

"I had become the biggest artist in the world, seemingly overnight, but really after 15 years of work," he said.

The lofty atmosphere of mega-fame didn't sit well with Frampton, who felt as if he had lost control over his own life. "It was so big that everyone was worried about the 'golden goose,' " he said. "They'd say, 'We want to make sure we know where he is at all times.' People wanted to keep me locked up in a room and just let me out when it was time to perform. I think I was overprotected at that time."

What he should have done, he later realized, was take a couple of years off to reflect on what had happened before trying to write new material. But in 1976 at the very crest of the huge publicity wave, Frampton was persuaded -- prodded, more likely -- to go back into the studio to record another album and strike while his iron of fame was still white hot.

The result was the schmaltzy romance of "I'm in You," an album that sold 3 million copies and produced a title track that hit No. 1 on the singles chart. Following the live album, however, "I'm in You" was deemed a failure.

"Up until 'Frampton Comes Alive!' and the success of that, I'd always written for my own enjoyment," he said. "I wasn't thinking about what anybody else would want to hear from me. It was what came out naturally.

"The pressure that 'Frampton Comes Alive!' brought to bear on me was that I started to second-guess myself and think, 'I wonder what I should write?' No artist can ever think about what anybody else wants. It's got to come from you."

Over the next five years, Frampton suffered several personal and professional setbacks. He was injured in a car accident in the Bahamas in 1978, breaking an arm and several ribs, and he starred in one of the biggest film flops of the decade, Robert Stigwood's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." By 1982 the native of Beckenham, Kent, England, felt compelled to step out of the spotlight.

"I never got to live a normal life at the time, which is why, in the early '80s I just completely disappeared," he said. "I took time off because I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to learn how to come out of the room without worrying about who's on the other side of the door."

Frampton continued to write songs and play guitar. In 1986 David Bowie invited him to play lead guitar on his album, "Never Let Me Down," and the subsequent Glass Spiders world tour.

Getting back onstage in front of thousands of fans as a "hired gun" rather than the featured star eased the way for Frampton's return. He called up his longtime friend and former Humble Pie colleague, Marriott, who also had been an original member of the Small Faces, and the two began writing songs and rehearsing with renewed fervor.

"We were meeting with record companies. We basically were just about to do a band publishing deal. We had half an album written. It was all just happening."

But on April 20, 1991 Marriott, 44, died in a fire at his 16th-century cottage in Essex, England.

"Once you've been in a band and stood next to him on the same mike and sung ... it's very hard," Frampton said. "He was one of the greatest singers of all time, right up there with (Bad Company and Free's) Paul Rodgers. "People said, 'Aren't you going to continue doing the band?' I tried for all of five minutes. You can't replace Steve."

Frampton's latest work includes several movie-related projects, including recording two songs for a Disney CD called "Tiggermania," due out this summer, and a variety of roles on a new Hollywood film by writer-director Cameron Crowe, the baby-boomer creator of "Jerry Maguire" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

"It's a personal story set in 1973 about -- guess what? -- rock music," Frampton said. "I get to wear a couple of different hats. I'm thrilled to be part of it. Cameron wrote the liner notes to 'Frampton Comes Alive!' and I've known him since then. Now I work for him. We all work for him."

Crowe's wife, Nancy Wilson of Heart, helped shape the sound of the movie's rock band and Frampton wrote and recorded a couple of songs for the soundtrack. He also served as an adviser for rock 'n' roll authenticity, teaching actors Jason Lee and Billy Crudup how to look like rockers.

"And the last hat I wear, actually it's a wig, not a hat," Frampton said with a laugh. "I play Humble Pie's road manager."

It's not the only time he's worn a wig in the recent past. Last fall Frampton was touring with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Tommy Shaw, the former singer-guitarist of Styx and the Damn Yankees. Shaw decided that for Halloween, he and his band would dress up as the four makeup-covered members of KISS.

"I figured I'd go as Peter Frampton," Frampton said. "I got the shiny pants. The big high shoes. The wig. I cut it and permed it. And I got a shirt that wouldn't (button) up. For the encore, I came on as Peter Frampton. And the place went wild. My bass player said he was blinded by the flashes.

"And I said, 'This is something I will only do once!' I don't take myself too seriously. But I take my music seriously."

archive