Frampton Comes Alive! Bowie MD

Frampton Comes Alive!

Peter Frampton

A & M Records, 1976

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 05/28/1998

Once upon a time in the land of music, just before the SonicPlague that was disco and just after the birth of the Metal Dragon,came upon the land a young prince (no, not that Prince -- it's ametaphor, dammit!).

This young prince was lithe and blonde and long of hair, andspoke in the soft, lilting tones of an Englishman, setting thehearts of all the young maidens in the land to pittering andpattering... and yet he could also pound out a tasty, jammingeight-minute cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" if the mood struck him.Truly, for his one brief shining moment, this prince had itall.

Leading into Frampton Comes Alive!, nothing particularly suggested PeterFrampton was about to issue the biggest selling live album of alltime (15 million units and counting... paying attention, Garth?).Sure, he'd produced several well-regarded singles with Brit-popbands The Herd and Humble Pie, and shown off some very solid guitarwork and melodic tunesmithing on three solo studio outings.

But despite the strength of his musical chops, he'd been passedoff as something of a lightweight thanks to his forays intosentimental, acoustic love songs. What Frampton Comes Alive! let him do was show both sides of hismusical personality, the crooner and the rocker, and do it in thecharged setting of a high-energy live show. As Cameron Crowe saysin the liner notes, this album is "a testimony to Peter Frampton inhis natural habitat." His lack of sustained success in any othercontext makes these words ring truer today than ever.