May 22, 2020 —– Chart #37
Hello Musical Friends,
Well it’s Friday and we are starting a holiday weekend. Most of us will be home for the holiday, but that’s not all bad. Let’s have some music fun while we are home and have time to play. Today I am going to 1975 and a great guitar player who was a real heart throb for young girls back then. Peter Kenneth Frampton (born 22 April 1950) is an English-American rock musician, singer, songwriter, producer, and guitarist. He was previously associated with the bands Humble Pie and the Herd. After the end of his ‘group’ career, as a solo artist, Frampton released several albums including his international breakthrough album, the live release Frampton Comes Alive!. The album sold more than 8 million copies in the United States and spawned several hit singles. Since then he has released several other albums. He has also worked with Ringo Starr, the Who’s John Entwistle, David Bowie and both Matt Cameron and Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, among others.
Frampton is best known for such hits as “Breaking All the Rules”, “Show Me the Way”, “Baby, I Love Your Way”, “Do You Feel Like We Do”, and “I’m in You“, which remain staples on classic rock radio. He has also appeared as himself in television shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Madam Secretary. Frampton is known for his work as a guitar player, particularly with a talk box and his voice. Today our selection is “Show Me The Way” and you will have fun playing it. Originally released in June 1975 as the lead single from his fourth studio album Frampton, it gained popularity after being recorded live and released in February 1976 as the lead single from his live album Frampton Comes Alive! The song reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 10 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming his biggest hit until “I’m in You” in 1977.
After four studio albums and one live album with Humble Pie, Frampton left the band and went solo in 1971, just in time to see Rockin’ the Fillmore rise up the US charts. He remained with Dee Anthony (1926-2009), the same personal manager that Humble Pie had used.
His own debut was 1972’s Wind of Change, with guest artists Ringo Starr and Billy Preston. This album was followed by Frampton’s Camel in 1973, which featured Frampton working within a group project. In 1974, Frampton released Somethin’s Happening. Frampton toured extensively to support his solo career, joined for three years by his former Herd mate Andy Bown on keyboards, Rick Wills on bass, and American drummer John Siomos. In 1975, the Frampton album was released. The album went to No. 32 in the US charts, and is certified Gold by the RIAA.
Peter Frampton had little commercial success with his early albums. This changed with Frampton’s best-selling live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, in 1976, from which “Baby, I Love Your Way“, “Show Me the Way“, and an edited version of “Do You Feel Like We Do“, were hit singles. The latter two tracks also featured his use of the talk box guitar effect. The album was recorded in 1975, mainly at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, California, where Humble Pie had previously enjoyed a good following. Frampton had a new line-up, with Americans Bob Mayo on keyboards and rhythm guitar and Stanley Sheldon on bass. Wills had been sacked by Frampton at the end of 1974, and Bown had left on the eve of Frampton Comes Alive, to return to England and new fame with Status Quo. Frampton Comes Alive was released in early January, debuting on the charts on 14 February at number 191. The album was on the Billboard 200 for 97 weeks, of which 55 were in the top 40, of which 10 were at the top. The album beat, among others, Fleetwood Mac’s Fleetwood Mac to become the top selling album of 1976, and it was also the 14th best seller of 1977. With sales of eight million copies it became the biggest selling live album, although with others subsequently selling more it is now the fourth biggest. Frampton Comes Alive! has been certified as eight times platinum. The album won Frampton a Juno Award in 1977.
The success of Frampton Comes Alive! put him on the cover of Rolling Stone, in a famous shirtless photo by Francesco Scavullo. Frampton later said he regrets the photo because it changed his image as a credible artist into a teen idol. Frampton’s following album, I’m in You (1977) contained the hit title single and went platinum, but fell well short of expectations compared to Frampton Comes Alive!. He starred, with the Bee Gees, in producer Robert Stigwood’s poorly received film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). Frampton’s career seemed to be falling as quickly as it had risen. He also played guitar on the title song of the 1978 film Grease, a song newly-written for the film by Barry Gibb.
Frampton suffered a near-fatal car accident in the Bahamas in 1978 that marked the end of his prolific period and the beginning of a long fallow period where he was less successful than previously. He returned to the studio in 1979 to record the album Where I Should Be. Among those contributing to the album were past band members Stanley Sheldon (bass), Bob Mayo (keyboards/guitar/vocals), and John Siomos (drums/vocals).
Frampton continues to tour today with voice and guitar skills as good as ever. His well known guitar is a black Les Paul Custom which he had named “Phenix” (pictured on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive) given to him by Mark Mariana and first used on the night of the recording of the Humble Pie live album Performance, and which he had used all through his early solo career. The guitar was lost, presumably in a plane crash in Brazil in 1980, then miraculously recovered and returned to him in 2011. If you want to really know this guitar story, I put it below (it’s long).
Just to show that he’s still got it:
The Story of “Phenix” :
Even if you’re not a fan of his music, you’re probably familiar with Peter Frampton’s Gibson Les Paul, “Phenix.” It’s the “Frampton Comes Alive!” guitar; the one that he plays on the album, and the one that he’s photographed with on the cover. If you were alive during the late 1970s, you probably remember how much of a big deal “Frampton Comes Alive!” was. Selling a mind-blowing 16 million copies, it was the record – along with KISS’s “Alive!” – that cemented the idea of a double live album as a viable rock n’ roll product. Any self-respecting suburban teenager’s record collection wasn’t complete without “Comes Alive!” circa 1976, and that cover photograph of Frampton rocking that Les Paul became an iconic and enduring image. For decades, it was thought that the Les Paul – along with most of Peter Frampton’s classic guitars – was destroyed in a tragic 1980 plane crash. But, 31 years later, the guitar and the guitarist were reunited in the most extraordinary of circumstances, truly living up to its phoenix namesake.
Frampton meets the Phenix
Peter Frampton’ association with “Phenix” goes back to 1970 and Humble Pie’s run at the legendary Fillmore West in San Francisco. On the cusp of big things at the time, the west coast shows were key to the band breaking the American market. But Frampton was having guitar trouble, with his Gibson ES-335 to blame. Frampton had recently traded a ‘62 SG for the 335, a decision he was now regretting. The semi-acoustic was fine for rhythm work, but gave him a fair amount of grief when it came to lead breaks. “Every time I turned up for my solo it just fed back and this was totally demoralizing,” he later remembered.
At the end of his wick by the time the second Fillmore set ended, Frampton was approached by friend Marc Mariana, who offered a lend of his Les Paul for the following night’s show. Frampton wasn’t a Les Paul fan, but, desperate for a useable instrument, he took Mariana up on his offer. The guitar itself was a three pickup 1954 “Black Beauty” that Marc had modified to look like a ’57 Les Paul Custom. For Frampton, it was love at first play, and he ended up using the guitar for the entire Fillmore run: “I tried it for both sets that night and then I tried it the next night and the next night… and at the end of the engagement at the Fillmore West, I gave Marc the guitar back and said to him, ‘I know this is a silly question, but do you think you would ever sell this guitar?’ and he said, ‘No… I want to give it to you.’” With that, the guitar was Frampton’s… for the next ten years at least.
The plane crash
Over the next decade, the “Phenix” became Frampton’s number one axe. But, that all changed during a 1980 tour of South America. Frampton and his band had just played in Venezuela, Caracas. They had a day off the following day, so flew ahead to Panama. The band’s equipment was meant to follow by cargo plane, but it never made it. As the band later found out, the plane had crashed on take-off. The crew were killed and the gear apparently destroyed. “After I got over the shock of people losing their lives I began to think about the gear. Rodney [Frampton’s road manager] said, ‘Yeah, it’s all gone.’ It was a fireball. It was totally filled up with fuel and they couldn’t get near it for five hours. It was just like an H-bomb went off.”
Frampton sent his guitar tech down a week later to survey the wreckage, and sure enough, all that remained was a couple of wrecked Marshall cabinets and some burnt out guitar cases.
The “Phenix” Rises
For 31 years, it seemed like the Caracas plane crash was where the story of Frampton’s “Phenix” ended. Then, in 2011, the guitarist received a surprise e-mail from someone in Holland, by way of a part-time Luthier from the island of Curaçao (40 miles off the coast of Caracas). In the message, he claimed that the “Phenix” had been brought into his workshop. What’s more, he’d forensically photographed every inch of the guitar.
“He took the pickups off, the tuners, he took everything apart so you could virtually see inside the guitar,” Frampton said, “that’s how I knew it was mine, because I’d been inside that thing so many times.”
The “Phenix,” once believed to be a charred wreck, was still very much intact. Frampton started playing detective and finally put the story together. It turned out that four of his guitars (a ’63 Precision Bass, a ’55 Strat, a white Les Paul and the “Phenix”) had survived the crash, but had been lifted by one of the first people on the scene, who decided to sell them. Someone who lived on Curaçao bought the Les Paul, intending to learn the guitar, but didn’t keep it up. The instrument ended up gathering dust in his house for years until his teenage son expressed an interest in playing. The guitar, by this point, was in terrible shape so the son took it to the aforementioned luthier. Said luthier, who also happened to be a customs inspector, knew what he had straight away and contacted Frampton.
After 31 years, Peter Frampton finally knew the real story of his “Phenix” Les Paul, but it would be another year-and-a-half before the guitar was returned to him. At first, there were problems with getting the kid to sell. It was 18 months before he agreed to part with the instrument. Then, there was the luthier’s own anxiety about handling the stolen guitar: “The luthier was frightened that he could get arrested for receiving stolen goods, “Frampton remembered, “so instead of buying it himself, he went to the minister of tourism of Curaçao, who he knew because he was in the customs department, and explained the situation. So the government of Curaçao bought the guitar back for me for $5,000.” Finally, after convincing the luthier that he wasn’t going to get the FBI involved, Frampton was able to arrange a handover in Nashville. “He brought the guitar in the room in the s–ttiest thin plastic cover, it’s not even a case. I knew before I even opened it that it was mine, it was wonderful.” And after being restored by the folks at the Gibson Custom Shop, the instrument went back into Frampton’s live rig, just in time for the “Frampton Comes Alive!” 35th anniversary tour:
“Now, I use it on every show – the least I use it on is “Do You Feel [Like We Do],” but [you’ll hear it on] any of the songs from “…Comes Alive.” So, basically, it’s better than it was, except it’s a little banged up.”
Keep Rockin’,
Stan