Every Moment Has A Song

Why was ‘Frampton Comes Alive‘ so Popular?

(answered by Don Stuart)

Well I was there, a junior in high school (and a bass player) around the time Frampton hit it big. Here’s how I remember it going down.

KISS had been kind of a cult rock band until they released KISS ALIVE in September of ‘75, just as we were heading back to school. Rock and Roll All Night and Party Every Day was basically the motto of many mid-70’s high school kids in the US (see the film Dazed and Confused, it’s deadly accurate). So KISS had an AM radio hit on a double live album, kind of setting the stage for Frampton’s.

Peter’s band started appearing on a Friday night show called Midnight Special on NBC in the fall. There was no MTV in those days, not much rock to watch on TV at all, and us kids watched that show in droves because it came on after we had to be home (by midnight, right?).

The guy looked good and there was definite buzz among girls like my younger sisters who had watched him on TV. Plus he’d been killing on tour all year and some of the cool older girls had seen him in concert. They were the evangelists.

Frampton Comes Alive is released in January 1976, to little fanfare but a single off the album, Show Me The Way, breaks on AM pop radio rotation in February. Where I lived, Baby I Love Your Way broke on the radio first because girls were requesting it.

The girls have had to put up with KISS ALIVE and Ted Nugent (also released in Sept. ‘75) at our parties and in our cars for months now. Around Spring Break, they whip out Frampton. Us guys are like, “Okay, chicks dig it and he doesn’t completely suck.” Peter played great lead guitar, which was essential for 70’s rockers.

Turns out the album had brilliant song-order mastering, too. It definitely has a trajectory, peaks and valleys and a big finish with Do You Feel Like We Do. We used 8-track tapes in those days to do the audio at our outdoor keggers. Frampton Live was the soundtrack for the spring and summer party season in ‘76. That’s the niche it filled.

Nearly every year has an big record like this — one that epitomizes the party season. It has a hit song or two and sells like gangbusters. Frampton scored, and we scored with Frampton. I mean, we choreographed our makeout sessions to that album.

We smoked a lot of low-THC giggle weed and mashed with a bunch of mildly stoned girls who were happy that they could listen to music with us that wasn’t the absurd 70’s cock and prog rock that guys were usually blasting. Thanks Peter!

Bob Seger’s Live Bullet came out in the spring of ’76 too, so we had two new live albums to party with. The thing about live albums was they kind of blended and amplified the atmosphere and cacophony of the party scene.

In the Fall of ’76 came Boston’s mega-album, then the Eagles’ Hotel California and McCartney’s live album in December, followed by Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours in February ‘77.

Oh, and this happened, too. Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)” The longest-running Billboard #1 since Hey Jude. The Stairway to Heaven of car-radio date songs.

Frampton got crushed, but it didn’t really matter.

Because Saturday Night Fever rolled in and ruined the party for all of us. When rock resurrected with Van Halen it was different, and an era was in the past.