How Peter Frampton Learned He Had a No. 1 Album

Peter Frampton can tell you exactly where he was when his now-legendary Frampton Comes Alive went to No. 1. on April 10, 1976.

“I was in New York. I was living in Westchester and I remember being there and getting a call from my manager,” Frampton tells UCR. “He said, ‘Sit down.’ I said, ‘I’m sitting.’ And then he said, ‘Guess what?’ I said, ‘What? Tell me!’ He said, ‘You’re number one!’

“I was overwhelmed to say the least, you know, so that was an incredible moment.”

‘Frampton Comes Alive’ Was Only the Beginning

Even after Frampton Comes Alive spent 10 weeks at the top of the charts, it kept selling, driven by the popularity and airplay of live versions of songs like “Show Me the Way,” “Baby, I Love Your Way’ and the epic “Do You Feel Like We Do.’ The momentum just continued to build for the songwriter-guitarist. “Overwhelmed” was only one way to describe it.

READ MORE: When Peter Frampton Discovered the Talk Box

As drummer Joe Vitale (Joe Walsh, Crosby, Stills and Nash) remembers, Frampton mania was still in full force when he joined the band in 1977, an invitation that came through bassist Stanley Sheldon, who he knew. “We were supposed to do three shows and they went quite well,” he recalls in a separate conversation. “And Peter asked me if I wanted to just do the whole tour with him. I said, ‘Hell yeah.’ He was playing stadiums. These were huge gigs he was doing. I mean, he was, he was a monster star.”

Stadiums were a big step up from where he’d been, even when Frampton Comes Alive was recorded.

Listen to Peter Frampton’s ‘Show Me the Way’ From ‘Frampton Comes Alive’

Recording ‘Frampton Comes Alive’

“Walking on the stage that night at Winterland with probably between seven and eight thousand people, it was one of our biggest headlining shows ever [and their first time as a headliner in San Francisco],” Frampton says now. “You know, I think that was so inspiring for all of us.”

“That was one of those nights. Usually, when you come off, two guys will say, ‘I had the worst night,’ and two guys will say, ‘Ah, it was the best night!’ Well this time, we all came off and we all went, ‘Oh, my God!'” We went to the recording truck, after the show that night. Ray Thompson, rest in peace, was the fantastic engineer that did that for us,” the guitarist continues.

“He said, ‘Look, I’m just going to put all the faders flat, straight out. You’ve got to hear a couple of these.’ So we listened to bits of a couple of the songs and we just looked at each other and went, ‘Oh my God, have we got a winner!”

Fans can hear Frampton Comes Alive in an exciting new limited vinyl edition that came out earlier this year as part of UMe’s ongoing Vinylphile series. The double LP pressing is sourced from the original 1975 Doug Sax 1/4″ production master, presenting the recordings in the same fidelity as Frampton himself originally heard them.

What’s Peter Frampton Up to Now?

It’s an exciting time to be a Frampton fan, as he’s preparing to release his first new studio album of original songs in 16 years.

Carry the Light arrives May 15 featuring contributions from a number of guests, including Sheryl Crow, Graham Nash, Benmont Tench and others. The guitarist worked on the new collection with his son, Julian, who cowrote and coproduced the material on the album.

“Lions at the Gate,” is the newest offering from the upcoming record, featuring Tom Morello as special guest and as Frampton told us, it’s a song that came early in the process as he was working on songs for his eventual album.

“It was the very first track that I recorded for this album, at least four or five years ago and it was just a trio of us,” he reflects. “I just had this riff, but I’d written it on a baritone guitar, so it was halfway between a bass and a guitar, you know — and I’d even tuned it further down, so it was even more halfway between a bass and a guitar.”

“And I just got inspired, because if you stick that through a dirty sounding big amp and maybe [add] a little bit of distortion on it, that thing sounds humongous,” he shares. “All of a sudden, you’re [Cream bassist] Jack Bruce, with the really distorted bass lines and everything. All of that inspired the riff where I began to write ‘Lions at the Gate.'”

Listen to Peter Frampton’s ‘Lions at the Gate’ Featuring Tom Morello