Peter Frampton Biography
Rock guitar legend Peter Frampton was born on April 22, 1950 in Beckenham,
Kent ENGLAND; he first received a banjolele, a banjo shaped ukelele, at
the age of seven and started to play influenced by rockabilly pioneers
like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran; he got his first payment for performing
at age nine. His dad, Owen was Music Teacher at the local Secondary School,
where one of his schoolmates was none other than David Bowie, their future
careers were to cross a few times in the years ahead.
After a few years of playing the guitar, Peter Frampton joined his first
serious group, The Preachers, a band produced and managed by The
Rolling Stones' Bill Wyman, whom Frampton struck up a great friendship
with, particularly while trawling the London Clubs.
In 1968 he joined ex-Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott in Humble Pie,
remaining for two years before departing for a solo career.
1972's "Wind Of Change", his solo debut spotlights Frampton's
well-crafted, though lyrically lightweight, songwriting and his fine guitar
playing but the album stuttered at #177 on the U.S. Pop chart.
The next year, he put together his new backing band, Frampton's Camel
releasing an eponymous album which hit #110 in the U.S. even though all
the songs were first-rate or close to it, the set included the original
studio version of the Classic-Rock staple "Do You Feel Like We Do".
Frampton's Camel disappeared after just one album, in 1974 Peter Frampton
returned with "Somethin's Happening" which also sold poorly,
however, before the year was out, the follow-up album "Frampton"
climbed to #32 on the U.S. Pop Sales chart and went gold on the strength
of such tunes as "Show Me The Way" and "Baby, I Love Your
Way".
All those years were fairly barren for Frampton, despite four excellent
albums and some equally excellent live performances.
However, his hard work touring the States was money in the bank and it
was returned with interest when "Frampton Comes Alive!" struck;
this mid-priced double-LP shot to #1 on the Pop Albums chart upon its
January 1976 release selling 6 million copies in U.S. and over 16 million
worldwide, becoming the biggest-selling live album of all time; it contains
a 14-minutes long version of "Do You Feel Like We Do" on which
Frampton used a talkbox, a device hooked up to his guitar amp that allowed
him to make distorted vocal sounds through a tube in his mouth, every
time he formed words, the crowd went nuts, especially when he sounded
out “I want to thank you” which came out sounding like “I
want to fuck you”; released as a single this song blasted into the
top 10 of the U.S. Pop Singles chart; that year two more singles stormed
that chart, "Show Me The Way" peaked at #6 and "Baby, I
Love Your Way" hit #12. At its height, the album was selling 100,000
copies a week and Peter Frampton had to re-invent himself as a stadium
Rock performer; for a spell in 1976, during the United States bicentennial
celebrations he was considered the biggest artist in the world.
