Was It Really 50 Years Ago That 'Frampton Comes Alive' Was Released?

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If you went to high school in the 1970s as I did, I will bet you my old pet rock that you or someone in your family had a copy of Frampton Comes Alive lying on the bedroom dresser. I think just about every family in the world had a copy of that album in 1976. I was only in 9th grade at the time, but I was a member of the high school radio station. Our radio station was basically just two speakers and a turntable in the Commons. Nonetheless, as a 9th grader, I was a backup DJ, meaning I didn’t have a show of my own. But I do remember some of the cool-looking seniors, the hippies, who the jocks always wanted to beat up, always carrying a Frampton album into the booth. I’m not talking Frampton Comes Alive yet, I’m talking the 1975 Frampton album, which had a very cool cover. I thought this guy must be pretty good if these guys keep carrying this album into the booth. Only a few months later, in January 1976, the whole world would find out just how cool he really was. That’s when the album Frampton Comes Alive was released on January 15th.

It is hard for me to fathom that it was fifty years ago this month that Frampton Comes Alive was released. But of course, life moves on, and I, like millions of others in this world, still have a copy of that record in my collection. Yes, I did buy the CD version, but it just cannot compare to that vinyl gatefold. I stared at the pictures of the musicians in the middle as I sat on my bed, listening to the record over and over again.

It is sad that today’s youth do not experience that. Of course, some do, in a way unique to today’s modern world, where they buy vinyl but check their phones every few minutes for new messages, social media cues, and all that other nonsense. We did not have those distractions back then. We put the vinyl record on, sat in our chair or on our bed, and faded into the music, and only the music, and nothing else.

It did not matter if our mother was yelling at us from downstairs or our brothers and sisters were knocking on the door. We did not hear any of that. All we heard was the sound of those guitars, those legendary vocals, and those magical melodies. The only thing that ever interrupted our listening experience was having to get off the bed to flip the record over, but we did that mostly in a trance anyway.

It was rare that we liked every song on an album, especially double albums. Yes there are some records that we had in our collections where every song was perfect but not many. Below, I think, are the highlights from Frampton Comes Alive. These are my top 10 favorite songs on the album.

# 10 – Show Me The Way

If I hadn’t heard this song a million times on the radio, I probably would have ranked it higher on this list. Yet, this was the song that helped catapult this album into becoming one of the biggest success stories in rock and roll history and set the course for record companies to realize just how much money could be made selling albums unlike anything they had ever experienced before.

# 9 – Baby I Love Your Way

It’s easy to rag on the first two singles from this album because we’ve heard them so many times, but one must remember why these first two songs became big hits. They’re great freaking songs. This song has also been covered multiple times, a great version by Big Mountain and a very forgettable one by Will to Power.

# 8 – All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)

There is such a soulfulness in Frampton’s singing on this one that hits immediately. It’s one of the most tender moments on the record, yet Frampton makes it cool. It’s a moment where it’s just Peter and his guitar, and yet it’s just as perfect as anything the full band played on the record. “I dont care if they cut my hair.” That’s a lyric that was very meaningful for us in the ’70s.

# 7 – Jumping Jack Flash

Many musical artists have covered this classic Rolling Stones song with its iconic guitar riff. It’s tough to make a song like this your own when it’s one of the most famous Rolling Stones songs of all time, yet Frampton lays down a groove in the verses that brought a freshness to a song that at the time was not really that old. That point itself simply blows my mind.

# 6 – Shine On

This one’s called “Shine On.” If you had the album, then you get it. Another great rocker with a smoking introduction and chorus that just shook your rock and roll world. This was initially released on Humble Pie’s album Rock On.

# 5 – Lines on My Face

Many people remember this one as the song placed before “Do You Feel Like We Do” on the album’s closing side. I bet there were a lot of people who skipped right over this song to get to the cranking closing track. Yet this was the perfect placement on the record for it. It’s a slow burn that lyrically doesn’t really hit 15-year-olds, not worried about getting old yet, and falling apart. But the melody and Framton’s performance was simply mesmerizing.

# 4 – (I’ll Give You) Money

This song was pretty fresh when Framtion performed it live. It was first released on Frampton in 1975. The sound of those drums, amid the crowd noise, set the excitement level to 10. When Frampton starts playing that kicking guitar riff and then dives into the solo, your thinking, can this get any better?

# 3 – Introduction/Something’s Happening”

What an album opener this one was. It took over 35 seconds of crowd noise and a spoken introduction before the band kicked in, but when they did, the sound was just so rich and heavy that it just blew your hair back like you were standing right in front of that stage they recorded this from. The magic of this album started right off the bat with the opening track.

# 2 – Do You Feel Like We Do

It’s pretty incredible that they took a song that was over 14 minutes long and cut it down to a little over 3 minutes, turning it into a hit single. Nonetheless, this is definitely a highlight of the album, featuring one of the most talked-about songs from the record. That guitar riff was simply too die for.

# 1 – It’s a Plain Shame

Maybe it was the sweetness of ‘Show Me the Way’ that was placed just before this song on side one that made this one rock even harder. Whatever it was, this one floored me the first time I heard it. It has remained, I think, the most rocking song on this album. “How about some rock and roll?”

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