41. Peter Frampton, ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ (1976)
Live Jam
41
Peter Frampton, ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ (1976)
In the summer of '76, nothing was in the air like Frampton Comes Alive!, the ultimate example of the double-live album with gatefold cover — it was supposed to be just a single album until A&M Records took the unusual step of insisting on a second disc. Frampton, a journeyman Humble Pie guitarist gone solo, happily obliged. "Baby, I Love Your Way," "Show Me the Way" and most of all "Do You Feel Like We Do" came to life in the live setting (all 14 minutes of it). Even the crowd noise sounds sensational. Frampton Comes Alive! quickly became the biggest-selling album of all time until the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack topped it. "A year before Frampton Comes Alive! we had released the studio version of "Show Me The Way" as a single…and it totally tanked," Frampton told MusicRadar. "It was pretty strange to put out the live version and watch it go through the roof. It was still the same song. What had changed? AOR was the big radio format at the time. And they were playing Frampton Comes Alive! like crazy. If you put on an AOR station — any station — you’d hear pretty much all the songs from that record." David Menconi