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Saturday Night Classics — Show Me the Way
From Frampton Comes Alive, his 1975 chart-topping live album. That year I began dating a girl I met at work, and most summer weekends we drove to Bethany Beach, Delaware where 9 friends and I had rented a beach house for the season. I would pop this 8-track into the tape deck and we would listen to it on most of the trips to and from the beach.
Two years later we tied the knot and in June we’ll be married 47 years. About five years ago we were out driving somewhere, and this one came on the 70s Sirius/XM channel. She looked at me and said “You know, I never really liked Peter Frampton.” Oh well.
Published in Music
Yes. First thought, naturally, “Too late now to throw her back in the pond, I suppose.”
But then, what if she was willing to put up with Frampton to get to you?!?
Everybody had a copy of this album in the late ’70s.
A couple years ago I was listening to the radio in the car, I recognized and correctly identified a song from this album by the few seconds of crowd noise before the first note was played. [I don’t recall right now if it was Show Me The Way or Do You Feel Like I Do.]
Yes, I can “Name That Tune” in zero notes.
8- track, love it! If you haven’t seen Frampton live, you are missing out. Frampton Comes Alive! is an amazing story. A lot of bands are not that good live, but he broke the mold.
Who was it that did the live show where the piano got lifted up and turned upside-down while he was playing? Ferrante and Teicher?
I think Keith Emerson did stuff like that.
Oh yeah, that’s right. It was Emerson/Lake/Palmer.
That was an enormous shark jump for ELP.
Pro tip: Grand pianos don’t work upside down. Gravity returns the keys. So it had to be a totally fake piano.
I thought I read somewhere that it had been specially modified. Although I don’t remember details. But seems like it could be done, albeit complicated.
I just saw he’s appearing in March at a casino event center in Hanover, MD, about 1-1/2 hours from us.
Not too sure I can convince her to go, ya know.
You should go. Use your charm, or bribe her, whatever works. If she likes music, she’ll thank you after.
Edit: The first time I saw Frampton in concert, he was opening for Fleetwood Mac and somebody else I can’t remember. I was blown away. He was the best act of the night. We’ve seen him several times since and have never been disappointed.
Pretty-boy post-glam rocker who was actually a good guitarist – right guy, right time. The ending of “Do You Feel Like We Do” is like a textbook lesson in “how to end a concert in 1975.”
Frampton had a weird career. His most famous album was a live album. He was moderately successful until his live album came out and then he blew up to become one of the biggest rock stars of his day. I loved his acting in the movie “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band”. The fight to the death scene between him and heroin addled Steven Tyler was epic. I was 10 years old when I saw it. If I saw it today I might be disappointed. The movie was panned pretty hard. His follow up efforts weren’t as successful and he just sort of vanished. I know he was very successful as a studio musicians and writer. He had everything to be a huge rock star for a sustained period of time. He was impossibly good looking and one hell of a musician. It just didn’t work out for him. Seems like a great guy from the interviews I’ve seen of him.
I agree. It’s the best encore song ever! I saw an online interview with him a few months back. He said he doubts he could replay the song’s solo exactly like he did at the concert because while his solos have a general theme, he does a lot of improvising. He also said that he might be able to play it again if he listened to it several times first . . .
That is the bane of performing music that you’ve previously recorded. Many in the audience are expecting that single performance that they’ve listened to hundreds of times. You are in competition with your 27-year-old self. You remember; that hungry kid looking for the perfect lick.
Your post sparks some good memories. It reminds me of a great road trip being introduced to music of this era, not with a woman though, with my future step dad. The summer of 1984. I was 10. He’s from Newark, Delaware and had a rental house in the area that needed some work and my mom thought it would be a good opportunity to bond if I went with him to help. Driving from Louisiana to Deleware, we listened to a lot of music. Of course, I had heard a lot of this music as I was growing up but he was really into music so it was a big part of our conversation. I definitely remember Peter Frampton, George Thorogood, of course, The White Album stands out. Uptown Girl, Big Log by Robert Plant and Let’s Dance by David Bowie were big on Night Tracks at the time so it was interesting for me to learn about Led Zepplin and all the other stuff Billy Joel and David Bowie had done. He told me about all the road trips he made to Bethany Beach as a college student at University of Delaware in the mid-70s listening to a lot of the same music. My mom was right! It was a very good and memorable time with him.
I’m glad it sparked memories.
Updating:
Yep in studio it can be re-done until it’s just right, and there’s not the same audience distractions etc.
A more recent example, from the 1990s:
Album/studio:
Live: