On January 6th, 1976, Peter Frampton released his legendary live album Frampton Comes Alive! Before this monumental album, Frampton released four solo albums with little commercial success. With Alive! Frampton earned three top 15 singles and the album itself hit the #1 spot and stayed there for ten weeks. It was the best-selling album of 1976, selling over 8 million copies in the US and is one of the best-selling live albums to date, with estimated sales of 11 million worldwide. Frampton broke barriers by making the album almost completely live, which was unheard of at the time. It was ranked #41 on Rolling Stone's "50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time" list.
The Conversation
if there's a mount rushmore for classic
rock you're in it and you're in it
because of .
[Music]
when he released frampton comes alive in
he went from being an opening act to an
international star
seemingly overnight
this was an incredible year by anybody's
standards and in many ways was the
making
of the peter brampton name right if
there's a mount rushmore for classic
rock you're in it and you read it
because in right
but what happened
things went downhill after that well i
think
there's a lot of theories um there's a
lot of theories for why
comes alive were so successful
and then
not only did it go to number one the
album and stay there for the summer
it became
the number one selling record in america
of all time it beat carol king's
tapestry record
and when i hit number one it was
exciting when i was told
two months three months later you're the
biggest
thing since sliced bread basically
you've sold more than anybody else
that's when i got scared
and i thought i've now got to compete
with myself
myself
and
it was
it was a scary
scary thought
among your top songs and i say among
your top songs you've had so many baby i
love your way
did you write that quickly or was it
written over a long period of time
it was quick i've gone to
the bahamas and um i go down there for
three weeks i got to write the album the
frampton album the one before the live
record i couldn't come up with anything
decent in the first two weeks now i have
a week maybe eight days
to write the album that's what it was
like in those days
and um so i got up the beginning of the
last week i
gotta write something so i picked up my
guitar
and in the morning
i wrote show me the way
which was the first hit of comes a lot
right
and then i thought well
that's that's pretty good i like that
one maybe uh maybe i can write something
else
today so
i had a little bit of swim and
had some lunch and then picked up the
guitar again and as the sun was setting
i wrote
shadows grow so long before my eyes as
they're moving across the page and that
was
baby i love your way and i wrote them
both
in the same day
and um
that's what we say in the publishing
business that's a really good day
to say the least
[Music]