I was introduced to the works of Peter Frampton in the following manner: when I was in 6th or 7th grade, I overheard my friend Holly's brother Michael, or possibly, her cousin Ernie, say "Peter Frampton is only about the best guitarist who ever lived." This was the late-ish 70s, and we were in rural Vermont, so most of the boys (and girls) did not have access to much of what was happening in the music scene. I presume this statement was based on heresay or derived from propoganda distributed by the Frampton publicity machine. Specifically, he probably heard Casey Kasem say it on AT-40. To be fair, it was only a matter of days until Frampton was all over the radio dial.
ACT 2
My father fell hard for Peter Frampton and his way of "making his guitar talk". Dad fell for a lot of the latest artists during that time. My son Drew claims that his friend Kevin B. doesn't have the ability to know which bands are and are not "bitches' bands" and the same held very true for dear old Dad. Case in point: he pretty much flipped out on my little brother for scratching a 45 of the Bay City Rollers' hit single "Saturday Night" (yes, the song that spells out the world Saturday). Dad also loved "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago and "Weekend in New England" by Barry Manilow. We now know those songs are for bitches only (a/k/a girls and women). Obviously, a cute guitarist with long flowing hair and a cache of extremely lame songs was best suited to a female audience, but Frampton had us all fooled at that time. I'm telling you, some publicist was presenting this guy as a guitar legend and we all bought into it for a while. Anyway, at the tail end of the Frampton Comes Alive craze, Dad was courting my stepmother Joan, who had teenagers to impress. Wouldn't you know that slick so-and-so won them over by bringing his copy of Frampton Comes Alive over to their house so he could appear hip and cool!!!!
ACT 3
I'll get straight to the point. My friend Annette and her husband Joe were watching something on t.v. with Peter Frampton singing live. I believe this took place in this millenium. The next day, Annette uttered the following words: "Me and Joe were astounded when they actually showed Peter Frampton mouthing the words 'do you feel..... like I do' into the microphone." It took me a minute, but I realized that there was someone on this planet who still believed Frampton had, indeed, made his guitar talk all these years. Bless her heart. And Joe's.
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