“Putting a song together can be quite painful.” Peter Frampton reveals five tracks that were worth the hurt.
BY JOE BOSSO
WHEN PETER FRAMPTON co-founded Humble Pie in 1969, he was already regarded as one of England’s hottest guitarists, but his songwriting skills hadn’t yet blossomed. He contributed a number of strong cuts to the four studio albums he recorded with the band during his brief, two-year tenure, but it wasn’t until he turned solo and began issuing his own albums, starting with 1972’s Winds of Change, that his compositional chops began to equal his skills as an instrumentalist.
“I can’t say I always enjoy the process of writing,” he says. “I do like coming up with bits — a riff or a chord pattern. Sometimes a title comes to me that sparks something. But putting a song together and actually finishing it can be quite painful, especially when it comes to writing lyrics. That can take a while. It isn’t until I’ve got the whole thing down and I’ve got a little demo version of a song that I can feel enjoyment.”
In 1976, Frampton’s monster-selling concert recording, Frampton Comes Alive!, was something of an unofficial greatest-hits collection, containing the tastiest gems from his previous solo albums, among them, “Show Me the Way,” “Baby, I Love Your Way,” “Lines on My Face” and “Do You Feel Like We Do.” Although the two-disc set spent 10 weeks atop the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart, none of its singles hit number one. At the height of his fame in 1977, Frampton came this-close to that mark when the title track from his studio album I’m in You reached number two on Billboard’s Hot 100.
“Everybody thought ‘I’m in You’ would hit number one because the live album was enormous,” the guitarist tells Guitar Player. “It was the lead single from I’m in You, which certainly isn’t my favorite album or anywhere near my best, but it’s a great song and I thought it deserved to be a hit.
“The truth is,” he continues, “I never thought about chart positions and things like that. After I left Humble Pie in 1971, I didn’t give any thought to having hits. That just wasn’t what I concentrated on. I was more concerned with being inspired, and writing good songs and making sure they were recorded right. My attitude was, ‘Do I like the song?’ It always came down to that.”
After announcing that he was suffering from a progressive muscle disorder called IBM (inclusion body myositis), Frampton embarked on a 2019 “farewell tour,” which fortunately didn
