[Our English correspondent Steve Clarke granted audience was with an Peter before just his triumphal British These tour. of his thoughts. are some -Ed.]

Time really does change things. Take a listen to Peter Frampton talking back in the lean year of '73 when he'd just started work on cracking the American market:

"It's not that I'm neglecting Britain, but you really have to break America first these days. If you go out in Britain, you lose money. It's that simple. Nearly every gig I've played here has been a commercial loss. For various reasons I feel nervous about playing for a British audience, but I'd be sorry if it turned out to be financially impossible ever to do so again."

Prophetic words indeed—and wholly relevant since Frampton returns to Britain this week after a three year absence during which time he's broken

America in unprecedented style.

To think, last time he played in Britain,

supporting Uriah Heep, he picked up

around 50 pounds a gig.

The tradition of "unknown" British acts conquering the New World and returning to the Old Country victorious started back in the '60s with Cream.

1 Led Zeppelin and the Faces did it that

MB| way too, and more recently Bad Com-

\ : pany-though in their case they had a

ready-made British audience.

But none of those acts returned with |@jrai§ an album that had topped the three 19 leading U.S. album charts for nearly Sy four months, with five and a half million H sales and still growing. As a recent | issue of Record World put it in bizspeak, Frampton Comes Alive is still "gaining momentum."

"It's Just

got completely out of hand. You read about it, but you don't think ltfs you."

One estimate says Frampton has played to well over a million kids in around 100 performances.

Three weeks ago the record sold a million copies in one week!

Doesn't make sense, does it? All those people buying an album that had been on the market for months? As Frampton himself told me, "It's just got completely out of hand. You read about it, but you don't think it's you."

That was in Miami, Florida, in early September. Since then, Frampton Comes Alive has broken Carole King's 1971 record of having Tapestry at number one for 14 consecutive weeks. It now ranks as one of the top 10 best selling rock albums of all time.

Sales from records, tapes and tickets have grossed Frampton an outrageous 50 million dollars so far this year. He's been touring continually all year long, and one estimate says he's played to well over a million kids in around* 100 performances.

Tonight's gig at the Florida Stadium (a baseball arena, ideally suited to presenting live rock 'n' roll) holds 22,000 fans. Needless to say, it's the first time any rock performer has sold the venue out.

Sickening, eh? Well, no, because as anyone associated with the Golden Boy will tell you' he remains totally unaffected by it all, save for the occasional mild outburst of paranoia. For instance, the Frampton entourage leave from the rear entrance of the hotel for the 14 minute drive to the gig. And as we

arrive in the stadium area Frampton instructs one of his management team to lock the car doors.

It wasn't as if any of the crowd had started pointing in Peter's direction yet, but still, with a Face like that you've got to be careful. After all, this is the same guy who, while with the Herd in 1967, waschased around Streatham Ice Rink by a contingent of overzealous admirers.

A roadie tells me Frampton is a damn sight better at handling the Success than any other superstar he's worked with.

Certainly there's no arrogance or conceit about him. After the gig I think Frampton's actually anxious to know what your reporter thinks of the show—after all; he says, the gig I'd seen two months earlier at Philadelphia was hardly representative, given the size of the place and the fact that his drummer w'as out of action, with an under-rehearsed Andy Newmark sitting in. t

And manager Dee Anthony says in extravagant Brooklynese, "He's so little, yet he's so big. He handles it so well. He's weathered it very nicely."

Anthony's role in Frampton's success story shouldn't-be underestimated. He and his company, Bandana, plan

Frampton's affairs in meticulous detail.

Anthony's son Bill handles the on-the-

road aspect with maximum smooth-

ness. He's been to every Frampton gig this year—save for one when his wife

was giving birth. There's no posing,

often loved by those close to a rock suc-

cess, but a phlegmatic approach to the whole thing.

Take Frampton's work schedules:

although he's toured all year long, gigs

are always planned so that he has sev-

eral days' rest between each three or four-day assault.

The Florida gig is one of the several

aimed (successfully) at turning key

regions in the Deep South on to Frampton—an area hitherto not one of his strongest. Anthony explains that it's not his strategy to hype frampton—and when the hype does come it's after the gig or series of gigs.

He handies it so well. He s so little, yet he's so big. Dee Anthony

In Octdb®* frampton played three nights at Hew York's Madison Square Garden to round off his 1976 American success. The gigs were sold out quietly three months earlier, in July, when they were advertised discreetly and uniquely by publishing a telephone number which, when called, told fans of the availability of tickets in a message recorded by Frampton himself. Immediately prior to the concerts many of New York's buses were plastered with Frampton posters. Anthony calls it post-hype.

It seems to be working.

Naturally Anthony can be heavy when he thinks Frampton's interests are threatened. Tonight's gig is being filmed for a promotional film to be shown to the relevent record company and media people immediately prior to the current European tour. When one of the crew suggests that Frampton do an edited version of his lengthy setcloser "Do You Feel Like We Do" (the current single), Anthony isn't pleased and prods the film crew member's belly to prove it.

He has taught Frampton how to entertain a crowd—in a relationship not unlike that between a football coach and player.

He's up there behind the stage with Frampton before he goes on, giving him a pre-fight run-through. "I've seen him do it with Steve Marriott and Greg Lake. Now he's doing it with Peter," observes a man from the record company.

Finally Frampton is ready to go on. And immediately he makes contact with the screaming crowd. "Good evening, Miami! How are you?" he shouts exuberantly. His small frame is clad in satin pants and a flowered top —tasteful flash. Whoever said he looks like Tinker Bell got it right all the way down the line./. . the sun-bleached curls, the boyish grin showing off immaculate teeth and the Face itself. No wonder this crowd is creaming.

Positioned only yards from the perfortner himself, I'm able to witness the

way Frampton works. He continually attempts to make an intimate one-foone contact with the crowd, who relate to him easily. OK, so he isn't saying a whole lot, but his I'm Young and Pretty, Been In Love, Hurt, But I'm All Right Now stance is actually quite intoxicating, containing a high degree of energy and freshness.

After seeing so many half-hearted, tired performers in the last year or so, this comes as the proverbial shaft of sunlight. His enthusiasm is indefatigable. You'd think this performance was his first and not his 100th or whatever.

With drummer John Siomos back in the line-up, his band transcend the role of back-up musicians. You never get the impression that Siomos, bassist Stanley Sheldon or Bob Mayo (keyboards, doubling on guitars) are anything other than in sympathy with what Frampton is doing.

He opens his set with two solo pieces, "All I Want To Be"—a gentle low-key love song—and an instrumental, "Penny For Your Thoughts," which is vaguely rag-time, then the band join him for the third number, "Something's^ Happening."

Musically, from this point, Frampton's guitar takes over, with Mayo getting a look in when he plays a great acoustic piano solo during "Do You Feel Like We Do"—the set's closer.

Throughout, Frampton looks glad to be onstage, leaving his audience at fever pitch after "Do You Feel Like We Do." Built around a lengthy jagged riff, melodic rather than skullcrashing, the number receives the biggest cheer of any—including "Show Me The Way."

The song seems as much the audience's as his. They love it when he asks them the title question, hand cocked to his right ear, awaiting the bellowed response "Do you feel like we do/We feel good", and so do they.

To them Frampton is the one. The chicks like him 'cause they fancy him and the guys like him 'cause they wish they looked like him.* And yet his performance is without any sexuality. Unlike most other male rock superstars, he doesn't come on the stud. Like McCartney in the '60s, Frampton is the kind of guy any girl could take home to mommy.

He doesn't post a threat and yet his cuteness doesn't prevent him from succeeding on a musical level. And here there's some similarity with Elton John —and McCartney, the three of them (not coincidentally) America's most popular rock stars right now.

Before "Do You Feel Like We Do" progresses to the closing riff, Frampton makes a point of shouting, "I want to TURN TO PAGE 68. thank you." That goes down a treat too, and when he leaves the stage the audience is really hot. Peter's lookalike lady Penny joins the rest of the stadium in applauding. "The magic's returned now that John's back," she shouts over to me. "That's why they don't get bored."

CReem

TURN TO PAGE 68

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 42.

FRAMPTON

Anthony is up in the backstage area again, encouraging Frampton. After just long enough, ne bounds back on stage footballer-style, the energy and the enthusiasm still bubbling. "Shine

On", "White Sugar" (it's not all good clean fun) and "Jumping Jack Flash" close the show.

Frampton doesn't make it to bed until eight the next morning, getting well and truly wasted. I ride out to the airport with him just to see how he's viewing his return to Britain.

Yes, he's surprised that the London shows sold out so quickly and, no, he isn't going to change the set at all.

He says: "I'm just gojng to go out and do the show and feel as confident as I do playing in America."

Peter had intended to spend ten days in the studio working on a follow-up to Frampton (his last studio album) before coming to Europe, but things have become hectic and work on the next elpee won't start until after the European tour.

Surprisingly, when you consider his workschedule, he isn't short of material. He tells me: "I'm not the sort of person who can write on the road. After the gig you're either wasted and you just want to go to bed, or you have to fly to another gig that night. There's just never any time. The only time I write is when I've got three or four days on my own. That's when I want to see a guitar or a piano. Until that point I couldn't care less whether I play guitar or not.

"On the road I play so much that for at least four days afterwards I don't want to see a guitar. The ideal situation for me is to go away—to Nassau (Anthony owns property there) or somewhere—get some sun, get healthy again and not get pressured into writing but just feel like playing the guitar again."

Talk about pressure, what about the pressure of coming up with an album which will be as successful as the current one?

"To start with there was pressure —when it first zoomed up the charts. But now it's just got completely out of hand, so I can't compare anything I do after this to this album. It's got too big. Therefore, there's no real pressure, not as much as if it had just been a gold album. It isn't. It's like a quadruple platinum," he says matter-of-factly.

I know. ((

(Reprint courtesy of New Musical Express.)