Peter Frampton

Peter Frampton was one of those quintessential '70s success stories -- a fast burn, a hazy comedown, and lots of embarrassing stains afterward. A journeyman En glish guitarist formerly of the Herd and Humble Pie, with several dull studio albums behind him and no fans to speak of, Peter suddenly scored one of the decade's biggest hits with Frampton Comes Alive! He had a simple formula: frizzy blond ringlets, shirts that probably didn't even have buttons, mellow romantic ballads, long guitar solos, even longer electric-piano solos, a strange guitar/voicebox contraption that could say "that's all roit!!" (which we all found inexplicably exciting at the time), and an audience full of kids in dialogue with all the machines in the strangely inspiring techno-utopian epic "Do You Feel Like We Do?" There must have been a killer light show or something, too, judging from the crowd squeals that popped up during the otherwise none-too-rocking boogie jams. "Baby I Love Your Way" was a superbly goopy acoustic ballad, "Show Me the Way" a slightly tougher sequel, and Frampton sold millions of records.

I'm in You was rushed out before the Framp had a chance to catch his breath. The title song was a nice goosebump-raising piano ballad, but side two had perhaps the flimsiest music ever passed off by a major-label rock superstar, gasping to the finish line with a pair of desperately time-killing Motown-cover jams. Cameron Crowe's liner notes proclaimed I'm in You "bloody great," but it was actually pretty darn bad, and it stopped the golden boy cold. Frampton later appeared, looking roughed up, in the Bee Gees' film version of Sgt. Pepper. To his credit, he never stopped making music, though, and finally got around to Frampton Comes Alive II in 1995. Beware of Anthology and The Very Best of, which present the hits in their inferior original studio versions; Greatest Hits and Classics, Vol. 12 do better just by adding the song "I'm in You" to the highlights of Frampton Comes Alive! "Do You Feel Like We Do?" got used brilliantly in the 1993 Richard Linklater movie Dazed and Confused as an endless 8-track loop humming in the background, which in the summer of 1976 is exactly what it was. (ROB SHEFFIELD)

From the 2004 The New Rolling Stone Album Guide