YouTube: rb.gy/zki6j2
It sounds straight off Humble Pie's "Rockin' the Fillmore," but there are more guitars!
I saw this album on Spotify a few months back. I thought it was an ancient recording, after all Peter Frampton still had hair on the cover, and he's been bald for quite a while, he even jokes about losing his hair on one of the contained tracks.
No, this was recorded recently, in 2022. And I played a few numbers back in 2023, but two days ago I needed something otherworldly, as in not connected to my present life, something to take me away, something that was self-contained, that didn't remind of that which I did not want to remember. And I ran through a few acts in my head, and then I thought of Frampton and said to myself, "That'll work." And then I was confronted with the "Royal Hall" album in the Amazon app. And I said, "Why not?"
The opening cut is "Somethin's Happenin'," the title track of Frampton's third solo album, which represented a loss in momentum. But with "Frampton" in 1975, Peter came roaring back. And Peter usually opens his shows with this song, and I've heard him perform it, but I was listening to the version on "Albert Hall" and the tone of the guitars just got to me. They were different from the recording, and combined with the energy of the playing it becomes something else entirely, it breathes in a way the studio recording does not.
So then I went to "All I Want to Be (Is By Your Side)," the second side opener on the solo debut, my favorite Frampton track, which was given short shrift on "Comes Alive!" Sure, it was great, an interesting acoustic reworking, but the original is an aural journey that goes on for six and a half minutes, it's a float in a boat down a river in the dark. Safe, but enticing, exciting. And this version on "Albert Hall" is even longer! It clocks in at over nine minutes. It's a journey that sets you free, especially the instrumental second half.
Now I'm cottoning to the album in a way I hadn't previously, not that I'd given it a good listen, and I decided to skip to the last track, the definitive Frampton live cut, "Do You Feel Like We Do." I expected it to be hackneyed, a far cry from the career breakthrough of the original concert recording. But that was not the case, it was as alive and vibrant as the rendition from '76. And, once again the tones, the instruments had additional color.
And yesterday I decided to dive in deeper to songs that I wasn't sure I wanted to hear. I mean how many more times can I listen to "Show Me the Way" or "Baby, I Love Your Way"? So I played track seven, "(I'll Give You) Money," from the aforementioned "Frampton," a good track, but not one of my favorites. I wanted melody, not groove. But the intro guitar was so heavy and crunchy, evidencing rock and roll, and then with a lead intertwining, dancing all over the track...
Now the original studio recording of "(I'll Give You) Money" is a typical album cut, four and a half minutes long. And that's how long I expected the "Albert Hall" version to be.
And you know how it is listening to music, you lose focus, it's there, in your mind, but you're thinking about, doing something else.
And that's when I noticed that this live version of "(I'll Give You) Money" never ended. The band was still playing. All the constraints were thrown away. Radio time limits. Worry about the audience going to the bathroom. It's like the band doesn't care about the audience at all. It's not a performance so much as satisfaction for the players themselves. This is music!
This is what concerts were like in the late sixties and early seventies. Sure, there were AM acts, playing the hits. But the FM acts expanded their repertoire, didn't match the studio recordings. And now, with so many of the bands of yore, never mind those of today, playing to hard drive, these experimental journeys are passé, history.
Along with the guitar. Sure, we have metal acts playing their axes, but that's something different, that's noisy, in-your-face, offensive to many. But the kind of guitar playing on "(I'll Give You) Money," on the whole "Albert Hall" album, is not that, it's like Dead Sea Scrolls, the past come back to life. I mean Clapton goes on the road occasionally and does something similar, but he's constantly trying to fade into the background, when a true guitar showman is drawn to the spotlight.
And Jimmy Page no longer plays live.
If you're of my vintage, you'll listen to this "Albert Hall" recording and you'll think about all the shows you went to back in the day. Sans production, not even a light show, maybe not even a backdrop. The band came out in their street clothes and they spoke through their music, and we loved them for it. They were Gods. When you sell out to the corporation, when you're active on social media, the internet, you come back to earth, you're just one of us. But these guitar heroes of yore...
And we're familiar with Frampton's story... Finally breaks big and plays to the teenybopper audience, focuses on his looks, and it all falls apart. And usually that's the end of the story. Maybe you go out on the road and play your hits to ever dwindling audiences, but almost no one retrenches, marches forward, tests the limits and comes back. Sure, Frampton put out those delectable instrumental albums, but the "Albert Hall" album transcends those. It puts Frampton in the pantheon, as one of the greatest rock guitarists in history.
But he also writes and sings.
But it's the band that makes the entire "Albert Hall" album shine. It's not only Frampton, they jell, bounce off each other, make the music that rained down all that money way back when, when music was the most powerful artistic endeavor, when rock stars were as rich as anybody on Earth, and acted like it. They were beholden to no one.
And this version of "(I'll Give You) Money" goes on for more than twelve minutes. And you'll be intrigued, possessed the whole way through, it squeezes out the rest of the world, the music is not a diversion, it's life itself.
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