The album Peter Frampton regretted releasing
Success sometimes can seem just as disconcerting as failure. Although it might be nice to have so many people fawn over the music one makes, there’s also a mantle of pressure that comes with trying to make lightning strike twice in the same place. Despite being known as one of the most in-demand guitarists of his time, Peter Frampton admitted that one of his most high-profile albums never felt right for him.
Before he had been known as a solo star, though, Frampton was already blowing minds as part of the blues act Humble Pie. While the group weren’t necessarily known to give artists like Crea a run for their money, albums like Smokin’ struck a nerve with rock bands that wanted to hear something a bit heavier than the psychedelia they had spent years listening to.
After playing on Rockin’ the Fillmore, Frampton knew that he was going to need to take his talents elsewhere if he was going to become a legend on his own. While there were plenty of opportunities to create hits on tracks like ‘Show Me The Way’ and ‘Baby I Love Your Way’, no studio could do justice to what Frampton did naturally live.
Taking a page out of his old band’s playbook, Frampton Comes Alive would become one of the most venerated guitar records of the 1970s. Instead of remaining faithful to the studio version, the best aspects of the album come from the sounds of the group jamming onstage, letting the song ‘Do You Feel Like We Do’ spread out for over 15 minutes, all while Frampton delivers a clinic on how to use a talk box.
While the project would become one of the most unexpected successes of Frampton’s career, he eventually had the label calling for what he had in the can for the next proper studio release. Feeling the pressure from the suits breathing down his neck, Frampton would turn in I’m In You, which did away with a lot of the ramshackle pieces that made his live album great.
Looking back on it, Frampton would say that he didn’t want to record the version that listeners eventually got, telling Guitar World, “I didn’t want to make I’m In You. I didn’t even want to hand it in; I didn’t like it. I knew it wasn’t good enough, but everybody was ‘Rush, rush, rush.’ I wanted to wait until I had the best material I could come up with, however long that would have taken.”
Aside from not matching his playing ability, Frampton also blames the lacklustre album on losing a handful of his ideas in the shuffle. Although he may have the skeleton of what could have been a great follow-up, Frampton ended up misplacing one of the cassettes that he was working with, leading to him relying on his memory and only salvaging the songs that he had properly thought out.
While the hype may have sustained Frampton for the first few singles, things slowly began to dwindle afterwards as fans started to become disinterested in the new direction he was taking things. Although Frampton may have danced with perfection on the live stage, I’m With You was a case of him getting way too big, way too fast.
