After a focus on loyalty last week, why not follow with commentary on faithfulness to one’s music.  Last Thursday, June 4 at 8:00 p.m., Rachelle, Marisa and I attended the Tribeca Film Festival for the premiere and 1st Screening at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center of Frampton - a documentary (view the trailer) about guitarist/singer/songwriter and finally a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Peter Frampton. Its impetus revolved around the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his 1976 record-setting Frampton Comes Alive! album.  I became an avid fan the year before with the release of his 4th studio LP, Frampton.  The song, “Nowhere’s Too Far (for My Baby),” and others caught my attention listening to WNEW-FM and I got hooked; I bought the LP in May of that year.

That June I saw him headline at the Schaefer Music Festival at Central Park’s Wollman Rink and  the following month at the Calderone Concert Hall inHempstead.  I quickly started buying the back catalogue starting with his 3rd LP, Something’s Happening later that summer and his 2d LP,  Frampton’s Camel as Autumn ended. That October I saw Peter for the third time live, this time opening for Rod Stewart and the Faces at the Nassau Coliseum.  The 4th time that year, Peter headlined the WNEW Christmas Concert Cerebral Palsy Benefit at Avery Fisher Hall (Eric Carmen was the opener.).  I purchased Frampton Comes Alive when came out the following January (1976).  A month later found me in the front row for his show at Queens College’s Colden Auditorium.  Eight months later I saw him headline Madison Square Garden and again there August of the following year.  Soon after he endure a near fatal car crash.  It was nearly 31 years before I saw him again — as an opening act to Jethro Tull — at the Jones Beach Theatre. A year later we caught him at Westbury. Two year later, with my son Jonathan, I saw him perform the 35th Anniversary of his original FCA show at The Beacon Theatre, including songs that did not make the live LP.  I saw him several more time the ensuing years including the September 2019 Peter Frampton Finale - The Farewell Tour at the Garden, so billed because of his diagnosis of Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM), a degenerative muscle disease that he expected would seriously inhibit his ability to play guitar.  Through his own hard work and treatment Peter found “new” ways to keep playing and toured again; Marisa and I saw the Never Say Never Tour the Summer of 2023 at the Capitol Theater in Portchester and the Let’s Do It Again Tour just over a year ago at the same venue.

Following Frampton over the years and reading his memoir, Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir, during COVID, I felt like I knew him well.  Nonetheless, I found the film directed by Frampton’s own longtime bandleader Rob Arthur an uplifting portrait of a legendary guitarist and singer as he continues to  perform. The British musician recounts, in his own words, how he first came to prominence in the UK as a teenager in The Herd and then Humble Pie with Steve Marriott leaving when he felt the success of the latter band’s live Rockin’ the Fillmore LP would limit his growth as an artist.  While the book covered how this rock icon lost everything before rebuilding his career first as lead guitarist for boyhood friend David Bowie; the documentary made it real with live clips of that period.  The film features interviews not just with Frampton but his first wife, Mary Lindes Lovett, brother Clive and three children - Julian, Mia and Jade Frampton; also Ringo Starr, Matt Pinfield, Bill Wyman, Glyn Johns, Tom Morello, Sheryl Crow, Alice Cooper, Herb Alpert, Kate Hudson, Cameron Crowe, Richard Daltrey, Chris Lord-Alge, Tommy Shaw, Jerry Shirley, Nancy Wilson, Andrew Bown, his specialist Dr. Lisa Christopher-Stine, Rodney Eckerman, Karen Glauber, Bob Harris, Lisa Jenkins, Ken Levitan, Donnie Lewis, Chris Kimsey, George Underwood and, of course, Rob Arthur.

The film was not the highlight. Following the showing, we got treated to interviews of Peter and director Rob Arthur.