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Peter Frampton — 469

ALBUM: Frampton Comes Alive  (1976)

OK, those who were teens in the 1970s, get out of your La-Z-Boys and find the  vinyl collection (warped and mildewed) you have stashed in the garage or basement closet.

Pull out your ‘Frampton  Comes Alive.’  I’m talking mostly  to white boys here because High School musical tastes were as segregated  as church. Except for the back parking lot crowd, where integrated groups would be listening to  Rick James AND Led  Zeppelin. Or Emerson Lake and Palmer AND George Clinton. But it seemed every white kid 15 to 18 years-old had Frampton Comes Alive in 1976.   I’m basing my anecdotal recollections on my own high school in Athens, Ga.  And there is obvious hyperbole here, but do you know how many records he sold?

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Frampton Comes Alive! sold 11 million worldwide and was the best-selling album of 1976  in the US, with 8 million copies sold. It’s been called the biggest selling live album of all time.
Frampton wasn’t particularly innovative, But  he was  good at what he he was doing — playing rocking guitar and looking good in an unbuttoned shirt.

The former Humble Pie guitar player on this album shared to the wider world a vocorder which allows you to sing with the guitar. It sounded a little like a robot as Peter would sing: Do you feel like we do?

My theory on how Frampton  Comes Alive became one of the best selling albums of all  time is the tremendous crossover with females and males. Not sure how to explain that.