Frampton's Guitar Comes Alive!

[captainsblog]

Wrong Pete in the icon, I know, but the story's too awesome to hold up on that account.

Over the weekend, Toronto's Jazz.fm played a track from Peter Frampton's 2006 album Fingerprints. The host had to identify him as "yes, THAT Peter Frampton," because he's been outside the centre of media attention for so long.

Has a recording artist ever hit his peak so fast, and then fallen so quickly from it, as this guy did with Frampton Comes Alive!- and with a live album, yet? Granted, I had pretty crummy musical taste in the mid-70s, and had barely heard of Humble Pie at the time, much less recognized his contributions to it, but "Show Me the Way" and "Do You Feel Like We Do" became anthems of those final Island-based years for me. His success never sustained after that- his followup studio album, I'm in You, became best known (for me, anyway) for Frank Zappa spoofing its title track on Sheik Yerbouti with an opening song titled "I Have Been In You." Then he bet the wrong hand with the Bee Gees, becoming part of their disastrous filmed adaptation of Sergeant Pepper, and before long, he'd been relegated to the Land Of Where Are They Now?

As did his Alive! and Humble Pie guitar- literally- until now, as Jazz.fm's website came to tell the tale, from just this past weekend:

After 30 years of believing it was destroyed, guitarist Peter Frampton has been reunited with the guitar he used on many of his iconic recordings including the seminal 1976 live album "Frampton Comes Alive."

The guitar was lost in 1980 when a cargo plane carrying the guitar crashed on take-off in Venezuela and burned up. Unbeknownst to anyone someone picked the 1954 Les Paul from the wreckage and sold it to a musician on the island of Curacao.

The guitar would have gone on unnoticed if not for a customs agent on the island who repairs guitars in his spare time.

The agent, Donald Valentina, was asked to repair the instrument and noticed that it had an unusal third pick-up and burn marks on the neck. Valentina suspected it might be the lost Frampton guitar and consulted with a die-hard Frampton fan in the Netherlands as well as sending pictures of the guitar to Frampton himself.

For 2 years Vantina tried to purchase the instrument from the musician who was not willing to sell. However, falling on harder times the guitarist finally agreed to sell the guitar. Not having the money he approached the Curacao tourist board to see if they would foot the bill.

Luckily the man he spoke to tourist board official Ghatim Kabbara. An amateur guitarist in his own right, and an admirer of Frampton agreed to use roughly $5,000 of the boards funds to purchase the guitar with the condition that he and Valentina return the guitar to Frampton.

Not only was the guitar used on "Frampton Comes Alive," it was his essentially the only guitar he used through the 70s, playing it on Humble Pie records, all of his solo records and recording sessions with George Harrison, Harry Nilsson and John Entwhistle.

Frampton hopes to play the guitar again soon, giving it to the Gibson Custom shop in Nashville for minor repairs.

Is that cool, or what? It almost makes up for the sadness of realizing that the instrumental track of his I heard, from that Fingerprints collection, was backed by only one of his longtime mates:

His band consisted of drummer Shawn Fichter, guitarist Audley Freed, bassist John Regan (Frampton's life long best friend, and keyboardist/guitarist Rob Arthur, and guest artists such as members of Pearl Jam, Hank Marvin, and his bassist on Frampton Comes Alive!, Stanley Sheldon - the only member of the backing band on that album still alive.

If that guitar ever Comes Alive in his hands again, I think I'm almost compelled to listen to how it sounds now:)

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Congratulations, btw, to the majority of readers who guessed the mystery phone story from the other day: it got buried, behind a stack of deposit slips, in my car door. It's feeling much better now;)