From 2011 to 2012, Frampton toured the world in celebration of the 35th anniversary of his iconic 1976 live album, Frampton Comes Alive! Each tour stop on the tour was divided into two sets: one featuring Frampton Comes Alive! performed in its entirety and a second including songs from throughout his career.
As a result, the DVD and CD feature classics like “Show Me The Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do,” plus songs from his most recent albums, 2010's Thank You Mr Churchill and the all-instrumental Fingerprints from 2006.
FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton, which was directed and produced by Pierre and François Lamoureux, is the result of two February 2012 shows — one at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee and one at New York City's Beacon Theater.
"We filmed recorded two nights for the DVD," Frampton told GuitarWorld.com late last month. "It took me about three weeks to go through all the songs and work out which ones I was going to choose — and then edit and put them together in order to get them ready to mix. That took me three weeks. I kept changing my mind [laughs]! There was a lot of work there. We mixed the three-hour DVD in Nashville.
"After that, I went straight into choosing — out of 116 shows we recorded during the Frampton Comes Alive! 35 tour — the best track, whether it was from Wallah Wallah, Toronto or London. We'd made a log book of every show we'd done on the tour. We put a set list in a binder and marked the date and then marked off what songs we liked as a band. What I found was that after a while, there were these shows where everyone in the band would say, "That was great for me," so we just marked that whole night or whole first set or second set.
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"In the end I had about 40 of those! [laughs]. That still meant I had to go through 40 three-hour shows and try to remember what'd I'd listened to, and it's enough to have to listen to "Do You Feel" 40 times! I don't think I'll ever play it again [laughs]. So yeah, that's where the work was. It took months just to go through all that. There's only so much you can listen to at once before your head starts to explode. But I was very diligent and went through everything."
It's important to note that the DVD and CD are not the same shows.
"There's actually a couple more numbers on the 3CD set because we didn't do all the same numbers every night," Frampton said. "It's slightly longer than the DVD. And there's only five repeat tracks out of the Beacon and Pabst Theater, which were the two DVD nights. There were five numbers we chose from those two shows that also appear on the CDs. There are 30 tracks on the CD, and 25 are different from the DVD, which I think is pretty good."
Look for more of this conversation with Frampton on GuitarWorld.com — and get ready for a Dear Guitar Hero feature in a future issue of Guitar World magazine.
Damian is Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World magazine. In past lives, he was GW’s managing editor and online managing editor. He's written liner notes for major-label releases, including Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'The Complete Epic Recordings Collection' (Sony Legacy) and has interviewed everyone from Yngwie Malmsteen to Kevin Bacon (with a few memorable Eric Clapton chats thrown into the mix). Damian, a former member of Brooklyn's The Gas House Gorillas, was the sole guitarist in Mister Neutron, a trio that toured the U.S. and released three albums. He now plays in two NYC-area bands.
