Featured Essay: Peter Frampton and the Reason My Mom and I Stopped Discussing Music

by Steve Goble

It was autumn in 1976, and 14-year-old me was desperately hoping my mom would leave the room before Peter Frampton blurted out a very naughty word.

I was listening to “Frampton Comes Alive!” The live double-album was the huge hit of the year, and happened to be the very first album I’d ever purchased. At that moment in ‘76, it was the only album I owned. And if my mom heard him say what he was about to say, it might well be the last album I’d own until I could afford to move out on my own. My mom, the daughter of a Kentucky railroad man and part-time Baptist preacher, was not about to put up with that word.

If you know and love the album, you know the part I’m talking about. Frampton was coming out of the slow section of “Do You Feel Like We Do” and that long, wonderful talkbox-fueled guitar solo. Bob Mayo was laying down some cool quiet keys, Stanley Sheldon’s bass was thumping sustained whole notes and John Siomos was backing it all with a nice tappy-tap on the high-hat, a pattern I have played on my own drum kit many times since. On top of it all, Frampton was melding guitar and talk-box into weird and ethereal sounds, including audible words.

“Do you feel?” The robotic voice asked. Yeah, I felt. We all felt that in that year of 1976.

And my mom was standing right there, listening along with me, with no idea at all that Frampton was building to a moment – the triumphant “fuck you!” that would launch the song into its thunderous concluding segment.

It’s not like I could ask my mom to leave the room, you see. I was in her bedroom, the only room in the house that had a stereo at the time. It was mostly used to play Merle Haggard and Conway Twitty while my mom slept and my dad worked overnight shifts at the paper mill. She’d usually set it up to play LPs on repeat, so I’d sneak into her room at night and flip the record when I’d heard “If We Make It Through December” one too many times. I learned how to do it quietly, without waking her, which was good. Mom did not sleep well when dad worked overnight. The music helped.

I think my late-night record flipping was one of the reasons she’d graciously allowed me to use her stereo. That, and she was a pretty good mom anyway. She’d bought a catcher’s mitt to help me learn how to pitch. I never threw super hard, but I developed pretty good control, thanks to mom’s patience behind the plate.

Even at this moment, with her listening to my music with me, as tense as it made me, she was merely being a good mom. She was curious to see what her son was so excited about. And she was asking questions.

“Is his hair pink?” She was holding the album cover.

“I think that’s just the stage lighting,” I said.

“Is his guitar talking?” “Sort of,” I mumbled, with a brief explanation of the technology, at least as I understood it at the time. I didn’t really know how the talk box worked. I only knew it sounded cool as hell.

And I knew what was coming, because I’d already played the album several times after the long walk downtown to the drug store where I’d plunked down money I’d earned mowing lawns and doing chores for the elderly neighbors across the street. I was so happy to learn the rest of the album stood up to the hits I’d heard on the radio, “Show Me the Way” and “Baby, I Love Your Way.” And I was ecstatic to learn the album version of “Do You Feel Like We Do” was longer and cooler than the abridged radio version. The album, and that song in particular, provided outstanding air guitar inspiration, with Frampton’s melodic and meticulously phrased solos running in my head non-stop.

And now my mom was about to hear Frampton and his guitar scream “fuck you!” In my head, she was already snatching the album from the turntable, grinding it to shards beneath her feet, and looking for a belt to whip my ass.

The guitar went “do-do-do-dooo-do-do…”

I distinctly remember sweating.

“Do-do-do-DOOO-do-do…”

Mom was still there, looking confused, probably wondering what this rock-and-roll-stuff was all about and maybe wondering if Satan was involved.

“Do-do-do-dooo-do-do… fuck YOOOOOOUUUUUU!”

Siomos led the way with a cool drum fill. The power chords thundered. The crowd went wild. Frampton roared into that amazing closing solo.

I closed my eyes and awaited my doom.

Mom walked out of the room, and never stuck around while I listened to music again. Ever.

Time passed. I eventually got my own record player, and learned to sneak KISS albums past mom without her seeing the garish covers. Friends turned me on to Grand Funk Railroad and Rush. I got headphones so I could listen to it all loud, and eventually moved on to 8-tracks I could play in my car when cruising. Through it all, I wondered. Did mom make out what Frampton had yelled? Or did she leave at that moment because the music got louder? Maybe the dog had distracted her, or the phone had rang?

I never found out.

Mom and I never talked about my music at all after that day. Well, except for one time. I’d joined an 8-track club, you see, and my purchases arrived in the mail. So I walked in from school one day to find mom standing in the living room, holding up my latest buy and staring at me in complete disbelief.

I can still hear her, in full Kentucky drawl. It’s a treasured memory equal to the Frampton story. She looked me right in the eye, waving the 8-track, her head slowly going back and forth, until finally, she just cited the name of the album.

“Alice Cooper Goes to Hell?”

“Alice is a folk singer, mom,” I said, as I snatched the 8-track from her hands and rushed off to my room.

And THAT was the last time I discussed music with my mom.

***

Steve Goble, a former journalist, writes mystery novels. Look for his Spider John historical mysteries (featuring pirates) and his detective novels, including the Shamus Award finalist for best novel, “Go Find Daddy.” He lives in rural Ohio with his wife, their kid, and a trio of dogs. And although his musical tastes have expanded greatly since 1976, he still listens to “Frampton Comes Alive.”

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