In terms of my early, formative experiences with music, the first concert I ever attended was (still is) a big dang deal. That first real concert we attend is a rite of passage, surely, if it’s any good: a gateway between childhood and adolescence, innocence and experience. It certainly was for me.
I went to my first real concert when I was 14 years old. I went to see Peter Frampton at Madison Square Garden during the Frampton Comes Alive tour in 1976. Bob S., my guitar teacher, got me into Frampton, noting that while Frampton was playing rock, his solos grew out of jazz (rather than growing out the blues, like Clapton, for instance). So I bought the album, and played the crap out of it, and marveled at the sounds Frampton was able to summon out of his guitar. He is known for his use of the talk box, of course, but what I noted in his solos were long passages of flowing, cascading notes, rising and falling and then swooping out of his swirling, rotary Leslie speakers to amazing effect. Listen to “Lines on My Face” below, for instance. I could hear a story being played out in his solos: setting the scene, rising action, climax, denouement — nuances and phrasing and dynamics that made the repetitive riffing of other rock guitarists seem both boring and bombastic at the same time. There was a drama being played out in his solos that I hadn’t seen or heard before (and haven’t seen or heard much from anyone since, for that matter, which is a shame). It is no coincidence that my first electric guitar was/is a black Les Paul, much like the one on his famous album cover.
My 1975 Gibson Les Paul Custom
So when tickets became available, I begged my dad, and he agreed to take me to the show. Our seats were about as far from the stage as was physically possible — the complete opposite end of the arena and all the way in the top tier. Frampton was a tiny little blur on stage, and the sound echoed chaotically and discordantly by the time it reached us in the cheap seats, but it was the loudest, most joyful thing I had ever heard. Individual bodies and total strangers around us were suddenly transformed into something larger, some communal organism connected by the sound, a marvelous, delightful, and completely new experience for me. Someone lit a joint nearby, and Dad joked, “Is that supposed to be pot? We smoked better stuff in the 40s!” We all laughed. And meanwhile, down on the stage, Frampton was clearly having a blast.
Flash forward 35 years. My daughter, Madeleine, is 14 years old, and has just asked if I would please take her to her first concert. “Of course,” I say, both flattered she would ask me and excited for her. “Who is it?” I ask, and she says, “Peter Frampton. He’s doing the 35th anniversary tour of Frampton Comes Alive. We can get tickets at the Durham Performing Arts Center.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. Unbeknownst to me, she had come to Frampton completely on her own, by way of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Queen and other classic British bands. [She describes hearing “Gimme Shelter” for the first time as “a life altering event,” by the way.] And so we went, completing the circuit that was started when I was 14 and went to *my* first concert *my* father. Frampton hadn’t lost a step, by the way. If anything, he was even more masterful.
Mad’s first concert was a really important moment in her and my relationship, just as it had been for me and my dad. Music binds us together, even when other avenues fail, giving us the language and the context through which we can engage with the larger questions and problems of culture, politics, and life.