Frampton Comes Alive!
2022 01 29
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Ever since I was a much younger person than I am now I've always loved the album Frampton Comes Alive! To me, it had healing powers. No matter how low I was, listening to that album would bring me up, bring me joy, make me feel soothed when the world was weary. I remember telling my mother, someone with whom I'd had a less than solid relationship (and that's putting it mildly), that one day. It turns out that she also loved that album, so on the odd occasion we'd talk about it.
In 2015 she was in hospital with a cancer the name of which I do not know. She hid that from us here, which was not hard to do as she was in France and I'm in Canada. In March of 2016 she lost her battle with that cancer.
It was not possible for me to go and see her before she passed, and I only had a couple of opportunities to speak with her before she was not sensible for conversation. During one of those conversations I sang Dream A Little Dream of Me, as she'd never heard me sing. The next day, or thereabouts, I emailed one of her friends and asked them if they could play the entirety of Frampton Comes Alive! for her, and tell her it was from me.
This was done.
The friend emailed and let me know, told me that my mother listened to the whole thing, and that it seemed to calm her, bring her peace. I spoke to that friend a couple of days ago for the first time and she spoke about that. She cried talking about it to me, talking about my mother relaxing and seeming about as happy as one could in such a situation.
My mother and I had a difficult relationship, for more reasons than I care to name. But one thing we could share without an issue was music. I remember once telling her how much I loved Otis Redding. It turns out that when she was pregnant with me she listened to a lot of Otis.
There aren't many albums that, in their entirety, have an impact on me. This was one. The Beatles' Let It Be is another. Tom Waits' Big Time. There are some others. All of them for different reasons. But none with quite that restorative joy of Frampton Comes Alive!
Update (2023 10 01):
I had the opportunity to tell Mr. Frampton about this post on Twitter last year. I did it in such a way it wouldn't have been seen by too many people, and thought he'd maybe read it and let it be. I did not think he'd post about it. I waited a long time to add this to lessen the likelihood of anyone seeing it.
