Gig review: Peter Frampton - Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

“GIVE that man a Caramel Wafer!” went up the shout from the floor. High praise indeed to award Peter Frampton the prince of chocolate biscuits for this performance, when he would quite happily settle for a Bourbon cream.

Sure, Frampton’s inter-song chat about tea and biscuits wasn’t terribly rock’n’roll but there was an endearing modesty about his approach to celebrating Frampton Comes Alive! He could have brought out the 21-gun salute to mark the 35th anniversary of one of the best-selling live albums of all time (17 million copies and counting). Instead, he chose to focus on its reputation as a people’s favourite, accompanying this performance with montages of fans holding up their beloved worn vinyl.

He joked about its reputation as a toker’s favourite, exemplified by the relaxed noodling on burnished rhythm’n’blues ballad All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side) but across its four sides Frampton Comes Alive! exerts a broad appeal taking in enduring pop melodies such as the talk box-embellished Show Me The Way, classic rock workouts and soulful love ballads, all of which were revisited in the first half of the show from the smoochy Baby I Love Your Way through an extended cover of Jumpin’ Jack Flash to the hoary singalong climax of Do You Feel Like We Do.

Having dispensed with the main business of the night, the second half was Frampton’s cue to indulge himself with odds and sods from his back catalogue, some Floydian guitar keening and Humble Pie boogie, a hard-rocking number fronted by his son Julian and covers of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun and George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps. One fan was so moved by all this that he presented Frampton with a packet of his favourite Bourbon biscuits.

Rating: ***