Rock Diaries: Christmas 1975 | Tommy Bolin

It was Xmas 1975, and we found ourselves holed up at "Electric Lady" studio in NY. Peter Frampton and band (Bob Mayo, myself, and John Siomos) had recently returned from touring the summer and fall that year, and we had in our possession the live recording we had made during the summer at Bill Grahm's Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. This was of course right after I had joined the Frampton band; right after Tommy Bolin and I had moved to LA the Xmas of 1974. After only a few months in LA, I had a gig in the Frampton band, (that is a whole other story) and Tommy was about to join Deep Purple. Lots of stories here! That Xmas of 1975, the songs from our summer "Winterland" show (and a few other select performances on the tour) was being mixed by Peter and Eddie Kramer... these were the recordings that were about to be released as "Frampton Comes Alive."... OK, that was going on in Studio B; a few days later Tommy Bolin arrived in NY, booked studio A at Electric Lady. He had put together some dates to finish the tracking for his first (“Teaser”) of two studio records for his hew label (Nemperor). The first half of Tommy's tracks we had already finished recording in LA at the Record Plant, some weeks before... now the second half of the record would be tracked in NY with some heavy hitting NY session players – Dave Sanborn, Narada Michael Walden, Jan Jammer, Phil Collins, and many others... fortunately Tommy wanted me to be his bass player for most of this record (so I was involved with his LA and NY dates! woohoo! Well here I am... fresh-faced... shit faced... and ready to roll. It was amazing to be going back and forth from Studio A to Studio B... back and forth... lol! Well, obviously, none of us could have known that both of these records would represent the highlight of not one, but two, brilliant careers... Frampton and Bolin both!! Lucky me! right? It was an Xmas I will never forget... by next Xmas Tommy would be dead...