A major attraction the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame unveils during induction week is an exhibit filled with artifacts provided by the newest class of inductees. Following is a sampling of what the 2024 inductees have loaned or donated, along with their stories about them. The ceremony is Oct. 19 in Cleveland.
Peter Frampton
Peter Frampton was a 21-year-old veteran of The Herd and co-founding guitarist and lead singer of the supergroup Humble Pie when he embarked on a solo career in 1971. But it was the 1976 release of Frampton Comes Alive! that launched him into the superstar stratosphere. The album, considered one of the greatest live efforts ever recorded, yielded classic rock radio anthems such as “Show Me the Way” and "Do You Feel Like We Do.” He continues to record and perform, even as he fights inclusion body myositis, a progressive muscle disorder.
REPRODUCTION OF 1954 LES PAUL CUSTOM.
In 2015 Gibson issued 35 reproductions of the guitar Frampton is pictured playing on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive! “I got the very first one,” Frampton says. He believed the original was destroyed when a cargo plane carrying his band’s gear crashed in Venezuela during a 1980 South American tour.
But it actually survived.
The black Gibson was sold to a Venezuelan musician, perhaps by someone guarding the debris.
Years later, a luthier recognized the guitar as Frampton’s when the musician’s son brought it to him for repairs. The luthier returned it to Frampton in 2011.
Frampton took the guitar, which he nicknamed the Phenix (French for “phoenix”) to the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville to be restored.
But he ordered the burn marks, scratches and other damage in the finish of the neck, headstock and body left as is — in fact, they were painstakingly replicated on the reproduction.
“It’s very hard to tell the difference between the two,” Frampton says. “But I cannot lend [the Rock Hall] my Phenix because I play it.”
OUTFIT FROM FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE!
The sand-colored suede suit and gold V-neck shirt that were custom-made for Frampton by a Hollywood, California, leather store in 1975, along with the talk box used to record the album, actually are on loan from the Hard Rock Café. “They had a guitar of mine, another one that had gone missing, and I wanted it back,” he explains. “So I did an exchange for the outfit and my original talk box.” He is blunt when asked if he can still fit in the suit. “Oh, absolutely not,” he replies, then laughs. “Unfortunately, I have a 30-inch waist now. It used to be 26.”
BLUE FLORAL-PATTERNED JACKET.
“[There] was a shop at the end of King’s Road [in West London] that all the bands would go to in the mid-to late ’60s,” he recalls. “They would shut the shop when the Beatles or the Stones went in. So I went there, and I got quite a few jackets from that shop at that time.”
FOREIGNER
Foreigner’s self-titled 1977 debut album produced three hit singles: “Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold as Ice” and “Long, Long Way From Home.” It wasn’t beginner’s luck. The group’s first eight consecutive singles charted in the Billboard Top Twenty, making them the first band to do so since The Beatles. And the hits — including the chart-topping “I Want to Know What Love Is”— kept coming throughout the 1980s, enough to make a post-hiatus lineup that founding guitarist Mick Jones put together in 2002 a must-see for a new generation of fans.
INFLATABLE JUKEBOX.
Original lead singer Lou Gramm commissioned the 30-foot-high by 6-foot-wide stage prop, modeled after a Wurlitzer. It was inflated during performances of “Juke Box Hero,” from the 1981 album Foreigner 4. Gramm occasionally uses the “cartoonish” inflatable during solo shows at large venues — it requires its own truck and four men to transport it. “It’s been around for 40 years now, so it has its little quirks and stuff,” he says of the limited-time loan. “But by and large, it’s very dependable, still looks fantastic when it’s inflated.”
“BIG APPLE” BANK.
Original keyboardist Al Greenwood recalls that Atlantic Records gave each member of Foreigner one of these banks to commemorate their first headlining performance at Madison Square Garden in New York City — “the ultimate for any band to play,” he says — on Nov. 23, 1978. “You put the coin on that little button, and the button goes down, and [the bank] starts up,” he explains. “It opens up. And a little hand comes out and drags the coin into the bank.”
CALIFORNIA JAM II CONCERT PROGRAM.
Greenwood admits he and his bandmates didn’t realize the magnitude of the March 18, 1978, music festival at Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California — a televised event that put Aerosmith, Foreigner, Heart, Ted Nugent and Santana, among others, on one bill — until they helicoptered to the racetrack and saw the mass of humanity gathered below them. “We only rehearsed the set once, and we’re in front of, like, 300,000 people doing this massive show,” he recalls. “It was a bit of a shock.”
MICK JONES’S PETSCHULAT GUITAR.
Jones commissioned Nashville luthier David Petschulat to build the distinctive instrument. "I got David to base the colors on the Foreigner 4 album cover,” he says in an e-mail interview. “The lower guitar featured a fine-tunable vibrato system invented by David. I recall flying David out to meet the band and deliver the guitar, which I ended up using for the rest of the tour on ‘Jukebox Hero.’”
DIONNE WARWICK
Warwick has the second-most Billboard Hot 100 hits among female artists in the 20th century. She began the feat in 1962 with her first single, the Burt Bacharach/Hal David-penned “Don’t Make Me Over.” Her smooth, scintillating voice continued turning a staggering number of songs, many of them Bacharach/David compositions such as “Walk on By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and “That’s What Friends Are For,” into pop/rock staples.
PURPLE DRESS WITH FLORAL APPLIQUES.
Warwick says the dress was one of “some really spectacular things” made by Michael Travis, who designed costumes for the likes of Liberace and The Supremes. The wide belt “was something that nobody else was wearing at the time,” she recalls. She wore the floor-length frock on a first-season episode of the syndicated television music series Solid Gold for a performance of the title track off her 1980 album No Night So Long.
HOLIDAY SWEATER FROM JIMMY FALLON.
The Tonight Show host sent Warwick the sweater — a cream-colored knit embellished with red and green pompoms down the front and metallic-garland-like trim at the neck and cuffs — in 2020 during the show’s “12 Days of Christmas Sweaters” giveaway. She posted Christmas Day videos on X and Facebook to thank him for it. “It was one of those kinds of sweaters that you wear only once,” she says. “That was it.”
“I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER” 7-INCH RECORD.
“It was written during the Vietnam War,” Warwick says of the Bacharach/ Hal-penned 1967 pop classic. “So it still holds a very, very special meaning for me with all of our babies — that’s what they were — who were being sent over to Vietnam to fight this senseless war. A lot of them, unfortunately, did not come back home.”
For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.
Cleveland Magazine is also available in print, publishing 12 times a year with immersive features, helpful guides and beautiful photography and design.
