More than 35 years after he played bass on one of the best-selling live albums of all time — “Frampton Comes Alive!” — Stan Sheldon still doesn’t completely understand how the famed “talk box” works.

The “talk box” was the device that allowed Frampton’s voice to sound like a guitar and his guitar to sound like a voice, most notably when he asked the audience in a robotic monotone, “Do you feel like we do?”

“Everybody wants to know about the talk box, everybody asks me how it works, but I’m not sure I know,” said Sheldon, 61, during a recent phone interview. “I know he had a tube from his mouth, and there was sort of a blending of the guitar sound with his voice, and that Peter could manipulate the sound. I know Stevie Wonder used it first, and that’s where Peter heard it.”

But the talk box was only part of the reason why “Frampton Comes Alive!” became a ground-breaking hit in 1976 and established the live album as an important commercial and musical force. It’s still used as a benchmark for live albums today, and lives on by virtue of continued airplay on classic rock stations.

“Frampton Comes Alive!” was, and is, so big that Frampton, also 61, is currently in the second year of a tour celebrating its 35th anniversary. Sheldon, who has played off and on with Frampton all these years, is on the tour with him.

During the tour, Frampton and his band have been playing three-hour shows that include all the songs from “Frampton Comes Alive!” plus others from his career.

Sheldon thinks the album’s success was largely due to the songs. “They still sound great,” he said. But another reason was the live energy of the album and the fact that the audience is a huge part of the record.

Sheldon said that wasn’t an accident. Frampton set out to make and market a live album, and he auditioned his band specifically for that purpose. Sheldon was a young musician living in Los Angeles when he heard about Frampton’s search.

“I think Peter had called me in as a last resort. I rolled my amp into the hotel (where Frampton was staying) and auditioned right there. A month later, we were off on tour,” said Sheldon. “The brilliant thing about Peter was that he knew that this could happen, that people really wanted live albums and they could be big. What he did different (from other live albums at the time) was mix in the audience so you can really hear them.”

The songs on the album are still played on rock radio today, and stand out for their wonderful crowd interaction. Hits from the album include “Baby, I Love Your Way,” “Show Me the Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do?”

Sheldon said Frampton began to realize the power of live albums when he was in the band Humble Pie with Steve Marriott of The Small Faces. He left that band in 1971, then watched the band’s live album “Rockin’ the Fillmore” head up the charts.

But Humble Pie wasn’t Frampton’s only experience with the music business, having literally grown up in it in England. He was playing in bands by age 10, and was a grammar-school classmate of David Bowie. By the time he was 16, he was lead guitarist and singer of The Herd, which had a string of British pop hits.

So Frampton had a feel for music and audiences when he put together his band to tour and make “Frampton Comes Alive!” into an album.

“We just happened to capture the magic of live shows, even though we hadn’t been together too long,” said Sheldon. “We just all clicked.”

During the last 35 years, Sheldon has taken some time off from music to study Latin American culture and music, and to get “healthy” after years of drug addiction. When Frampton called him and asked him to tour again, he quickly said yes.

“I’m not crazy,” he said. “When Peter calls, I say, ‘Yeah!”‘

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com