This song is about a hangover. Frampton would often write from experience, and at the time he was experiencing the effects of a night of drinking.
When he woke up that morning there was a wine glass by his bed, and he wondered how it got there ("Whose wine? What wine? Where the hell did I dine?").
Still hungover, Frampton went to rehearsal and somehow remembered some chords he was playing the night before on his acoustic guitar. The band hashed out the tune and told Frampton to come up with some lyrics, to which he replied, "I can't, I have a really bad hangover." His bandmates told him to just write about that, which he did.
After forming Humble Pie in 1969, Peter Frampton left the band in 1971 and embarked on a solo career. "Do You Feel Like We Do" was released in 1973 on his second album, which was named after his backing group, Frampton's Camel.
This version runs 6:32, but was often extended during live shows where the band would do lots of improvisations during the song, often with Frampton scat singing parts of it. Always a crowd favorite, Frampton kept refining the song, which was recorded live on November 22, 1975 during a sold-out show at Memorial Hall at SUNY Plattsburgh. This recording was included on the 1976 landmark double album Frampton Comes Alive, which shot Frampton to stardom and became the best-selling live album ever, at least until live albums by Garth Brooks, Bruce Springsteen and The Eagles surpassed it.
On the live version, Frampton used a talkbox, a device hooked up to his guitar amp that allowed him to make distorted vocal sounds through a tube in his mouth. Other groups had success with the device around that time (Aerosmith used it on "
Sweet Emotion" the year before), but Frampton became most associated with it thanks to his talkbox solo on this song.
Frampton it to a whole new level: every time he formed words, the crowd went nuts, especially when he sounded out "I want to thank you," which came out sounding like "I want to f--k you." Soon, teenagers were crafting homemade talkboxes to imitate Frampton, often learning lessons on the dangers of electricity along the way.
Frampton Comes Alive was conceived as a single album taken from a show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on June 14, 1975. When Jerry Moss, the head of Frampton's record company, heard it, he decided it should be a double album and commissioned a mobile recording for Frampton's Plattsburgh show and another one at the Long Island Arena.
The album was wildly successful, and even though "Do You Feel Like We Do" was three years old, it was still new to most listeners who were just discovering Frampton. "Show Me The Way" (which also featured a talkbox) and "Baby I Love Your Way" were the first singles released from the album (the studio versions of both songs appear on Frampton's 1975 self-titled album), followed by "Do You Feel Like We Do." Releasing three singles from a live album was unprecedented, but all three were hits, with "Show Me The Way" making #6 US and "Baby, I Love Your Way" peaking at #12.
The live version runs 14:15, and when Frampton toured to support the album, it would often extend to 20 minutes. Played as the last song before the encore, Frampton would leave the for a while during the instrumental passage, then return for the big finish. Disc jockeys often used it as a chance to grab a smoke or go to the bathroom.
This was the only song on the Frampton's Camel album that was written by the entire band: keyboard player Mick Gallagher, bass player Rick Wills, and drummer John Siomos, who had recently replaced Mike Kellie. The other original songs on the album were written entirely by Frampton, except for "All Night Long," which he wrote with Gallagher.
Frampton has always stressed the communal nature of this song: he sees it as a crowd participation number, with the audience as much a part of it as the band. After the first verse, the crowd would often take over on vocals and pick up on Frampton's gestures as he would point to emphasize the "you" in the title.
The live version of this song was a godsend to disc jockeys, who could put it on and take a 14-minute cigarette break (to give the voice that nice raspy sound). There were lots of FM rock stations with a freeform or album-oriented format at the time who eagerly played the track, and in some cases the entire album.
This is one of many era-appropriate songs used in the 1993 movie Dazed and Confused, which is set in 1976. It also shows up in two episodes of That '70s Show and in the "Homerpalooza" episode of The Simpsons, where Frampton appears in cartoon form.
Frampton played "Do You Feel Like We Do" when he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2024. By that time, he was still touring but had to perform sitting down because he had developed a muscle condition called inclusion body myositis. Keith Urban, a big fan, joined him for the performance, doing a bit of guitar dueling with Frampton.
