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Platinum Spinner. One hit LP has made Peter Frampton, 26, a multimillionaire in a mere 18 months. Frampton Comes Alive! has sold 11 million copies, earning the transplanted British rock star $6.4 million; in addition, he grossed $3.5 million in S.R.O. concerts across the U.S. last year. It took the wispy (5 ft. 7 in., 120 lbs.) guitarist ten hard years of experimentation and road tours before he hit platinum. Says he: "I would never have believed 18 months ago that I'd be driving around in limos, own a Rolls and live this way."
Living this way, for the tax exile, also means pads in Beverly Hills and Long Island, as well as a 53-acre estate in New York's Westchester County. Life hasn't changed that much, he insists: "I still watch a lot of TV and play with the dogs." Frampton," whose melodic soft-rock Frampton Comes Alive! won him Rolling Stone's 1976 "Artist of the Year" award, has a newly released album I'm in You and will embark next week on a four-month tour. He is also starring in a movie version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, based on the Beatles' album. "I've earned every penny of the money," he maintains. "I guess I'm just a capitalist at heart."
The Spotters
Call them seers, diviners, futurists or just plain heads-up smart. The spotters are entrepreneurs of fast mind and slim purse who have, early on, discerned a social trend, a cultural drift or an economic imperative— and made it from noodle to boodle.
King Pong. Nolan Bushnell, 34, saw a future in video computer games. In 1976 his four-year-old company, Atari Inc., the maker of Pong and other electronic entertainments, was sold to Warner Communications Inc. for $28 million; Bushnell remains chairman of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company with a six-figure salary.
Bushnell started Atari in 1972, when he was 27; the firm was financed by Bushnell and a partner with $500. By the end of 1973 the company's sales were $11 million; they had reached $36 million by 1975.
The 6-ft. 4-in., 200-lb. tycoon says of his success: "Not many people have the obscure combination of engineering education, knowledge of video syntheses, and a background of work in an amusement park. I do. Add to that courses in economics at college and a sense of how the financial system works, and you get success." In his case, that has meant a 15-acre estate atop San Francisco Bay, a 41-ft. sailboat named, of course, Pong, a Lake Tahoe ski cabin and a Mercedes 450 SL. A former Mormon who has been divorced since 1973, Bushnell admits to "liking girls." Says he: "I find I have phone numbers in a lot of cities." King Pong hopes ultimately to work for the Government in such areas as energy and law.