Songfacts®:

• This 1:27 instrumental is about Penny McCall, the woman Peter Frampton was living with at the time. "I'm going to dedicate this to the one that it was written for," he said when introducing the song on Valentine's Day, 1976 at the Capitol Theatre in New Jersey. "This is for Penny."
  
  It's the closest Frampton got to putting his relationship with McCall on record at the time. They were both married when they met in 1972 and started dating. They moved in together in 1973, and McCall became Frampton's muse inspiring the songs "Show Me The Way" and "Baby, I Love Your Way." But Frampton was still technically married when he wrote those songs in 1975, so he ascribed them to universal feelings of love. "Penny For Your Thoughts" was his way of naming her without really naming her.
  
  All of this ended up being drudged up in a court case when they broke up in 1978. McCall wanted compensation for her time devoted to Frampton, but because they didn't have formal agreement in place, Frampton won the case.
• The song appears on Peter Frampton's 1975 album Frampton, but was much more famously included on his live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, the following year. Both versions are instrumentals with just Peter on acoustic guitar.