Peter Frampton has been a guitar legend for decades. He’s adored by millions for his creativity and excellent playing skills, and he has no issue selling out huge shows, even after so many years in the business. For a while, it looked like the rocker was done performing live, following the diagnosis of a debilitating disease, but now he’s confirmed that he’s not giving up.
“Every note I play now is so much more important to me because I know one of the notes I play will be the last I play within my lifetime,” Frampton recently told the San Diego Union-Tribune in a new interview. The rocker just finished his Never Say Never tour, which took him around the U.S. throughout March and April of 2024.
In the chat, Frampton was referring to the fact that there was a time when he thought he’d have to stop playing live. In 2019, he revealed that he’d been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), which leads to muscle weakening. He assumed he had a limited window of time left to play his music live, so he booked what was then marketed as a final tour.
Two years after a farewell trek concluded, Frampton still feels up to performing for huge crowds, though some changes have been made to his stage show. “What I have to do now is create new ways (to play),” he shared, which is evident to anyone who attends one of his concerts. Frampton now plays sitting down, and when he walks, he uses a cane.
Despite these setbacks and difficulties, Frampton is defiant, and it seems he is intent on continuing to play, perhaps for as long as he can. “I’m a fighter and I’m not giving up,” he told the California-based newspaper. “I have weakness in my fingers, yes, but I have created different paths to get to the end point of what I want to play.”
Frampton even seems to be enjoying changing things up after so much time, even if he has to do so because of a less-than-ideal reason. “For the things I think of that I can’t play, I quickly work out what I can do at that point, and it’s different and I like it,” he stated. Frampton added that sometimes he thinks, “Wow, I wouldn’t have played it that way (before).”
