Peter Frampton Talks Degenerative Muscle Disease Diagnosis, Farewell Tour
About eight years ago, Peter Frampton started to notice that his ankles felt a little tight in the morning. He initially dismissed it as one of the many pains that comes with getting older, but as time passed, his legs began feeling weak as well. He tried to ignore the signs that something was wrong until four years ago when a fan kicked a beach ball onto the stage at one of his concerts and he fell over when he tried to kick it back. “My legs just gave out,” he says. “We all joked, ‘He’s fallen and he can’t get up.’ But I was embarrassed.”
Two weeks after the beach ball incident, he tripped over a guitar cord on his stage and collapsed again. He was also noticing that his arms were getting so weak that loading heavy objects onto the overhead compartments of planes was becoming extremely difficult. When his tour had some time off, he finally booked an appointment with a neurologist to see what was happening. He was diagnosed with the inflammatory muscle disease Inclusion-Body Myositis (IBM) and sent to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland where he was teamed up with Dr. Lisa Christopher-Stine, the director of their myositis clinic.
“I inherited this incredible team of doctors who are so passionate about what they do that it’s ridiculous,” says Frampton. “Then it was revealed to me that it wouldn’t just affect my legs and my arms, but it’s going to affect my fingers. That was the most troubling thing, obviously, for me.” He is still able to play guitar without any difficulty, but with the window now beginning to possibly close forever, he booked a farewell tour that will keep him on the road this summer and possibly a bit longer.
We spoke to Frampton about coming to terms with IBM, what fans can expect from the tour, the secret albums he’s been frantically recording in Nashville, how the huge success of Frampton Comes Alive! doomed the rest of his career, touring with David Bowie in the Eighties and much more.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/peter-frampton-degenerative-muscle-disease-ibm-797556/
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I was lucky to see him perform his "Frampton Comes Alive" tour in 1976 at Anaheim (Angels) Stadium. Yes also was onstage. I'll never forget it!
