Peter Frampton talks about a moment that sticks in your memory. In the middle of the 2010s, he is hiking in Big Sur with his son Julian, who climbs the hill in a matter of seconds. When Frampton finally arrives, he tells his son that something feels off while breathing more forcefully than he should. Turn off. heavier than normal. He attributed it to ageing, decades of touring, and the basic physics of a body that had been used extensively. In that regard, he was mistaken. It would take several more years, two-stage falls, and a visit from a neurologist to discover what was going on inside his muscles.
Inclusion body myositis, or IBM as it is known in the medical community, is what Peter Frampton has. It is a progressive neuromuscular disorder that causes muscles to deteriorate and weaken over time. Because it tends to move slowly and unevenly, it is frequently confused with arthritis, ageing, or other conditions. For a precise diagnosis, the average patient must wait five to eight years. Before going to see anyone, Frampton had fallen on stage twice in three weeks. In his own words, he had thought that walking was difficult because of his tight jeans. He later said, “The mind is a terrible thing.”
In Frampton’s case, the condition targets particular muscle groups in a way that feels almost cruel: the quadriceps, which control balance and stair climbing, and the finger flexors, which enable one to fret a guitar chord, turn a key, and grip a doorknob. That second detail is especially important to a man whose hands have been his source of income since he was twelve years old and played in a school band with a young David Bowie.
When Lisa Christopher-Stine, a rheumatologist at Johns Hopkins, initially examined him, she anticipated finding severe finger deterioration. She didn’t. In actuality, his dominant right hand was weaker than his left, which runs the frets. Something that the illness would have eaten away at had been saved by decades of focused play.
The exact motivation behind IBM is still unknown. Muscle tissue inflammation suggests an autoimmune cause, but the medications typically used to treat autoimmune diseases—immunosuppressants and corticosteroids—tend to have very little effect. Although there is no approved treatment for mitochondrial dysfunction, some researchers think it might be the underlying cause. There isn’t a treatment. There isn’t a recognised treatment. Exercise seems to be the answer, and Frampton works out with a trainer for an hour six days a week, focusing on fall prevention while working through each afflicted muscle group. Stairs continue to be an issue. They most likely will be forever.
What the diagnosis did to him outside of his body is more difficult to measure. Observing Frampton’s public handling of this gives the impression that something was made clear by the illness. He raised nearly $300,000 during his farewell tour, founded the Peter Frampton Myositis Research Fund at Johns Hopkins, and spent years publicly discussing IBM at a time when most people were unaware of it. He would save IBM patients for last at meet-and-greets, giving them more time after everyone else had left. One man told him that he finally got a name for what was happening to his body after seeing an interview on CBS. He had visited numerous physicians. They had all failed to figure it out.
By 2022, Frampton was performing while seated on stage; he claimed that standing had become truly risky because he became so engrossed in his performance that he neglected to exercise caution. He returned to touring in 2023 under the moniker “Never Say Never tour,” which is either accurate or defiant—possibly both. His fingers no longer move as they once did. They perform better than he anticipated. He has stated that the discrepancy between expectations and reality is sufficient justification for continuing. Even though the math—a progressive, incurable disease against one man’s stubbornness—only ever goes one way in the long run, it’s difficult not to find something admirable in that.