Peter Frampton concert review: Classic rocker bids NYC farewell

“I won’t say goodbye,” Peter Frampton said following an emotional, career-spanning concert at Madison Square Garden Friday night, part of his “Frampton Finale Tour.”

Over the course of the evening, Frampton paid tribute to late bandmates and Chris Cornell, told stories about recording at Electric Lady Studios in the West Village and recalled working with members of the Rolling Stones.

The talkative Frampton didn’t mention inclusion body myositis, the autoimmune disease that is expected to weaken his ability to play guitar and take him off the road at the end of the year. Maybe he didn’t want to be pitied or maybe he wanted to focus on the positive — like more than 50 years of feel-good hits, one of the best-selling live albums of all time and a new album, which sits atop the Billboard Blues chart.

Frampton and his band set the celebratory tone with “Something’s Happening,” which also opens “Frampton Comes Alive!” the top-selling album of 1976. The grinning Frampton, looking trim and neat with close-cropped white hair and beard, sang beautifully and played a crystalline solo. He then fast-forwarded a decade into “Lying,” from 1986’s “Premonition,” a slick, David Bowie-esque track that was punctuated with pastel images of Frampton on the video screen. “I’m verklempt,” he said. “This is a historical day for us right here.”

The meandering “Lines on My Face,” with a moody wah-wah guitar solo by Frampton, preceded the breezy hit “Show Me the Way,” peppered with his peppy talk-box guitar solo and the musical equivalent of comfort food. Three songs from the new “All Blues” album were highlighted by an instrumental “Georgia on my Mind.” With his head back and eyes closed, Frampton, 69, replicated the vocal lines on guitar, adding more flash in each verse, eventually building into fiery guitar shredding.

Prefacing a vocal-less cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” he talked about recording the track with Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready and Matt Cameron and pointed out that the 2006 instrumental album “Fingerprints” didn’t sell well, it won him his first Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album. He dedicated the song, which has become a centerpiece of his sets since its release, to late the Soundgarden singer Cornell — “we became friends” — and his family.

“(I’ll Give You) Money” was a chunk of driving, radio-friendly rock, with a jammed-out ending, and the easy-listening hit “Baby, I Love Your Way” predictably inspired a singalong. Frampton closed the main set with the epic “Do You Feel Like We Do,”  telling security to let fans make their way to the front of the stage and playing his lengthy talk-box solo, possibly the last time a New York crowd will get to witness that slice of rock history.

Frampton pushed aside his solo career for the encore, instead focusing on two songs by Humble Pie, “Four Day Creep” and “I Don’t Need No Doctor” — “we wrote this number on this stage right here” during a Humble Pie soundcheck, he said of “Doctor.” He ended the night with The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” injecting some blues into the vocal and putting his own stamp on the guitar solo.

If it’s the last note — and concert — Frampton plays in New York, he can rest assured he went out on top.

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