When rock stars sing about going all night long, one infers that their context is romance.
But the connotation is changing for performers rocking into their golden years.
On Friday at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, Peter Frampton boasted about not going all night long.
“Thank God for Flomax!” the 65-year-old guitar ace told an audience that instantly got the joke.
Hmmm. If his next tour needs a sponsor…
“Tired of missing your favorite songs at every concert? Tell Mother Nature to take a chill pill!”
Whatever Frampton is taking, it seems to be working. Backed by a loud, punchy band featuring Australian guitar-slinger Adam Lester as his “wing man,” he roared through the songs that powered him past Zeppelin, The Who and Wings as king of the airwaves during America’s bicentennial:
Show Me the Way, Lines on My Face, All I Wanna Be (Is By Your Side), Baby I Love Your Way, Do You Feel Like We Do…
Going with the flow. Please click icon below for slideshow captions:
He also trotted out his Epiphone acoustic guitar for the airy Penny for Your Thoughts, and led the band through a trippy treatment of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun, from his 2006 instrumentals album Fingerprints, and a rollicking cover of Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours, from Frampton’s 1977 I’m In You album.
(Having some fun with the crowd, Frampton said parts of that record’s title track — the evening’s final encore–were penned in New Jersey. “Where in Jersey?” a fan demanded. Pause. “Morristown,” the singer deadpanned.)
Frampton’s signature golden curls — “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” he quipped — are long gone.
But his famous Talk Box endures. Let’s just hope, for Frampton’s sake, that he’s cleaned that rubber mouth-tube a few times since 1976.
