Peter Frampton Comes Alive With Anger During Minnesota Concert

Peter Frampton has apologized to fans after an angry outburst at a recent concert in Minnesota.

Frampton, who is in the middle of a summer tour with The Steve Miller Band, stopped his July 23 show at Treasure Island Resort and Casino in Red Wing after a video camera operator — whose shots were projected onto large screens visible throughout the 9,000-seat outdoor venue — chose to focus on an enthusiastic fan on two separate occasions holding up her vinyl copies of the singer’s albums, “Frampton Comes Alive” and “I’m in You.”

The shot, Frampton asserted in a Facebook post, took the attention away from the show and the mood he was trying to create during a guitar solo. After what was described by a concertgoer as a “camera tug-of-war,” the artist left the stage and returned only after a request to switch off the video screens was honored, reported Minneapolis’ The Star Tribune.

Frampton further explained that the distraction diminished the intimacy he was trying to create during the song, “I’ll Give You Money,” and the decision to pan to the audience thereby missed the “climactic moment.”

“After the first interruption, I asked the director through my backstage team to please keep the cameras on the band during this important part of the song, but the monitors changed again,” Frampton wrote. “After the show, the director admitted this was a “very bad call.”

Frampton, who just released a clever new animated video for the single, “I Saved a Bird Today,” explained that he did not see the fan on the screens, and feels terrible that the woman was caught in the middle.

“I was frustrated because I felt we had completely lost control of this special moment in the show,” he wrote. “I overreacted and tried to take the camera from the cameraman and left the stage to talk to the director. I reacted passionately because I care very much about giving you the best show we can possibly give every night. … I could not take the chance of the screens affecting the show again so I had them turned off. This was not the right thing to do and I apologize to everyone there.”

The fan, identified by The Star Tribune as Sherry Tupa, told the newspaper, “[I was] merely holding my album cover at my chest using it as a fan, when I noticed my face on the big screen. I then held up my cover and the crowd cheered.”

She added: “My only wish was that Mr. Frampton might catch a glimpse and be impressed that his fans have held on to his albums for so long.”

Can Frampton make it up to her? Said Tupa: “An autograph would have been fantastic, but I knew going in that was probably not realistic.”

Frampton’s summer tour continues at River Spirit Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma on July 28.

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