Image Credit: Jim Dyson/Getty Images
Sometimes, even rockstars have curfews.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were cut short during a joint performance with Paul McCartney in London’s Hyde Park last night. According to The Guardian, promoters shutdown the event after the three-hour concert pushed past its 10:30 p.m. curfew time.
E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt took to Twitter following the performance to vent his frustrations. “One of the great gigs ever in my opinion. But seriously, when did England become a police state?” he said, shortly afterward adding, “We break curfews in every country but only English cops needs to “punish us” by not letting us leave until the entire crowd goes.”
McCartney had joined Springsteen and his band on stage to perform a couple of Beatles classics, but their mics were turned off right as they were about to head into a new number. The fans—there were apparently 76,000 people in attendance—reportedly began booing when they realized the sound was off, but they weren’t the only one disappointed with the decision. Even London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, criticized the promoter’s call to abide so strictly to the curfew—which was pre-determined by the Westminister’s Council—during a London radio interview on Sunday. “It sounds to me like an excessively efficacious decision. You won’t get that during the Olympics,” he reportedly said. “If they’d have called me, my answer would have been for them to jam in the name of the Lord.”
