Music venues are often under strict ordinance with a city to cut off sound at a particular time. I’ve seen this happen over and over again at concerts from cities as varied as Chicago and Cincinnati. Most of the time bands take this pretty well—and sometimes pretty apologetically to fans—but occasionally, some old rockers try to relive the days before sound ordinances were a heavily fine-able offense.
Such was the case when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band joined up with former Beatles and Wings frontman Paul McCartney. Saturday night, the boss performed past his 10:30 curfew at Hyde Park in London, when McCartney decided to join the band onstage. The crew got through a couple of crowd-rousing songs, including “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout.”
Before Springsteen brought out his special guest of the evening, he spoke out about what a treat it was going to be to perform live with the recent Hollywood Walk of Fame musician.
"I gotta tell you. I've been trying to do this for 50 years."
Unfortunately, for a fifty-year wait, the joint gig did not end up as well as it could have. According to CNN, as the two magnanimous rockers were finishing up “Twist and Shout,” the stage went quiet, leaving fans and rockers alike in a state of confusion. Springsteen even tried to address the crowd before noticing all of the mikes and amplifiers were completely cut off. The venue, dealing with pressure from the local government and a long list of complainers in the past, felt they had already run over the allotted time for the event and needed to call it quits. You can check out the performance and the poor ending, below. The cutoff comes around the 10:20 mark, with Springsteen attempting to address the crowd several seconds later.
The biggest problem with this is that Springsteen is known for running really long sets. There needed to be a conversation with the artist and his E Street Band if they were going to consider cutting the power. Everyone deserved a little bit of a warning before the power cut went down. Instead, fans got the short end of the stick, creating bad press for the venue and a long queue of upset fans.
I’m guessing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band may avoid the Hyde Park venue in the future, but I’m hoping any more collaborations with McCartney will not be moot.
