In London, rules are rules and curfews are curfews, even when Bruce Springsteen andPaul McCartney are together onstage in Hyde Park, bashing out Beatles classics and blowing the minds of thousands of people.According to CNN, organizers of the Hard Rock Calling festival pulled the plug last night on Springsteen, who had brought McCartney out as a surprise guest during his encore. Backed by the E Street Band and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, the duo performed “I Saw Her Standing There” before making it most of the way through an epic “Twist and Shout.”They would have kept going, but at 10:40, the power cut out, leaving the Boss and Macca to shrug and leave the stage. The Hard Rock organizers had evidently promised London’s Westminster Council that the show would end by 10:15, and while Springsteen — who had already been going for more than three hours — is known for marathon concerts and might conceivably have kept the party going well into the night, E Street guitarist Steven Van Zandt was furious about the decision.
“One of the great gigs ever in my opinion. But seriously, when did England become a police state?” he wrote in the first of several tweets.
“We break curfews in every country but only English cops needs to ‘punish us’ by not letting us leave until the entire crowd goes,” he added. “Is there just too much fun in the world? We would have been off by 11 if we’d done one more. On a Saturday night! Who were we disturbing?”
Van Zandt later said there are “no grudges to be had,” and he drew parallels between the aborted encore and the Beatles’ famous 1969 performance atop the Apple headquarters.
“Ha! @raindogs70 just reminded me how the Beatles’ rooftop concert ended,” hetweeted. “Not much has changed in 43 years!”
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