McCartney and Springsteen silenced on stage in London

London, England, United Kingdom (4E) – After defying the sound curfew Saturday night at Hard Rock Calling festival in Hyde Park, Sir Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen’s microphones were silenced before they could even say a word to the audience.

Towards the end of Springsteen’s three-hour performance, which had exceeded the council’s two-and-a-half-hour curfew, he called McCartney to join him onstage to say a few words, but the music stars found themselves “voiceless” as the microphones were already cut off.

Stephen Robb, a BBC reporter who was at the event, said, “It made for a slightly bizarre, anti-climactic end to what had been a fantastic show. The band obviously couldn’t tell from on stage that the sound had been shut off. It just looked a bit like everyone was milling about on stage having forgotten how the show should end.”

The crowd was not exactly thrilled about the shut off, and some took to several social networking sites to express their sentiments.

Meanwhile, in the Hard Rock Calling official website, a spokesperson for Live Nation, the concert organizers, said, “It was unfortunate that the three hour plus performance by Bruce Springsteen was stopped right at the very end but the curfew is laid down by the authorities in the interest of the public’s health and safety.”

Westminster Council, however, claims that licenses for loud events are honored until certain times only in order “to protect residents in the area from noise late at night” and it was not the council who ended the night’s performance but the organizers.