Hyde Park curfew extended for Snow Patrol’s Olympics concert

When it comes to strict music curfews in London’s Hyde Park, it’s apparently less a case of who you are than who you’re playing for.

Less than two weeks after concert promoters cut short a performance by Bruce Springsteen and his guest Paul McCartney for playing past the established 10:30 p.m. curfew on concerts in the park, Westminster Council officials have extended the curfew until 1 a.m. for British rock group Snow Patrol, which is playing Friday as part of the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Olympic Games.

“The opening night of the Olympics is clearly an exceptional evening and the Hyde Park show on Friday is timed to run around the opening ceremony of the Olympics,” council member Audrey Lewis said by way of explanation this week. “It is not a case of a straightforward concert night at Hyde Park.”

Springsteen fans quickly took to Twitter to express their outrage: “That’s life,” Mariann Brooklyn tweeted to E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt’s Twitter page. “Different rules for all.”

And @davemint wrote: “Let’s face it though, there was very little chance of snow patrol interrupting any local resident’s sleep.”

Van Zandt himself wrote: “So many of you are [ticked] off Snow Patrol getting after midnight curfew. I checked apparently as long as it’s an Olympic disturbance it’s ok!”

Three nights after the plug was pulled on his Hyde Park performance, Springsteen made light of the incident when he and the E Street Band played a show in Dublin, for which they brought out a giant prop electrical switch that was thrown to the “ON” position at the start of the show. After which Springsteen told the crowd, “Before we were so rudely interrupted” and finished the portion of “Twist and Shout” that had been curtailed in London.

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