Playing hooky for Bruce Springsteen? The Boss signs a kid’s absence note at Bay Area show
LOS ANGELES
“Skipping school sign my note?”
Those five words, written in large black letters on a white poster, prompted Bruce Springsteen to help a young fan skip a day of school after his San Francisco concert last month.
Facebook images and video shared by a fan who attended the singer’s Chase Center concert shows the “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Dancing in the Dark” singer, 74, holding the poster and kneeling to sign what seems to be an absence slip. In the background, members of his E Street Band are seen cheering on Springsteen before he hands back the poster and absence slip and blows a kiss to the crowd.
According to Karen Pitcher Scovell, who captured the moment, the Boss “knelt down directly in front of me to sign a school excuse for the little girl behind me.” The child was not featured in the video.
“No words !!!!! ,” Pitcher Scovell also said in her post. “To be in such close proximity to greatness was more than I had ever expected.”
Sunday’s show wasn’t the first time the Boss personally signed off on his fans playing hooky. While promoting his memoir in 2016, the “I’m on Fire” hit-maker signed a similar note for a then-10-year-old student in Philadelphia.
Springsteen played two shows in San Francisco after bringing his music back to San Diego last month. At his March 25 concert at the Pechanga Arena, the singer-songwriter delivered a “rousing” three-hour show for his Southern California audience, L.A. Times music critic Mikael Wood wrote in his review.
“Here his voice was in strong shape in both the roaring uptempo numbers and the stately ballads,” Wood said of the San Diego show.
Springsteen returned to the road this January, months after postponing a handful of U.S. shows last year to deal with a peptic ulcer.