E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt has apologised for comments he made on Twitter not long after Bruce Springsteen‘s Hard Rock Calling headline appearance in London’s Hyde Park was aborted by organisers.
After the decision was made to pull the plug on Springsteen and his special guest Sir Paul McCartney just as they were about to pay their thanks to the crowd, Van Zandt took to Twitter to voice his displeasure at the events – asking when ‘England had become a police state’ in the process.
But after subsequently being told more of the finer points which went into the decision, Van Zandt has now offered his apologies in a guest blog on the Huffington Post, insisting that it was never his intention to undermine the work of the police force.
“Regarding Nick [Aldworth] and his fellow officers I want to officially apologize for blaming them,” he wrote. “I was mistakenly informed it was they who pulled the plug. We know now it wasn’t.”
“I apologize because I was wrong, because I have a lot of cop friends, and because I don’t want the obviously hyperbolic question I asked, ‘when did England become a police state?’ to be misinterpreted as a criticism of the police themselves.”