Bruce Springsteen's mother, Adele Springsteen, died Wednesday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 98. Springsteen announced the news on his Instagram account along with a video of them dancing outside to a recording of Glenn Miller's 1939 classic “In The Mood.”
when Springsteen on Broadway returned to the Broadway stage in 2021, he slightly changed the text of the show to talk about his mother's condition, saying that she was no longer able to speak or feed herself. But she still loved dancing to the big band music of her youth.
“When he sees me, there's always a smile,” she said. “And there's one more kiss. And there's a sound he makes when he sees me. I know it means “I love you”. And when I put on Glenn Miller and she starts moving in her chair. She begins to stretch me out, to take her in my arms once more and dance with her on the floor.”
She continued, “That's an essential part of the mom spirit, it is what it is. It is beyond language and is more powerful than memory. It is the embodiment. This is what she has trusted and lived her life with and with which, despite what she suffered, she continues to this day, as if the beauty of life never left her. I love her.”
Springsteen had a famously combative relationship with his father, Douglas, who struggled with depression throughout Springsteen's youth and felt he was wasting his time with music. Adele, however, was a rock of support. He rented Bruce's first guitar in 1956, shortly after Elvis Presley appeared on the The Ed Sullivan Showand always encouraged his musical ambitions.
“My mother was bright, happy, she would happily talk with a broom handle,” Bruce said. Springsteen on Broadway. “He believed that there was good faith, good heart, good hope in all citizens. She gave the world far more credit perhaps than it deserved, but that was her way… She would look down on me with a look that to me was like the grace of Mary. It made me understand for the first time how nice it is to feel proud of someone you love and who loves you back.”
Adele and Douglas moved from New Jersey to California in 1969. Adele Springsteen returned east after Douglas' death in 1997 to be closer to her children and grandchildren. He was a regular sight at Springsteen's concerts and occasionally came on stage to dance during “Dancing In The Dark”, smiling broadly the whole time.
“I think with all the problems we've had in our lives, God has rewarded me,” he told Springsteen biographer Peter Ames Carlin in 2012. “I thank God for that. I could cry about it. It's a terrible thing to brag about. But I can brag because I'm the mother, right? It's hard to believe he's my son.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bruce-springsteen-mother-adele-1234959282/
