Bruce Springsteen and Adele Springsteen attend MusiCares Person Of The Year Honoring Bruce Springsteen at Los Angeles Convention Center on Feb. 8, 2013 in Los Angeles, Calif. Lester Cohen/WireImage
Bruce Springsteen has announced that his mother, Adele, died on Wednesday. She was 98 years old.
The 74-year-old rock star shared the news with his followers via Instagram on Thursday (Feb. 1), posting a sweet throwback video of him dancing with his mother to a recording of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” “Adele Springsteen – May 4, 1925-January 31, 2024,” he captioned the clip.
The Boss also fittingly paired the video with lyrics from his 1998 song “The Wish.” “I remember in the morning mom hearing your alarm clock ring,” he wrote in his post. “I’d lie in bed and listen to you getting ready for work, the sound of your makeup case on the sink. And the ladies at the office all lipstick, perfume and rustling skirts, how proud and happy you always looked walking home from work.
“It ain’t no phone call on Sunday, flowers or a Mother’s Day card,” he continued. “It ain’t no house on the hill with a garden and a nice little yard. I’ve got my hot rod down on Bond Street I’m older but you’ll know me in a glance. We’ll find us a little rock ‘n’ roll bar and we’ll go out and dance.”
In addition to Bruce, Adele leaves behind two daughters, Pamela and Virginia. Their father Douglas Springsteen, whom Adele married in 1948, died in 1998.
A Brooklyn, New York, native, Adele was a proud champion of her son’s music and sometimes joined him onstage at his concerts to dance. “My mother loves to dance,” Bruce once said in a July 2021 Broadway performance. “She grew up in the ’40s … [with] the big bands and the swing bands, and that was a time when dancing was an existential act.
“She’s 95 and she’s 10 years into Alzheimer’s and that’s taken a lot away from us,” he continued at the time. “But the need to dance hasn’t left her.”
See Bruce’s tribute to his mom below.