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Adele Springsteen, who nurtured the budding musical talent of her son, pioneering rock star Bruce Springsteen, died Wednesday. She was 98 years old.
Mr. Springsteen announced the death of his mother in an Instagram post Thursday. No cause was given, but Springsteen had battled Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade.
Her son has spoken openly about his relationship with his mother and her influence on him.
Ms. Springsteen rented him his first guitar when he was 7 years old. said in 2021 during his Broadway show, “Springsteen on Broadway,” which ran for more than two months that year as the city began to emerge from pandemic-related shutdowns. The program had wide-ranging reflections, including thoughts about his mother.
It was also Mrs. Springsteen, he told the packed Broadway audience at the St. James Theater, who danced to 1940s swing music and instilled in him the pleasure of bop-inspired tunes, according to the “Today” show NBC.
He also spoke of his mother’s ability to persist in her vivacious spirit even as aging and a debilitating illness took their toll.
“She has 10 years of Alzheimer’s,” he said. “She is 95 years old. But the need to dance, that need to dance is something that has not abandoned her. She can not speak. She can’t stand it. But when she sees me, there is a smile.”
Ms. Springsteen was born Adele Zerilli on May 4, 1925, in Brooklyn. She married Douglas Springsteen, with whom she had her son in 1949 and later two daughters, Virginia and Pamela.
She worked as a legal secretary and raised a young working-class family in Freehold, New Jersey, while her husband often struggled to find stable work and battled mental illness. He died in 1998.
“She wanted us to be a family and we were,” Springsteen wrote in “Born To Run,” his memoir. “She wanted us not to disintegrate and we didn’t.”
Ms. Springsteen’s ever-present joyful spirit seemed to be the thread that ran through her life and enlivened the lives of the people around her.
“My mother is the big energy, she’s the energy of the show,” Springsteen told The Miami Herald in 1987. “The consistency, the toughness, day in and day out, that’s her.” He added that “it was she who created the sense of stability in the family, so that we never felt threatened in all the difficult times.”
In Thursday’s Instagram post announcing his mother’s death, Springsteen shared a video of his elderly mother dancing to Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” captioned with an excerpt of his own. 1998 song about her, “The Wish.”
“I’m older, but you’ll recognize me at a glance,” he said. “We’ll find a little rock ‘n’ roll bar and go out dancing.”
Aimee Ortiz contributed with reports.