Springsteen Fans Create Chaos on Capital Phones

In this city of power and politics, rock superstar Bruce Springsteen showed who was boss Monday morning.

When tickets for Springsteen’s upcoming concert at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium went on sale, fans of the man they call “the Boss” placed hundreds of thousands of calls in search of a scant 3,000 telephone-sales tickets--swamping phone lines and crippling long-distance service in and out of three metropolitan areas.

Residential customers, business and government agencies--even the White House--got busy signals or recorded messages when trying to dial out of the area. An extraordinary 2 million calls, more than double the normal load, flooded American Telephone & Telegraph lines in one hour.

Stuck for Two Hours

An AT&T; spokesman said that many customers in Washington, Baltimore and Richmond, Va., were unable to complete long-distance calls for about two hours Monday morning.

“This started early, and we weren’t ready for it,” AT&T; spokesman Marty Szostek said. “We didn’t know that Bruce Springsteen was so popular.”

A total of 53,000 tickets to the Aug. 5 show, priced at $18.50, sold out in 97 minutes, said Dave Williams, vice president of Cellar Door Productions, the group promoting the New Jersey performer’s show in the capital.

“It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” Williams said, “and we’ve done everything but the Beatles.”

Call Radio Stations

In addition to the long-distance problems, some local lines were overloaded as ticket seekers turned to local radio stations for information, said Web Chamberlin, a spokesman for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co.

Such severe bulges in the number of calls usually are associated with disasters such as tornadoes, Szostek said. A similar swamping of phone lines in Washington occurred in January, 1982, when an Air Florida jet crashed into the Potomac River.

The knotted phone lines not only frustrated Springsteen fans but also those trying to conduct business.

“I couldn’t get a dial tone for a while,” said Tim Kelley, an intern in the office of Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.).

Slow at White House

At the White House, spokesman Larry Speakes said that the popularity of Springsteen--who was lauded by both President Reagan and Democratic candidate Walter F. Mondale in last year’s election campaign--might explain why reporters had difficulty in calling their White House contacts Monday morning.

“We finally figured out how to cut our business down here,” Speakes quipped.

In addition to the callers, thousands of ticket seekers camped along Washington’s sidewalks for up to three days in hopes of buying a ticket to see Springsteen, whose “Born in the USA” album has produced five hit songs.

Ralph Beyers, director of management services for the TicketCenter, which handled citywide sales at 35 sites, said: “Some people are still sitting there (outside the stadium) in hopes that tickets for a second show will go on sale any minute.”