Come on Bruce

Inflation is high, but some ticket prices are obscene

     I’m listening to Bruce Springsteen as this is being written. It’s a radio broadcast of the 1978 show at Winterland in San Francisco.

      This was the Darkness on the Edge of Town Tour and I saw my first Bruce show in Charleston SC in August of the same year. Tickets were $7.50 and it started my love of Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street Band. I’ve seen some great show. (The Jam, the Clash, Wille and the Neville Brothers on Fat Tuesday at Tipitinas in N’Awlins.)  But this show, call it epic, seminal, powerful. The adjectives could go on and on. 

       Nobody would expect to pay that price for a concert nowadays. Most club cover-charges are probably higher.

      However, many US fans had sticker shock when they saw the Ticketmaster prices. $200 and some reaching into the thousands and there’s no telling what the resale market will bring.

       Fairly or unfairly, Springsteen has been positioned as the voice of the American working man. In an interview with The Irish Times, Springsteen talks with the interviewer (Ruadhan Mac Cormac) about his then-new album Wrecking Ball. Written after the collapse of de-regulated financial markets, Springsteen says

    “There was really no accountability for years,” he says. “People lost their homes and nobody went to jail. People lost enormous amounts of their net worth. A basic theft had occurred that struck at what the American idea was about.”

       Springsteen holds the belief that it’s patriotic to question your country and its leaders. He continued,

    "There is a patriotism underneath all my music, but it's a very critical, questioning, often angry patrtriotism,” he said.

    Trouble with Ticketmaster appeared on this tour. Ticketmaster would sell out of tickets within minutes. But tickets would be appearing on secondary-market sites at much higher prices. Even scalpers know how to use the internet. 

So let’s skip ahead to 2022-23 and Bruce and the Band are on the road again. After selling his back catalogue to Sony for $550 million. It’s unlikely he needs money. 

      Bruce is 72 and he’s already lost bandmates Danny Federici and Clarence “The Big Man” Clemmons. So this might be his last tour.

       However, that wouldn’t justify paying more than $4,000 for a pair of mid-floor tickets in Tampa, Fla.

      A long-running Springsteen fanzine called Backstreets writes 

   “From our point of view, this so-called premium, algorithm-driven model violates an implicit contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans, one in which the audience side of the equation appeared to truly matter — and in fact was crucial. We believed it because he told us repeatedly it was true.”

      A lot of people believed Bruce Springsteen was the local lad who made good, very good. But he remained one of us.

    However, the ticket prices not only will freezeout a number of Springsteen fans. It hurt. Surely, Bruce can’t know about these prices. He wouldn’t let this happen.  

     He does and he doesn’t want to talk it.  His long-time manager Jon Landau told that bastion of hipness and cool, The New York Times,

    “Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 (£828) or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 (£165) range “I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”

      That might be your belief, Mr. Landau, but it hurts fans not only in the pocket but emotionally because it looks like Bruce agrees.

In my opinion, those tickets especially in the US are outrageous. I’ve talked to some friends who are big Springsteen fans and they say they’ve been priced out.

Another note, I’m setting up a paid-subscription for this site. I’m not sure what it will entail, but you’ll get some goodies. But must of the pieces will remain free.