You Want to See Springsteen? Micky Dolenz? Pay Up!

Please allow an old boomer, who at one point long ago was paying about 8 to 10 bucks to see the likes of the Who, the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen, to today sound off on what it now costs to go to a rock concert.

What got me revved up about this was a front page story in last Sunday’s New York Times headlined “Pricey Concerts Hit a Sour Note For Music Fans.”

In the lead of that story we were introduced to Ellen Rothman, now 75, who in 1974 saw Springsteen perform at “a sleazy little blues bar” in Cambridge, Mass.

She said Springsteen, who was just then breaking as a national act, nearly blew the roof off the joint. Since that night she has been to about 180 Springsteen concerts.

But now she’s had enough. Although for many years Springsteen managed to keep his ticket prices at “bargain rates,” the Times reported, the seats for his current tour are going for as high as $5,000.

“It’s not worth it,” Rothman said. “Even for Bruce.”

I can relate to her. In April 1976, when I was a cub reporter for the Morning Record in Wallingford, CT, I found out that Springsteen was due in that one-horse town to perform for the preppies at Choate Rosemary Hall. He was doing it as a personal favor for John Hammond, the legendary music producer, who was a close friend of the family of a student there.

On that night, in the words of Rolling Stone writer Jon Landau, “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” This was the first of many wonderful evenings I spent with Springsteen and the E Street Band — at the Palace Theater in Waterbury, CT, at the New Haven Coliseum, at the “No Nukes” concerts at Madison Square Garden, etc.

In those golden years, if you were a fan and listened carefully to the d.j. on your local rock music station (WPLR in New Haven) and moved quickly, you could get tickets and see those performers. And you didn’t get ripped off by fees and other add-on charges. (Full disclosure: as the rock critic for the New Haven Register, sometimes I paid nothing to see a show).

But now we have something called “dynamic pricing.” Dynamic indeed. For Springsteen’s new tour about 11 percent of the seats are designated “official platinum,” priced “dynamically.” The cost rises and falls with the demand. And that’s where you see the $5,000 prices.

It ain’t just Springsteen. For Drake, “dynamic” prices are as high as $1,182. Drake’s fans learned they were being asked to pay $500 for a pair of tickets in the upper decks of stadiums.

What the heck’s going on here? How and why have these performers — especially Bruce, “the champion of the working people” — lost control of what their fans are paying?

I consulted with an old friend and fellow Springsteen fan; at his request I will not name him but refer to him as “a veteran observer of the music industry.” He told me, “I am not an apologist for Bruce” but he sent me a Billboard story from last July: “Top Springsteen Ticket Prices Fuel Rage But the Average Cost Wasn’t So High.” The article stated the average price for tickets was $213. But the story also noted: “Springsteen stands to earn about $4 million per show — and as much as $120 million for the U.S. leg of the tour.”

I’m well beyond all of this. If I want to hear live music I go to the New Haven Folk Festival at a lovely park near my home, or I bring a folding chair to the parking lot patio at Best Video over the town line in Hamden to hear a local band. They pass the hat and you put in $10 or $20 or whatever you feel.

Meanwhile, get a load of this: tonight (Friday), Micky Dolenz (remember? The Monkees?) is performing at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, CT.

The show is sold out. All 500 seats.

And get this: when, solely out of curiosity, I went online to see how much the tickets cost, I saw the prices for some seats were as high as $719!

Right, to see one-quarter of an act that hasn’t had a hit on the charts for about 55 years. And let’s face it — they weren’t the Beatles.

When I called the theater’s box office to verify those absurd ticket prices, the guy there said, “That’s a third-party re-seller.” He said the “actual” prices were $85 to $105.

How is somebody to know this? How do you avoid paying such a ridiculous amount? My “veteran observer” said: just call the box office and buy your tickets that way! Do NOT go online. OK, good to know.

But I’m still wondering: are we baby boomers so hard up that we’re willing to pay a minimum of $85 to see one-quarter of the Monkees?