We can’t say it’s an exact secret that online ticket booths love overcharging for fees, and while you might be willing to spend a few hundred dollars on seeing your favorite act, it surely hurts anyone to see online ticket-selling platforms draining your bank balance away. So this controversial situation has led to some protests and questions.
With people complaining about the overpriced tickets, it wasn’t much later that a beloved rocker landed right in the middle of the crosshairs. The singer in question was Bruce Springsteen, an all-time American hero, who received many furious comments over the expensive fees one needed to pay before seeing him on stage.
Springsteen, however, took a bit of a controversial step and stood by the ticket prices, saying he and his team already had tried their best to keep the costs at a minimum and every other rocker in the music industry also charged the same price. Still, that didn’t change the fact that those minimum fees annoyed many and surely upset the fans who couldn’t afford to see the rocker live.
Look, I’m not trying to make Bruce look like the bad guy here since it’s apparent that he’s just trying to look out for his team and crew, and with the everchanging inflation and worldwide financial unrest, it might be safe to say that we’ve become a bit used to seeing things over cost than they used to.
However, even decades before the Springsteen controversy took place, it seemed that one young man was not all too happy with the ticket costs. Although the late ’70s to early ’80s were an era when ticket prices were much lower and affordable, that broke young man still couldn’t find the money.
It was none other than a desperate Jon Bon Jovi who was determined to get into a Springsteen show in Madison Square Garden, and luckily, he managed to get hold of a few tickets without paying for them. However, getting those tickets didn’t change the fact that the young rocker still needed to pay for them before the concert, so he and his then-girlfriend started thinking of a solution.
The solution came after the said girlfriend’s father, a printer, gave them a few in-store posters and the couple decided to sell them to pay for the ticket fees. So, while they looked out for any possible buyers, a police officer approached the pair, expressing he wanted to buy a poster for two bucks; and Jon cluelessly agreed and handed the cop the poster.
It was then the officer arrested him for bootlegging, and Bon Jovi, along with his girlfriend, found themselves in the back of a police car. Luckily though, they didn’t spend the night in jail, as the officers showed mercy by only confiscating their posters and fining them fifty dollars… (Ouch) and the couple managed to get back to the venue and witness Bruce perform.
Jon recalled getting arrested during an interview in 1987:
“I didn’t have any money, but I was in New York City in Madison Square Garden and wanted to see Bruce Springsteen, and we had gotten tickets, and we had to pay for them. My girlfriend at the time, her father, was a printer and gave us the in-store posters.
So, we thought [we could] get a buck or two for them, and one cop came up and said, ‘Two bucks, give me a poster.’ And I gave him one; he says, ‘You’re under arrest.’ And he took us in, threw us right in the paddy wagon, and took us to jail.”
The rocker continued by disclosing whether they spent the night in jail:
“No, we even made it back for the show. They knew that we weren’t real bootleggers; we were just two kids who wanted to go to a show. They kept the posters, and I think we paid like a fifty-dollar fine… so it was the tickets and the fifty dollars, and we all got in trouble.”
So, as the people of the modern age are currently protesting and complaining about the expensive fees, a young Jon Bon Jovi in the early ’80s also thought the same while trying to pay for some Springsteen tickets despite being broke. However, that didn’t end well as he and his girlfriend got into what we might call a terrible business deal, with having to pay fifty extra dollars to the police while trying to make a few bucks to see Springsteen.
