Getting Shafted At The Box Office

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood are the latest batch of legacy artists gouging the public with insane ticket prices. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled the two of them have reconnected on a musical level and are working together, but $250+ for tickets at Madison Square Garden? I could see them charging that kind of money if they were playing somewhere a little more intimate like the Beacon or Carnegie Hall, and it would still be a shaft to the consumer, but the Garden? And this isn’t a case of two arena headliners going out. Yes, Clapton can still play the Garden on his own, but Winwood is now a theatre artist.

Their agenda clearly is not to spread the music. It is not to create a buzz about what should be the most important element of their collaboration – the music. This just makes it look like an attempt to cash out. They are jumping on board the greed train. The concert business at its finest.

The funny thing is that their work together only somewhat appeals to a niche audience. They can pull this off in NYC, but this show can’t fill arenas nationwide. This isn’t the magnitude of a Led Zeppelin reunion show in terms of mass appeal. These are two brilliantly talented guys that played briefly together in the late 60’s and while their work together made a significant mark popularity-wise in the 60’s, it hasn’t had a lasting effect in those terms 30+ years later.

If I lived in NYC, I would really want to see this show. But $250+ is just too much. And I know a lot of people that feel the same way. This would be just another show I would have been priced out of. I would rather blow $250 on 15-20 CD titles that I can spin endlessly for years and download a recording of the Clapton/Winwood show off the internet to get a sense of what transpired. It just isn’t worth it to spend that kind of money on concert tickets.

The real music fans, the ones that can really appreciate a show of that magnitude are left out in the cold. Seriously, who are Clapton and Winwood really trying to appeal to?