ARTICLE: Springsteen: Hard To Be A Saint In The Rock 'N' Roll City

Posted Fri Feb 6, 2009 4:40pm PST by Blender Magazine in The Blender Burner

You're Bruce Springsteen and you've just played the greatest halftime show in the history of the Super Bowl. What are you going to do? Why, put the tickets for your U.S. tour up on sale, of course! Because, after all, there were an awful lot of people watching the Super Bowl, right? And you rocked them harder than humans deserve to be rocked, right? So they'll want to come see your show now more than ever, right? Right!

But wait, there's a problem here--when Springsteen tickets went on sale last week, Bruce fans flooded Ticketmaster's site looking for a fix, and many in the New Jersey area got error messages telling them to try back later. When they did, they found out the shows were sold out--nooooooo!--but they still had a chance: A link would take them to TicketsNow (Ticketmaster's resale site) where they could buy seats for a lot more than face value. In the old days, before the miracle of the Internet, this used to be called scalping, and wouldn't you know it, such a fuss ensued that the New Jersey State Attorney General has launched an investigation and Bruce put a message up on his site saying he was just as angry as everyone else. (Ticketmaster apologized too.)

Bruce has done his share of apologizing recently, saying his team goofed up by letting their record company give an exclusive hits CD to Wal Mart, a place that's not traditionally a friend to the union guys Springsteen sings about. You know the old Springsteen song about how it's hard to be a saint in the city? Sometimes it's hard to be a saint in the world of rock 'n' roll too (sometimes? always!), but Bruce Springsteen will keep trying.

The Bruce ticket screw-up is hardly the only concert flub in rock history, which includes Kanye keeping his fans waiting until nearly dawn, Axl Rose not showing up at all, and the great tradition of fans throwing bottles. Burner takes a look...