A leading Bruce Springsteen fanzine has announced it will cease publication after 43 years because the artist’s fanbase became disillusioned by unaffordable concert tickets.
Backstreets magazine said both its editorial staff and fans had become ‘dispirited’ and ‘downhearted’ after prices for some tickets to the artist’s 2023 arena tour reached $4,000 each last year.
‘These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result.’
And:
Springsteen’s humble beginnings in New Jersey and the relatability of his music once earned him the reputation of being ‘the voice of the working man’.
In his early years, Springsteen played at any bar in which he could make money. He earned the nickname the Boss because he would collect and distribute gig money among band members, Andrew Delahunty, the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames, told the BBC in 2009.
Mark Kemp of Rolling Stone magazine once described Springsteen as ‘a working-class hero: a plainspoken visionary and a sincere romantic whose insights into everyday lives – especially in America’s small-town heartland – have earned comparisons to John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.’
Yeah, well now he’s just a woke dollar-chasing asshole, like so many of his ilk.
I never cared for his tuneless bellow anyway, so I have no dog in this fight. But these people need to be brought back down to earth by the people who were actually responsible for their success. Nowadays, their success seems to be driven by those bloodless fucks at TicketMaster, and a pox on them too.
