It's no secret that going to shows is insanely expensive these days. The tickets are pricey, the fees practically double the cost of the ticket itself, and then there's the venue beers and parking. It's all nuts. Though if you ask Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine, he'll tell you that the ticket prices at least reflect the cost of touring.
In an interview with The SDR Show, Mustaine said the cost of having a staff for a band like Megadeth – and the cost of travel in general – has unfortunately made ticket prices more expensive.
"What happens is — you have each individual, and whether they're working or not working, they get paid on a per-day basis… So you have whoever is out on the road," said Mustaine.
"For us, it's a lot of people we have a light man, a sound man, a monitor man. And then you go on to the deck. We've got a bunch of people up there. You've got a drum tech, guitar tech, and bass and guitar tech, another monitor guy."
"And then, there’s people backstage, there's the drivers, the bus drivers, the truck drivers, the caterers, all that stuff. And then there's all the hotels, all the money to get the hotel rooms for all these people. And then you got to feed them."
He continued: "So the cost just keeps going up and up and up. And a lot of people look at the ticket price, and they think, 'Man, I'm not paying 75 bucks to go see these guys.' And it's unfair to say that."
"Even if you had a choice in the matter, it's kind of what it is nowadays if you want to go see a live band. Because you just can't get from point A to point B anymore without spending a lot of money."
It's one of those situations where it's easy to sit here and criticize a statement like this, but it's true. If ticket prices came way down (ticket prices, not fees and all that nonsense) and everything cost the same, bands would likely be way more in the red – if not broken up entirely. Just ask Refused's frontman, he'll tell you.
