Don Henley on Petty

QUESTION: Are you still friends with Tom Petty?
HENLEY: I am, and I admired his last album (`The Last DJ') tremendously.

QUESTION: Well, Tom told me last year that he's never seen a rock show that was worth $150 a ticket. The prices for The Eagles' concert here in San Diego range from $49 to $158, and there were some tickets priced at just over $300. How do you justify that?
HENLEY: I don't know anything about $300 ticket prices, but our manager will be happy to call you. We've been careful on this tour to be below some of our peers' ticket prices, like Billy Joel and Elton John, for example. We went over that with our manager, at the beginning of the tour, that we wanted to be below some other people's prices.

QUESTION: But $300 sounds pretty exorbitant, doesn't it?
HENLEY: I really don't know anything about that figure. There are charities involved with some of this.

QUESTION: You mean your non-profit Walden Woods preservation charity group?
HENLEY: Sometimes mine, sometimes somebody else's. But to be fair, I think you'll find there are $40 tickets at stops on this tour; there's a wide range of prices. And, frankly, we've been dong this for 32 years now, and when you're at the top of your field and accomplished as much as we have, you get paid more.

That's true in any industry. I admire Tom (Petty) a great deal, but I don't necessarily agree with him on this issue. As I've said jokingly: 'Sometimes antiques cost more!'
Our band and crew numbers 92 people. We create a lot of jobs for truck drivers, sound and lighting technicians, electricians, guitar roadies, drum roadies, as well as for the numerous people in each city, who are generally unionized, who come and work in the loading docks at the venues where we play. So a great many jobs are created.

I can say one thing, though, this (touring) is about the only way an artist can make money any more. If consumers weren't stealing from us on the Internet (by downloading songs without paying the artists), and if record companies weren't stealing from us in our contracts, ticket prices might go down.

We're caught in the middle ... we're being stolen from on both sides, by so-called fans and so-called reputable record companies.

Ya know, I like Henley's song writing, but I don't think he should talk. LOL! To read more of Don's whining, click here.