In the spring of 1970, college students were protesting racism, pollution, the Vietnam War and the high cost of live music. A CSN&Y show at the Met Center in Bloomington was setting kids back as much as $10. That’s a little over 50 bucks in today’s dollars, about the average price for a major show in 2006 – and far below the $450 charged for the priciest seats at Barbra Streisand’s recent concert at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.

An October 2006 interview with Barry Knight, a Macalester student who organized a boycott of the CSN&Y show, follows this Minneapolis Tribune report.

Student Launches
Boycott Against
Rock Concert Prices

By MIKE STEELE
Minneapolis Tribune Staff Writer

Last Sunday, Barry Knight, a 21-year-old Macalester College student, saw an ad in the newspaper for the May 24 concert concert by Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young at the Metropolitan Sports Center. Tickets were $10, $7, $6 and $5.

“I said, ‘That’s outrageous, period,’” said Knight. “I called some friends and some record shops and we had a meeting Tuesday night at the Electric Fetus. We decided to boycott the concert. We sent releases to AP, UPI and called the Rolling Stone and Ralph Gleason in San Francisco. It’s gotten to a point were it’s incredible. No one can afford to hear music anymore.”

Several “underground” record shops which normally sell tickets to rock concerts have said they will not for this one. They include The Fetus, The Oblivion, The Optic Nerve and The Laughing Lady.

Ray Heim, who is promoting the concert for the sports center, agreed prices were high but laid the blame on the groups. “They ask exorbitant fees, a guarantee plus a hefty percentage. We have expenses putting on a concert that can run as high as $20,000. We aren’t getting rich on it.”

	Or was it NCS&Y? From left: Graham Nash, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young in a 1970 publicity shot. The band’s album that year, “Deja Vu,” was a big hit in my family’s house. Since posting this piece, I can’t get that cloying “Our House” out of my head.

Heim didn’t give a figure for Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young, but others put it at a $25,000 guarantee against 65 percent of the gross.

Heim said the building costs around $3,000 a day whether filled or empty. From the money he takes in on a concert, he must pay for rent, staff, ushers, guards, police, box office help, a crew to set up the stage and seats, technical and union help, equipment, lights, advertising and maintenance.

“If kids want this kind of thing,” said Heim, “we have to pay through the nose to get it. The groups set the terms. They know how many seats there are and set up a potential gross. We’ve got to meet their demands. If the kids don’t want it, we’ll go back to the Lawrence Welks.”

Heim did say he talked to the manager of Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young, and said he would probably turn some of the $5 tickets into $2, but he didn’t know how many.

“It makes no difference,” said Knight. “We’re going ahead with this. Even a $5 ticket is outrageous at the Met. No one wants to see a rock concert through binoculars. We want them, including Crosby, Nash and Stills’ management, to meet with us and do something. If they don’t we’ll put ads in the papers and try to put on free concerts throughout the city and maybe end with a massive onslaught of posters.

“But someone has got to stop it sometime. I don’t know how else we can do it.”

October 2006 update: Barry Knight, now a “spry 58,” is a private wealth adviser for Merrill Lynch. He and his wife and two children live in Orono.

I asked him how the boycott played out more than 35 years ago. He said it forced promoters to lower ticket prices for some seats at the CSN&Y concert but otherwise had little effect. “It became very apparent to me that there wasn’t a lot of consumer impact to be made,” he recalled. “If people wanted to see an act badly enough, they would pay whatever was charged.”

	Barry Knight

Knight graduated from Macalester that spring and joined Walker Art Center as an assistant for the performing arts. He helped put together concerts at the Guthrie, including Elton John, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead and The Band in the early 1970s.

His all-time favorite concert? “An all-night jazz concert at Red Rocks that included Jimmy Smith and Dionne Warwick stands out,” he said. “It was an amazing day of remarkable music.” Tickets for that late 1960s concert cost “seven or eight bucks.”

Knight guessed that the most he’s paid for a concert ticket is about $65 for the Dixie Chicks show at Target Center in August. That’s about $12.90 in 1970 dollars. He took his 10-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. It was their first live arena show.

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