Posted on 12/09/2007 6:48:18 PM PST by blam
Led Zeppelin to get heavy on ticket touts
By Joanna Corrigan
Last Updated: 2:14am GMT 10/12/2007
Led Zeppelin fans who bought tickets online for the band's first performance in almost 20 years could be turned away from the concert because of stringent security measures.
Touts have been selling tickets to the band's reunion on auction websites such as eBay despite organisers trying to prevent anyone apart from winners of the official ballot from attending the show at London's O2 arena.
Only fans with a special code obtained in the ballot, photographic ID and the credit card that paid for the tickets will be allowed in, meaning some who bought tickets in good faith could be shut out.
Sellers on eBay have been asking up to £1,550 for a pair of tickets, with one asking £4,000 for two and promising to grant access to the VIP guest area.
Chris Goodman, spokesman for the band, told fans not to believe the touts and said they would only have themselves to blame if they spent a fortune on tickets that failed to get them in.
He said: "Everybody has been warned that they cannot get through in any other way and if they choose to go on unofficial sites, that is the chance they take."
The announcement of a Led Zeppelin reunion at a tribute concert for Ahmet Ertegun, the late founder of Atlantic Records, provoked huge interest around the world.
More than a million people took part in the ballot. Successful applicants were given a pass code which enabled them to buy two tickets from for £125 each. They then had to pick up a non-transferable wristband before the concert to ensure entry.
Resourceful ballot winners who only needed one ticket were still trying to get round the strict security by selling their spare one in advance for up to £1,000 and arranging to meet the buyer before the concert so they could collect them together.
But an O2 insider said there had been problems with a companies trying to sell the pass codes. Some people were "bound to have been turned away" because of fraudulent tickets.
Led Zeppelin, formed in 1968, were one of the most influential bands of the 1970s with songs such as Whole Lotta Love and Stairway To Heaven. They split in 1980 after the death of the drummer John Bonham.
Kenneth Donnell, 25, who was not born in 1980, spent £83,000 on two tickets in a BBC Children in Need auction.
Um, does he mean thirty years?
If it were only 20 years ago, I would have seen them.
Yeah, but are they as good as Hanah Montana?
They played an Atlantic Records anniversary show at Madison Square Garden in 1987 (20 years ago) with Jason on drums. It was great!
those darn rules again
Is “touts” Britspeak for “scalpers?”
Hehe... I just dropped a bunch o'money on iTunes for some of the Led Zeppelin catalog. Dayum, that's some good music! I was in college when much of it came out; every song reminds me of some dorm room or some event in college.
Other people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, I remember where I was the first time I heard Stairway to Heaven (an Orange Julius in Ann Arbor).
I’m sorry....I just never got the Led Zep sound. Robert Plant’s solo cover of, “Sea of Love,” was listenable, but the balance sounds like a pepper-sprayed bobcat trying to sing harmony with lawnmower.
i predict a repeat of the ‘69 riot in newport ri. they better get reinforcements. the national guard and marine reserve had to be called in when zep fans tore down the fences and mobbed the park. i think they were the first..and last rock band at the folk festival. i was told by my brother in law...who was a reservist...that a couple thousand kids were essentially marched out of town at bayonette-point. just not a good idea on their part...or a misguided publicity stunt. people could get hurt.
With love in her eyes and flowers...In her Hair.... Puke! ;)
“Sellers on eBay have been asking up to £1,550 for a pair of tickets, with one asking £4,000 for two and promising to grant access to the VIP guest area.”
...Whoa!.....I smell reunion tour.
I tell myself this once a day...
He looks like the king of Rohan from the LOTR movies.
I played the first four albums until the grooves wore out.
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