Being born in 1968, I think I’m someway in between our oldsters and you, and I attended my first arena concert in 1986, ZZ Top at the Westfalenhalle Dortmund. I since have been at hundreds of concerts, including many stadium and other outdoor festivals with +50k visitors, and I have never encountered any critical situation or felt unsafe in a concert. I don’t know if this makes a difference, but all those concerts were in Germany or the Netherlands. Of course I read many horror stories from former times, and my sister attended a Toten Hosen concert in the Rheinstadium, Düsseldorf, in 1997 when a melee in front of the stage broke out and a 16 year old girl died and 300 were injured (my sister was safe, she was in the back), so it still happened.
Oh I am not nostalgic for that! I would have been quite happy to have a seat and watch the concert in peace. That just wasn’t how it was done. Even after the “I’d walk over you to see the Who” 1979 tour, “festival standing” was still the norm in a lot of places
And then the opening act starts half an hour late, and the main act starts and hour late. After too much of that you think “I’ll just listen to my albums.”
I hated it, and it’s probably the reason I never went to as many concerts as my peers. Which has the added benefit that I can hear better at 63 than a lot of my peers. 
I was going to say I have that show on DVD, but apparently the Who played Toronto twice in 1982 and the one they released was recorded at Maple Leaf Gardens. It’s a pretty solid set.
Right. They did the October show at Exhibition Stadium, and then returned for the show at Maple Leaf Gardens in December. My buddy’s sister was at the MLG show; the rest of us had had our fill of The Who in concert after that Exhibition Stadium concert, so we didn’t go.
It was rumoured that the MLG show was supposed to be their last before they retired from touring, but as we all know, that didn’t happen. After a few years, they resumed touring.
And in 1989, they returned to Toronto as a stop on their tour that year, and again, played Exhibition Stadium. And again, I went—but this time, I was not about to return to General Admission. I shelled out for reserved seats for my girlfriend and me.
Heh. I saw them on their 2016 tour which was being billed as Our Last Tour Ever Seriously We Mean It This Time, and at the end of the show Pete said “Tell your friends, if they’ve never seen us before - you missed your chance!” Of course, they’ve done a few more tours and released an album since then.
I also have the live album of the 1989 tour, which was compiled from a bunch of shows and I think has a track or two from that concert. Not really their best performance, but the rendition of 5:15 with the full horn section and John’s bass solo is pretty cool, and getting to see Tommy performed live must have been a treat. (I got to see Daltrey do the whole thing on his solo tour in 2011, with Zak Starkey on drums and Simon Townshend on lead guitar, which was still pretty cool.)
I got a kick out of Pete being interviewed in his limo before the 1982 Shea Stadium gig:
Q: Pete, we’re going to Shea Stadium for the last Who show in New York ever. What do you feel now for what you’re about to do?
A: I kind of get into a blasé attitude, you know…
Q: So the fact this is goodbye to New York, with The Who…?
Q: Goodbye to this place? I’ve never been here before. I’m looking out the window at it now and I don’t like the look of it. I’ll be glad to say goodbye to it. (waves out the window) I’m saying good bye to it now: good bye Shea Stadium, I’ll never f**king see you again. I mean, who needs it? I never wanted to be a baseball player.
But the fire hoses were the best part!
Seriously, it looks like I’m a bit older than some of the posters. In the late 60s and early 70s, concert tickets cost about the same as an LP (e.g., $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50) and we could afford to go to one or two every week even though we were starving students. We’d go early to the festivals, but usually got there less than 30 minutes before the scheduled start when we had assigned seats. Many bands were indeed late to take the stage (Yes was especially bad, in my experience), but most of the time it was less than a 30-minute delay.
I was fortunate to be in a big city with lots of venues and a constant stream of touring acts. (But how many times do you want to see Black Oak Arkansas?)
Five bucks in 1970, according to the CPI inflation calculator, is about $40 today. There’s plenty of concerts in that range and cheaper today. (And also many much more expensive.)
I don’t see many that are comparable, at least not for better-known bands. I just saw Richard Thompson in Northampton, MA, and decent tix were over $60. Todd Rundgren was over $80.
Seeing Led Zeppelin when their third album came out cost me less than one hour’s pay from my student job.
I just bought Gang of Four Tickets for $25. Granted, it’s their farewell tour and their guitarist Andy Gill died in 2020 as an early victim of Covid, but still, not too bad. Most of the shows I go to are around $40. Tickets to see Ani DiFranco in April are $45. The Frank Black show is $35. The KMFDM show is $42. I just paid $28 for Teenage Fanclub a month ago. Redd Kross (one of my favorite bands) was $32. I tend to go to small-to-medium sized venues, and tend not to see the most mainstream of acts. Sounds like you got paid well at the student job if you were making $5/hr. Minimum wage was $1.45/hr back then.
The thing that gets me today is all the additional costs on top of the actual ticket. The prices I quoted there, at least with Teenage Fanclub and Redd Kross since I found the receipts, are after all the fees. But I have had fees end up like 30% of the total cost of the ticket.
I did get paid well. It was part of my student aid, but a lot of people were making $3.00 to $4.00 an hour doing similar work, so it wasn’t that big of a difference.
I totally understand that there are currently many talented acts at smaller venues with lower ticket prices. I go to those myself. But Yes, King Crimson, CS&N, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, and Alice Cooper were pretty big acts with multiple highly-successful albums released at the time.
The big acts now (unfortunately), have to pretty much rely on their touring income more than their media sales.
Yeah, for the big acts, it’s probably closer to what you observe, $90/ticket. That’s what I paid for Smashing Pumpkins a few years back, Liz Phair a year (or was it two) ago, St Vincent, etc.
I’m jealous. Smashing Pumpkins was one of the acts I never saw. When I retired, I had to get serious about cutting back on concerts. I can see a BIG act…or I can see a bunch of (often equally good but lesser known) acts for the same amount.
I’ve never seen The Eagles and, based on what they wanted on their last tour, I doubt I ever will.
But I’ve “seen the hell” out of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Cheap Trick (who play anywhere and every time they’re asked), Richard Thompson, and a bunch of other favorites
Yes, the fees are ridiculous, I just ordered a ticket for Motorpsycho at Eventim (the big monopolist in Germany, like Ticketmaster in the US you hardly can avoid them). The regular price was € 37, but they added € 5.99 declared as “shipping fee”. The ticket came in a standard letter with a postage of € 0.85. It’s a joke and a steal.
Like you, I mostly visit concerts of second tier bands (not in quality, but in popularity). Examples in the last few years were Teenage Fanclub, the Jayhawks, Dinosaur Jr, Paul Weller and several times Motorpsycho, and the price ranges were € 35-45. But you wouldn’t get a ticket for a band like Gang Of Four for € 25 here, that’s the price for a decent cover band. The only big names I saw recently were Bob Dylan, Neil Young with Crazy Horse and Van Morrison, and these were all around € 80 for the cheapest seats.
I was slightly surprised, but that one, now that I look at the ticket, also has a $7.35 fee on top of the $25, so really more like $32. It’s at a venue called Bottom Lounge that holds 700 people max. So it’s not a huge room. Maybe the lack of Andy Gill makes it a less in-demand show or something. I know a friend of mine just considers it a Gang of Four tribute band at this point. But checking in now, it looks like it did sell out, so who knows. I see that Stabbing Westward (a local/localish band whose heyday was in the 90s) is commanding $40/ticket at the same venue, so I’m not sure why the megainfluential Go4 was only $25 ($32 with fee.)
ETA: Damn, they’re already starting at $75 on the resale market. I do have one extra … Hmmm …
In recent years I’ve paid as little as $20 to see indie bands that I enjoy, like Twin Temple and Church of the Cosmic Skull, and as much as $200 for arena acts from the classic rock era like Springsteen and Queen.
San Diego, December 1971, also my loudest concert ever attended and the last concert I ever attended without hearing protection. I was there to see Keith and John (I was never impressed by Pete or Roger, then or now); Keith was already past his prime but he and John were great. Won’t Get Fooled Again, still pretty new, was awesome.
My loudest was Motorhead in 2011. Perhaps not as loud in raw decibelage as a stadium concert, but this was an indoor venue that held 1,000 people and I was about ten feet away from Lemmy for most of the show.
My ears didn’t stop ringing until a day and a half later, and I drove home that night with the radio turned off because it felt painful to hear things.
My loudest concert was the aforementioned Motorpsycho (you all must know by now that they are one of my favorite bands 
), at the Gloria in Cologne, Germany, ca. 2014. I’ve seen them three other times in other venues, but this was their (and everybody’s) loudest. The Gloria is a former movie theater with an ascending floor (but no seats anymore, only standing) and a capacity of about 1,000, so a good view and sound everywhere, and Motorpsycho are a Norwegian heavy psychedelic/prog rock power trio with a monster bass player, the great Bent Sæther, think Lemmy, Jack Bruce or John Entwistle. The band just blew us away, but it was fantastic. I’m looking forward to their 2025 concert in Cologne, again at the Gloria.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor was my loudest concert, and I’m seeing them again in November. LCD Soundsystem was pretty darned loud too.
The Who shows I saw were pretty loud, but not your-whole-body’s-vibrating-am-I-going-to-have-a-heart-attack loud.