Desert Trip concert weekends sell out within hours

LOS ANGELES — Tickets for Desert Trip, the mega-concert in October in Indio, California, featuring Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, the Who, Neil Young and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, sold out in five hours, concert organizers said Tuesday.

Orders for Monday’s sale came in from around the world, said Paul Tollett, head of Goldenvoice, the promoter that organized the Oct. 7-9 and Oct. 14-16 shows.

Interest in the event, he said, has been unprecedented. “There were over 400,000 people trying to place orders,” he said.

Sales were capped at “a little bit more than 75,000 [per day],” he said, a figure similar to what Goldenvoice does for the annual Stagecoach Country Music Festival on the same Empire Polo Field site. For the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, attendance has been expanded in recent years to 99,000 per day over a six-day run.

Tickets for Desert Trip started at $199 US for a single-day admission and ran up to $1,599 for reserved-seating three-day passes for either weekend, with a variety of VIP options pushing prices above $3,000.

Shortly before tickets for the Oct. 7-9 weekend went on sale, Goldenvoice announced that all the performers would return for a second weekend.

There were complaints from some fans who didn’t get tickets.

“My wife and I were both on laptops, with windows open for both weekends,” Los Angeles resident Richard Guardian wrote in an email on Tuesday. “The first one barely crawled, the second weekend was just above snail pace. On Facebook, I monitored comments from people that were all over the map, but most very negative and complaining, and identifying seats already on resale sites. After about three hours, a friend of mine got on, but she wanted [general admission], so wasn’t going to buy.

“So the bad news, no tickets. The good news, we saved money.”

Tollett said Tuesday that overall the sale ran smoothly.

“It seemed to go well for all the orders that needed to be processed,” Tollett said. “So many people didn’t get tickets. That’s a bummer.”