Tickets for Bono’s sell-out memoir tour go for 98 times face value
BONO superfans will have to fork out eyewatering sums of money if they want to witness him sing and recite chapters of his new memoir.
And fans who are willing to travel to see the rock star and activist can get more Bono for their buck depending on their destination, with tickets on resale sites varying from €374 in Dublin to more than a whopping $6,000 in Los Angeles.
The singer recently announced he’s hitting the road again in a whirlwind solo tour to promote his memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
The tour kicks off at the Beacon Theatre in New York City this Wednesday, November 2, with
‘Tickets snapped up within minutes’
stops in theatres in Boston, Toronto, Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The much sought-after tickets, which have a face value of
€61.95, were snapped up within minutes of their release on
Friday morning.
And no sooner had all the dates been sold out, than the prized tickets began appearing on resale sites for many multiples of their original price.
The most expensive city by far is Los Angeles, where two frontrow seats, which afford an upclose-and-personal view of Bono, are being offered for sale for $6,346 (€6,369).
But for those on a budget, tickets can be bought for the cheap seats section at the Los Angeles Orpheum Theatre for just $222.
Tickets for two prime seats at Bono’s New York reading at the Beacon Theatre are being offered for as much as $4,258.
One disappointed U2 fan who wanted to see the singer at the New York event told the MoS: ‘I’m in New York this week and I thought I’d love to go, but I checked it out and it was $800 for two tickets for myself and my daughter and that was the official price – it wasn’t even the black market.’
But on Bono’s hallowed home turf in Dublin, tickets for the local hero appear priceless, with only one person willing to part with their precious ticket for the sum of €374.
After his hometown appearance at The Olympia Theatre, Bono is headed for England, where he has dates booked in London.
From there, the star will hop the Channel for readings in Berlin and Paris, before finishing up in Madrid on Monday, November 28.
Speaking ahead of his return to the stage, albeit as speaker not singer, Bono said he has missed performing in front of a crowd.
‘I miss being on stage and the closeness of U2’s audience,’ he said. ‘In these shows I’ve got some stories to sing, and some songs to tell… plus I want to have some fun presenting my me-moir, Surrender, which is really more of a we-moir if I think of all the people who helped me get from there to here,’ he said.
The subtitle of his memoir – 40 Songs, One Story – refers to the book’s 40 chapters, each named after a U2 song. In his own voice, he takes readers from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was 14, to the group’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than 20 years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and to combating poverty.