Tickets for Barbra’s first big tour in 28 years went on sale Sunday, March 27. There were three sections for sale: $50, $125 and $350. The prices were considered high at the time, although the rock band The Eagles were also criticized for the ticket prices ($55 to $90) for their “Hell Freezes Over” concert tour.
Ticket prices were rising in the mid-1990s. Artists like Bette Midler and Paul Simon were charging $100 at most, considered top price. Entertainment Weekly even ran a cover story on Barbra’s tickets with a condemning headline: “Money Girl.”
The problem (then as now) was ticket scalpers … If the show sold out and you were not able to buy face-value tickets, the only choice would be to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars more to “ticket brokers.” Since scalping is illegal, they skirted the law by throwing in extra services.
In Auburn Hills, broker Joel Schwartz said with a straight face, “The extra money is a service charge for transportation. I fax you maps. I Federal Express you the tickets. We do all the things that TicketMaster doesn’t do.” (Yes, in the 1990s, you could not print your tickets at home, nor add them to your iPhone Wallet. Tickets were “hard copy” paper objects that had to be picked up in person, mailed, or FedExed).
Streisand’s 1994 concert tour sold out in an hour, with TicketMaster receiving over five million phone calls – in “the old days” fans had to telephone a TicketMaster representative and read their credit card number over the phone to secure their tickets. Fans would also line up (some in the rain!) at a TicketMaster outlet or box office to buy tickets. These days, we do it all from our computers in the safety and warmth of our own homes!
With the tickets selling like hotcakes, many fans were despondent that they were unable to acquire seats to see Barbra. So, Streisand’s team added more concerts after the incredible response, for a total of 18 shows. (She would add more before the tour was over). TicketMaster’s CEO at the time, Fred Rosen, called the ticket sell-out “historic in every respect.”
Here’s how the mini-tour was sold: On Sunday, March 27th, twelve shows were put on sale: Washington (May 10, 12), Detroit (May 15, 17), Anaheim (May 25, 27, 29), San Jose (June 7, 9), and New York (June 20, 23, 26).
After those shows sold out, Streisand’s team added six more shows! In Anaheim, they added May 31 and June 2 and 4. In Detroit she added May 19. And in New York she added two more shows, June 28 and 30.
Streisand’s publicist Ken Sunshine said Streisand “doesn't see the tour as [being] for herself. It's her way of giving back, to just try to show love and support and appreciation for the fans. I know it sounds schmaltzy, but it's true.”
For the price of a Streisand ticket, not only were fans promised a chance to finally see her perform live, but “you can be sure that the sound, the lighting, and every technical aspect will be state of the art,” said Sunshine. “I don't think ever in live concerts have we seen that kind of detail, all supervised by Ms. Streisand.”
Streisand hilariously justified her prices. “I think this price is fair,” she said. “If you amortize the money over 28 years, it’s $12.50 a year. So is it worth $12.50 a year to see me sing? To hear me sing live?”
As a barometer, the most expensive ticket to a Broadway show in 1994 was around $75 — in this case, Streisand came to your city herself!
One important aspect of Streisand’s concert tour was the sound design. She hired Bruce Jackson, who also did sound for Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Presley.
“She was uptight about going and playing at all, let alone in big arenas,” Jackson said. “So it was the same deal, where she said, ‘I don’t care what it costs, I just want you to make it right for me.’ So I developed these custom monitors for her with these soft dome mid-range and tweeters.”
The other problem in the arenas was the reverberation of the sound. “How can you make it comfortable?” Jackson continued. “We want to control the reverb, so what’s the best thing to do? Well you know, if you walk into a carpeted room it’s much better than one with a wood floor, so we carpeted all these places. We carpeted Wembley, Madison Square Garden, and the Pond here in Los Angeles. All over, everywhere we went we carpeted, and also hung lots and lots of drapes to improve the sound.”
The efforts made a difference, as Marty Erlichman discovered when the crew set up for Barbra’s shows at Madison Square Garden. Streisand complained that the sound in the hall was unacceptable. It turned out that the MSG people “showed us a sample of carpet and we said OK,” Bruce Jackson said. “But when we came in, it was nothing like the sample. So, Marty said: ‘Take it out!’” And the crew did … at a cost of $30,000 to pull it out and put down Streisand's approved carpeting.
Ultimately, Streisand's six-city 1994 tour grossed (according to Pollstar) $58.9 million. She came in #4 for the year in tours, behind the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and the Eagles. Her numbers were impressive: Streisand averaged $10 million per city and set records at Madison Square Garden with her $16.5 million earnings there.
Streisand ended up performing a total of 24 concerts in 1994, and we all know that 24 is her lucky number.
