MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE says increased cost of touring is main reason concert ticket prices are so high
22-12-2023
In a new interview with The SDR Show, MEGADETH‘s Dave Mustaine elaborated on his previous comment that it costs around fifty thousand dollars a day for him and his bandmates “just to sit still” on the road. Asked if that is still an accurate number, Mustaine said: “Pretty close. Yeah, it’s pretty close. What happens is you have each individual, and whether they’re working or not working, they get paid on a per-day basis. And so you have whoever is out on the road, and for us, it’s a lot of people. We have a light man, a soundman, a monitor man, and then you go on to the back. We’ve got a bunch of people up there — we’ve got a drum tech, a guitar tech and a bass and guitar tech, another monitor guy. And then there’s people backstage. There’s the drivers, the bus drivers, the truck drivers, the caterers, all that stuff. And then there’s all the hotels, all the money to get the hotel rooms for all these people. And then you’ve gotta feed ’em. So the cost just keeps going up and up and up.”
He continued: “A lot of people, they look at the ticket price and they think, ‘Man, I’m not paying 75 bucks to go see these guys.’ And I’m sad to say that even if you had a choice in the matter, it’s kind of what it is nowadays if you wanna go see a live band, because you just can’t get from point A to point B anymore without spending a lot of money.”
Mustaine also weighed in on AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows‘s comment that the busing on AVENGED‘s latest tour would cost two million dollars more than it did prior to the pandemic. Dave said: “I think that might be ’cause his band takes out more buses. For example, we take two. I’m sure that they probably take more than that. And I think because they’re so successful that there could be — I’m not saying this — but there could be certain people that would be more willing to give them an incentive to use their company because of what great promotion it would be to have those guys using a bus company. If I had a brand new bus and I wanted to get popular, bands like AVENGED would be a great band for promoting your company. So you would think charging these guys two million bucks, man, they would either have to have a lot of buses or he’s talking about a long time. Buses are generally between five to 10 thousand dollars a week. ‘Cause that includes fuel and the driver and his hotel. Sometimes you have to do double drives in Europe; you have to do that.”
Financial issues are continuing to wreak havoc on the touring industry, with the economics of the business simply not adding up.
Acts of all sizes are canceling or postponing shows, with several claiming that it was “not sustainable” for them to go ahead with the tours.
For many midsized acts, ticket sales are not even enough to cover their overheads.
MEGADETH‘s current lineup includes Mustaine, Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer Dirk Verbeuren, who had played with SOILWORK for more than a decade before joining MEGADETH, Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro, who was previously best known for his work with ANGRA, and bassist James LoMenzo. James was MEGADETH‘s bass player in the mid-2000s and stepped back in as a touring member for the 2021 leg of “The Metal Tour Of The Year”. In May 2022, it was announced that Lomenzo was officially rejoining the MEGADETH family.
Last September, MEGADETH‘s latest album, “The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!”, debuted at the top of the charts during its first week of sales, taking the No. 3 spot on the Billboard 200 as well as number ones on Top Album Sales, Top Current Albums Sales, Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums. “The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!” was the highest-charting MEGADETH album of all time around the world, notching No. 1 In Finland, No. 2 in Australia, Poland, Switzerland, and Scotland, No. 3 in the U.K., and more.
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