Julius posted:If he weren't doing it for money, he wouldn't be asking for payment. The first five shows grossed 2.3 million dollars. He's doing 80 shows. They will gross $35 million. With little to no production costs. He'll take 20-25 million easily. But no, he's not doing this for money. Please, man.
Springsteen has made no secret about liking money—no surprise there, right, almost everyone does, and we all know how little he had growing up and well into his adulthood.
But he's worth somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-billion dollars. What do you think another $35 mill is going to allow him to buy he can't already? You don't think he could get something like that by just going along for the first time with sponsorship or something? Just signing a contract is a hell of a lot easier than the hundreds and hundreds of hours he's going to be putting into this thing.
I was pretty turned off by the Broadway idea, initially, and I think the prices are pretty obscene. But he's an artist trying something new, and that's what most of us claim we want from our artists, even if we don't like the result. (And, of course, a lot of fans are honest about not wanting something new from their favorite artists.) And since Tom Petty's sudden death, I've decided I am a-O-fucking-K with whatever the fuck Bruce Springsteen wants to do artistically whenever the fuck Bruce Springsteen wants to do it. I still might not like the result, but I'll just be glad he's still around to do his thing.