By Cathy Maestri
InstantRiverside.com

We knew last Sunday’s U2 show was going to set a record at the Rose Bowl, with an estimated 96,000 in attendance.

That’s why we got there before 11 a.m. and tailgated in the parking lot. Pretty much everyone got there reasonably early and chilled — of course, then it seemed like everyone decided to go into the stadium all at once. We anxiously pointed out to our friends how ironic it would be to have gotten there 10 hours early and then missed the start of U2’s set. (OK, we were a little panicky.)

According to Billboard, U2 not only set the record for the Rose Bowl but set a new record for a single-headliner concert in the United States.

Box-office totals show that 97,014 attended the Oct. 25 Rose Bowl show, thanks to the in-the-round staging on the 360 tour; that breaks the previous record of 86,145 set in 1987 at the since-demolished JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

The previous record-holder — U2, during the band’s Joshua Tree tour.

And the third-highest attendance number? That would also be U2, set in September in Maryland.

Pink Floyd is fourth with a 1994 show at Ohio State, and the Backstreet Boys are fifth for a 2000 date in Atlanta.

What’s really mind-boggling is that U2’s 1987 show grossed $1.5 million, while the Rose Bowl grossed $9.96 million.

So we pulled out our old ticket stubs just to see how much prices have gone up. We didn’t include additional charges, partly because it’s confusing and partly because it makes us steamed to pay so darn much extra for service charges.

Our first U2 show, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago in 1984, was $12 general admission.

After they band had gotten a little bigger in 1985, admission to two shows at the University of Illinois, Chicago, was $13.50 each.

On the aforementioned Joshua Tree tour, we paid $16.50-$18.50 (and probably just a wee bit more for the two shows we saw in Dublin).

For ZooTV in ‘92, we paid $25-$31.

The night before prices were announced for the ‘97 Pop Mart tour, we had a terrible dream that tickets would be $50; we paid $52.50-$54.50 for floor, and seating was appreciably higher.

For Elevation in ‘01, we paid $30-$85 for a seat (we find it hard to believe we paid that much) and $45-$55 for the floor.

For Vertigo in 2005, floor was $49.50-$51.25, which was subsidized by the rich people in the pricey seats.

This time around, we’ve been paying $55-$56.50 for general-admission floor (though, thanks to service charges, the total for a pair of tickets for next June’s show in Oakland was $138.80). Prices for the 360 tour range from $30 to $250, not including the auction prices for the (RED) Zone on the floor near the stage.

Considering the show you get (those giant claw stages cost $40 million), being able to get in for $30 — and get close for $55 — is pretty reasonable. If we had $250 to spend on a ticket…. well, we’d go for the floor tickets and go four or five times, but that’s us.

– photo by Megan McLean