Luck, Kindness Find a Place in Line for Jackson Tickets

On Monday, desire was not a streetcar, but a lust to see Michael Jackson on stage. To the lucky few, fate was kind. Others had to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. for an advertised two-night stand by Jackson at the 15,000-capacity Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Nov. 7-8. They were gone within an hour, but tickets for an unannounced third show, on Nov. 9, were quickly put on sale. Before long, according to Fred Rosen, chairman of the board of TicketMaster, those were sold too.

At Music Plus in Westminster, one of about 100 TicketMaster outlets in Southern California, the lucky included 44 people who had raced to the store Sunday to secure blue wristbands giving them the right to buy up to six tickets each.

Getting tickets to the biggest-name rock shows can be a mercenary business. Scalpers and brokers pay premium prices for tickets and resell them for hundreds of dollars. On Monday, ticket agencies in Orange County already were quoting prices of $200 to $400 for a Jackson ticket in the first 10 to 20 rows.

But outside the Westminster Music Plus, in the minutes leading up to zero hour, the kindness of strangers was very much in evidence.

The system for getting Jackson tickets--aimed at making things harder for scalpers--worked like this: On Sunday at 2:30 p.m., the promoter, Avalon Attractions, put out word over seven radio stations that wristbands entitling holders to buy tickets would be given out--first-come, first served--at Music Plus stores. Those who won the race were in a position to buy Monday. (May Co. department stores, which also house TicketMaster outlets, had a different system of issuing purchase rights early Monday).

The Music Plus system put Jimmy Willis, 12, and his father, Jim Sr., at the front of the line at the store in Westminster. It put others, such as Marsha Besley, in much the same position as Tennessee Williams’ character Blanche DuBois--dependent upon kindnesses that others might not be inclined to give.

Besley, who skipped her usual Monday morning tennis match to try her hand at ticket acquisition, found kindness in the Willises’ hearts. Father and son needed only three tickets for themselves; they bought three more for Besley, charging her only the $55 face value for front-row seats worth several times that to ticket brokers.

“I wouldn’t get them for somebody who was going to scalp them,” said Jim Willis Sr., a Westminster service station owner.

Heidi Mak, who bought extra tickets for a Huntington Beach lawyer who was in line, said she came by her wristband by chance Sunday afternoon. Word that Jackson “priority bands” were being issued arrived just as she was returning a tape she had bought at the store. She said she and her husband had discussed the ethics of ticket profiteering the night before.

“I just don’t have the heart to do that,” she said. “I don’t want people to do it to me.” Mak bought two $35 tickets for herself and gave the rest of her quota to James MacPhee at face value.

At the May Co. in Westminster, where more than 100 would-be ticket buyers gathered, there was some disgruntlement with the system. Paul Farr of Newport Beach was irate over the advantage it gave buyers who listened for the radio announcement, and at the different sales policies between Music Plus and May Co. outlets. Farr suggested that promoters should announce well in advance when tickets will go on sale, limit the number each person can get and sell to the first to show up at the outlet.

That, however, would lead to huge lines that would clog ticket outlets and disrupt neighboring businesses, said Brian Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions.

The answer, said Ticketmaster’s Rosen, is a choice between far higher prices for superstar tickets or more consumer resistance to the scalping business. “The public likes to complain” about the system for allocating tickets, said TicketMaster’s Rosen, “yet the public goes to the scalpers. How do you protect the public from themselves?”

Murphy said Word on Jackson’s plans for possible shows in Los Angeles is expected early in June. “I’m confident that Michael will not ignore the Los Angeles market,” he said.