How did people book tickets for concerts and so on before the internet?

[Headphonesin]

I’m not even young, before I get a load of MNetters scorning my lack of knowledge, I just didn’t go to a concert until I was 35!

Even things like shows at the theatre, events on for kids - I hear about them all through social media and through websites, so wondering how people would go about it before good old google and Facebook?

We queues at our local record shop or, failing that, just turned up and hoped someone was selling tickets outside.

I lived in a small backwater town, no trendy record shops or nearby box offices for us so it was phone or post. I recall sending off for tickets, with a little note and including a cheque and stamped addressed envelope for return of said tickets! None of this checking your seat number and view of the stage malarky in the olden days! 😄

I queued from 6am for my Bros tickets, age 10!
It sounds insane now but my Mum dropped me and a friend off to do it.

That was my first concert 35 years ago.

Where I lived in the US, it was mostly by phone or in person at the box office.

There was also Mike Lloyd music in both Newcastle -u-lyme and Hanley. I think that's where we used to go for tickets. I went to a fair few gigs from age 15 onwards so I must have procured tickets somehow!

At the local record shop. They’d sometimes offer a coach and ticket deal, which we would always do.

I slept out overnight for REM tickets. I also bought a ticket, second hand, from a guy. He came to my house with his passport to show my mother, to prove it was a legitimate ticket lol.

I got the strap at school for skiving off to queue for.... Showaddywaddy tickets at the City Hall, Newcastle.
Was worth it on two counts. Got the tickets for me and 4 mates and was accepted as 'cool' by the bad girls for taking the strap without crying🤣🤣

I remember camping/ queuing outside virgin records in about 1997/98 for take that tickets. I was only about 15.

The first concerts I went to in the early 80s were booked through a local travel agent/bus company. You could buy just the concert ticket on its own, or go on the coach they put on. The concerts were advertised in the company's office window.

You'd also see them advertised in the local paper and you'd ring up/go the Box Office. They'd post your tickets out to you, if the former.

Blooming heck, I'm ancient.... I'm talking 1975/76 😒

Sorry, thought I'd quoted this🫣

You could go to the box office at the venue, or you could write in requesting tickets, and send a postal order or a cheque.

By telephone for those of us living in the sticks at the time. Far more effort for us and the sellers, but I don’t remember the huge booking fees - they seem to have come later. At one point if you booked tickets for our local arena at the box office there was no fee, then it had to be cash for no fee, then they closed the box office!

We lived not far from Wembley so we'd ask our dad to get up at stupid o'clock on a Saturday morning to take us to the box office and queue fir tickets for take that. There were big signs up saying you were not allowed to buy more than 6 tickets.we did go to a concert at Earls Court once but I think we must have phoned for tickets then.

Using the phone in the early to mid 1990s was quite traumatic because my parents refused to get a cordless or push button phone, we had to use the old style bakelite rotary phone which took ages - I blamed them all the times we couldn't get through to play games or speak to bands, on Going Live, because all the 8s in the number meant it took too long to dial!! 30 years have passed and I'm still not quite over it! 🤣🤣

It's so weird how reliant we are on tech and how it almost seems impossible we ever did things differently. I remember driving to France with DH with just an enormous map and very sketchy knowledge of French to get us around.

You got them from the venue, or phoned to book them. It seems to me it was actually easier to get tickets in those days.

for a really big show you would queue at the box office. Sometimes there were also satellite offices.

Record Shops. They had a seperate cash box.
The first time I went to Glasto, 1983, it was booked through a local coach firm! In fact lots of concerts were combined with coach travel.
Also just went to the box office. Never had credit cards so used to go the box office. Or sometimes ticket agents in London, I remember Stargreen in Oxford Circus.

Yeah, from record shops or box offices, back in the 80s. As a teenager I didn't have a bank card, so I don't know if booking online was an option - wasn't an option for me anyway.

We knew who was going to be touring from radio discussions (the same way I now know that Beyonce is planning a tour), or from ads in the record shops/box offices/etc.

I did manage to buy concert tickets over the phone in Japan a few years later, with minimal Japanese lol. I don't remember how we knew that band was touring though - it's lost in the mists of my mind.

Certain shops sold an allocation which would be sent back after a number of days to the venue. Went to the box office, paid cash or cheque then debit card as tech moved on. Picked some tickets up for school friends for Queen, Night at the Opera tour. 6.30 show at Manchester because they did 2 shows in one night!!!! Overnight queue for Springsteen at Mcr Apollo in 1981. £12 a ticket, went both nights, centre stage 3rd row. Or Genesis, mid 90s. Overnight queue, Mcr Apollo. Then Ticket master started taking over. Booking fees, telephone booking and it all got out of hand for me. I don't go now. I could ring a venue e.g. NEC, talk to a sales rep about seats, location etc and get them. Mid 2000s McCartney played Sheffield. I rang on the afternoon and got returns, prime seats. Springsteen, Human Touch tour in 87. Sheffield had production seats available on the day. Extra seats that were put in once the stage was installed. Front row, to one side.Much more people, much bigger gigs, much higher prices now. Then no VIP Golden Circle bollox, meet and greet etc.

Birmingham used to have a ticket shop mainly to service the NEC.

My friends and I used to queue up outside the venue box office on the day tickets went on sale. We'd take it in turns to do this, esp it was side someone big, like Prince.

Also as another PP said, used concert ticket shops in London. There would be signs outside saying eg: best seats Duran Duran Wembley, Japan Hammersmith etc

Back in the early 80s my friend and I ended up with four pairs of Duran Duran tickets as each place we went to had better tickets, ie closer to the stage. We spent over a weeks wages in total.

The next day we stuck ads on our work notice board - sold them all that day. Think the dearest ones were £3.50 each 😂

We only ever went to concerts at Wembley stadium and my mum would buy the tickets from the box office at the stadium.

There was a record shop in town that sold them or there was a local company that did gig and coach packages and we used to get my dad to phone them and pay on his credit card then me and my mates would all pay him back 😁

Well before the Internet, we used to have to send a young lad down to purchase tickets on our behalf. However if they were busy clearing the moat or throttling a sheep for dinner or whatever we would have to go ourselves. Can you believe it?

So that meant having the Sedan Chair brought round to the front of the house and a rather dull journey to the Theatre. Then there would be a tedious meeting with the Manger (dreadful dandruff, that man) and a throat-burning glass of sherry before we got out tickets.

However ever since Timmers (Sir Tim Berners-Lee) made the internet (in his garden shed I believe) we have be able to dismiss two of the lads and saved ourselves some of the old Mazuma (to coin a phrase) into the bargain and get the tickets 'on-line' (that's the phrase the youngsters use now!).

So every one's a winner, except perhaps the two lads who now live on the street along with the obligatory 'dog on a string'.