SOMETIMES, you just have to wait a long time before you can see your favourite artist in concert. And when demand for tickets far outstrips supply, it might seem that you'll never realise this particular ambition.

One fan of Bruce Springsteen, however, has just demonstrated the virtues of endless patience.

In a post on Facebook, Joanne Gibson, who lives in Yukon, northwest Canada, said earlier this week: “I missed out 40 years ago in Birmingham NEC because it was the day before my A-level chemistry exam. Now I’m retired and living on a different continent I finally have tickets for Vancouver in November this year!”

That Vancouver date, on November 22, comes as Springsteen, who is now 75, continues a world tour with his E Street Band that began in Tampa, Florida, in February of last year.

The 2023 tour encompassed 66 shows in 51 locations. Last year’s tour was, however, cut short when Springsteen required urgent treatment for a peptic ulcer, and several dates had to be rescheduled.

He is back on the road again, and in magical form. Next year’s run of concerts includes three at Manchester’s newest venue, Co-op Live, on May 14, 17 and 20, and two at Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium, on June 4 and 7.

Thousands of fans took part in pre-sales last Wednesday for three of those UK concerts (the May 14 and June 7 dates were added on Friday due to “phenomenal demand”). Some got lucky but many others took to such platforms as X and Facebook to complain.

“The ticket merry-go-round continues”, one grumpy fan wrote on X. “Ticketmaster et al are just not fit for purpose and don't get me started on the bots and the idiots who say, Oh i got 2, popped back in saw better ticks so grabbed 2 more, anyone want to buy”.

Others piled in with similar views, although some gleeful fans couldn't resist sharing news of their good fortune: “I got tickets easily. Thru the coop app. Don’t get what the fuss is!” or “Bagged 3 for Manchester 2nd night no problem”.

Tickets for the gigs went on sale to the general public on Friday.

Next summer is shaping up as a bumper one for major-league concerts, with Springsteen in May and June, Coldplay visiting Hull (twice) and London’s Wembley Stadium (ten gigs) in August and September, and Oasis’s long-awaited reunion concerts in July, August and September. Billy Joel will playing Murrayfield and Anfield in June.

Coldplay, whose new album, Moon Music, looks likely to follow all of the previous nine studio albums in topping the British charts, embarked on their Music of the Spheres tour  in Costa Rica in March 2002.

Not only have they broken concert records in countries from Greece to Thailand, but they have also recorded remarkable tour receipts.

As Pollstar, the trade publication for the concert and live music industry, recorded a couple of weeks ago, Music of the Spheres has become the highest-grossing rock tour of all time. It has surpassed the $1 billion threshold for a single tour with a $1.06 billion cumulative gross from 164 performances reported since its March 2022 launch, with more than 9.6 million tickets being sold so far on the tour.

Chris Martin and his bandmates - Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion - topped Pollstar’s list of the top five touring artists in 2024, followed by Luis Miguel, Bad Bunny, Springsteen and The E Street Band, and Madonna. Springsteen’s number-four slot, the publication added, was based on a “$201.5 million haul from 1.38 million tickets sold at 33 concerts during his ongoing world tour booked through July 2025”.

LIVE, the federation that speaks for Britain’s live music industry, said recently that spending on the UK live music sector and associated businesses had hit a record £6.1bn last year.

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Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, which was launched in 2023, reportedly had a gross income of more than $1 billion in ticket sales globally, to say nothing of the $250 million generated from the sales of the Eras Tour film and $200 million from merchandise sales.

As for Springsteen, he has certainly had more than a few troubles to contend with, in addition to a brush with peptic ulcer disease so serious that he was afraid he would never be able to sing again.

His wife Patti Scialfa, a long-standing member of the E Street Band, revealed recently that she had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2018. His mother Adele, who bought him his first electric guitar and encouraged him to become a musician, died last January, aged 98.

But as anyone who saw him at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield in the summer of 2023, he remains a peerless live performer.

Critics routinely run out of superlatives as they review his concerts.

After attending a Springsteen concert in Cardiff in May, the Daily Telegraph’s Neil McCormick, describing him as “perhaps the greatest performer rock has ever witnessed”, wrote this: “The challenge of writing a Springsteen review is to come up with superlatives adequate to the occasion, and perhaps to persuade the few remaining sceptics that this supreme rock and roller really is as great as everyone says he is. Because he really is. I first saw him back in 1985, at Wembley Stadium, and I was astonished that a man and a band could command such a huge space with such intimate charisma, summoning a spiritual bond of sweat, blood and music.

“Can Springsteen and his ageing bandmates really keep this level of performance up for much longer? The octogenarian Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney have shown it is possible”.

Springsteen himself has often spoken of the joys he derives from hitting the road again.

As he says in the trailer for Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, a documentary that premieres on Hulu and Disney+ on October 25: “Since I was 16, playing live has been a deep and lasting part of who I am, and how I justify my existence here on Earth”.

Some people may complain about the price of concert tickets, the frustrations experienced while queuing online, and all the ancillary costs, such as travel and accommodation. But the chance to see an older generation of rock and pop superstars in the fleshy, even in a cavernous stadium, is very real. Paul McCartney's current tour sees him play Liverpool's Co-op Live and London's O2 in December. Bob Dylan's world tour, which began in 2021, brings him to Edinburgh's Usher Hall on November 5 and 6. Tickets for all these shows were in extremely high demand. And fans of the Rolling Stones are hoping that the band can extend their Hackney Diamonds tour, such a big success in the US, to these shores soon.

David Hepworth, the journalist and broadcaster, puts it skilfully in his latest book, Hope I Get Old Before I Die.

Writing about Springsteen, but making a more general point, he says: "A huge amount of the emotional charge that long-time fans draw from going to see their favourite bands performing when both band and audience are in the evening of their days comes from simply being there to watch the walk on stage, to be there to witness them still together with their old friends from their teenage years, playing the songs they first played way back when and still surviving, which is the greatest reward in itself".