'Paul McCartney winked right at me': the fans who buy nosebleed seats – and get whisked to the front

Billy Joel has announced he’s finally winding down his record-breaking residency at Madison Square Garden, after a decade of playing one sold-out concert a month at the New York venue.

Legions of fans have flocked to the arena to see him in that time, but early in the residency Joel said he wouldn’t sell tickets to the front rows, because, he told Billboard in 2014, they were often sold at inflated prices to rich people; he’d see them “sitting there puffing on a cigar, ‘entertain me, piano man.’ They don’t stand up, make noise.”
He wanted the “real fans” at the front – so he began sending crew members to the back of the venue to scout them out. “They get people from the worst seats and bring ’em in to the front rows. This way you’ve got people in the front row that are really happy to be there,” he said.

Source: Matthew Cantor/theguardian.com