In the years after Neil Diamond’s arena-opening show at The Mark, nobody could beat his record.
It took Diamond 20 minutes to sell the entire arena out. And despite the immense talent that came through, that number couldn’t be matched.
It took 90 minutes for Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper to do it. A bit over an hour for Billy Joel. It was 45 minutes to sell-out for Rod Stewart and 50 minutes for KISS.
In 1997, Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn took 45 minutes, too. Even when Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls played an exhibition game there, they missed the fastest sell-out record by a quarter-hour.
But the record was broken in October 1997, when tickets went on sale for Elton John. The new record? 18 minutes. Tickets started at $50.
“I think Elton John going on sale last Saturday was living proof of a performer at his peak at the right time,” The Mark director of marketing Charlie Schilling told the Moline Dispatch at the time.
That was certainly the truth in 1997. The iconic pop rock singer penned songs for “The Lion King” musical, which debuted on Broadway earlier that year. His 25th studio album, “The Big Picture,” debuted in the Billboard Top 10.
“Could the timing of Elton’s visit to The Mark be any better?” Barb Ickes wrote in a column for the Rock Island Argus. “I mean, the guy’s on top of the world — again.”
Schilling and Ickes both noted that there was also tragedy behind Elton John’s return to the spotlight.
‘Candle in The Wind 1997’
Less than two months before the concert, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a tragic car accident. John and the princess were close friends, and her death came a month after the passing of another of the singer’s friends, fashion designer Gianni Versace.
John was asked to perform at Diana’s funeral, and he performed a special version of the hit 1973 ballad “Candle In The Wind,” dubbed “Candle In The Wind 1997.” After its release, the song topped the Billboard charts for 14 consecutive weeks. It became John’s last No. 1 single to date and won the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
“Candle in The Wind 1997” became the first song ever certified diamond by the RIAA in the U.S. It’s still the best-selling physical single of all-time, with almost 9 million sales.
The fact that John was coming to town at all was a revelation for the Quad-Cities, still kicking its feet at its transition to an A-list destination.
“Ten, even five years ago, if you were going to see a big concert, you’d have to go to Peoria, Chicago or Ames — all of them hours away,” Steve Hyman, the executive director of The Mark, told the Dispatch in 1997. “Now people can drive 10 minutes and see somebody like Rod Stewart perform.”
Hyman said in the interview that business at The Mark improved in each of its first four years open. With the fan appetite for the show, John was almost certainly going to help make it five.
Ahead of the concert, the scene in downtown Moline was chaotic. People hounded attendees, hoping for someone to have an extra ticket. The Quad-City Times interviewed fans from as nearby as Dubuque to as far away as Peru — the country, not the Illinois city.
The spectrum of fan attire on the street was something of an abstract painting.
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“They wore short skirts and three-piece suits, black leather and Bulls jerseys, West High School letter jacks and Harley-Davidson T-shirts,” Jae Bryson wrote in the Times. “All were in search of their clutch of precious seats.”
A souvenir vendor outside sold black shirts with John’s face on them for $25 a piece. Like the tickets, they sold out.
‘If affection were money…’
Inside the venue, the scene was explosive, too. Love bombs were set off after every song. It was enough to perhaps soothe the still-grieving John, Sean Leary wrote in the Dispatch.
“If affection were money, Elton John would have been Superfly-TNT-Bill Gates squared at The Mark of the Quad-Cities Wednesday evening,” he wrote.
Leary even tossed in an internet joke that perhaps captures the era as well as that Bulls jersey detail.
“Standing ovations routinely bookended both classic and recent hits; roses poured forth like complaints about Windows ’95,” he wrote. “And enough positive vibes to keep a commune full of hippies out of the peyote for weeks marinated the building.”
Throughout his lengthy set, John played the hits: “I’m Still Standing,” “Can You Feel The Love Tonight,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Honky Cat,” “Tiny Dancer.” Noticeably missing was “Candle In The Wind 1997,” which John said would be too fresh of a wound to get into.
LaBua said some fans headed to take a bathroom break when John played newer tracks. But still, she called it “one of the freshest, highest-energy shows The Mark has ever hosted.”
John returned again in 1999, 2007 and 2017, and every time the Quad-Cities turned up in huge numbers. In 2017, the show became one of the highest-grossing events to ever come to The Mark.
Still, in 1997, Schilling was pretty confident John’s “fastest sell-out” record would be tough to break. He noted how many phone operators would need to be active on-site at Ticketmaster to truly withstand the volume. But he said, with some technology, it would be possible.
“Will there be another person who comes along and breaks the record? Probably,” Schilling told the Dispatch. “Ticketmaster is continuing to grow, the number of operators, the number of phone lines is growing. All it takes is the right artist at the right time and it’ll be done.”
He was certainly right about Ticketmaster. The entertainment company grew, and grew and grew some more, though more online than over the phone.
In the last decade, it has been subject to intense criticism by people who say it has now monopolized the live entertainment industry, after it merged with competitor Live Nation in 2009.
In 2022, when tickets for popstar Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour went on sale, over 2 million tickets sold in one day. The Ticketmaster website crashed due to demand, catalyzing her fans to criticize the company for not defending against scalpers and employing expensive “junk fees.”
Given Swift’s ravenous fandom, the reaction led to political consequences. In the last two years, a series of bipartisan bills have been introduced in the U.S. Senate to address issues on ticket-selling sites. The company has also been the subject of congressional hearings, where legislators quoted lyrics from Swift’s songs.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is planning to file an anti-trust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company.
Nowadays, if affection were money, Swift may have John beat. But money is money, and Ticketmaster takes that cake.
This story is part of a series called “Timeless Tickets,” where we’re aiming to find the most notable concert in the Quad-Cities, every year from 1960 to today.
To read more “Timeless Tickets” stories, click here.
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