Features
Barley Smashes Imola Record
The AC/DC show that Claudio Trotta’s Barley Arts put on at the Imola Autodrome July 9 is starting to look like a landmark event in Italian live music history.
Photo: Ennio Leanza / Keystone via AP
The 92,000 tickets sold, all of them before Christmas, broke the Bologna racetrack’s attendance record, held by Live Nation for the 80,000 people it did with Vasco Rossi at a Heineken Jammin’ Festival.
It was also the second-largest crowd for any international act, beaten only by the 146,000 tickets that Fran Tomasi sold for U2’s show at Reggio Emilia in 1997.
Trotta’s firm once announced that it had broken even that record by putting 165,264 punters onto Reggio Emilia airport for a Ligabue show in 2005, although it seems it’s no longer laying claim to that one.
Securing Italy’s only AC/DC show for Bologna cemented Trotta’s reputation at the venue to such a degree that his Barley Arts has just been given a two-year extension on its contract to run it.
The other international soon due to visit Italy with Barley Arts as promoter include Mike, Chemical Brothers, and