I was working off the WSJ’s online version of the latest on the Ticketmaster Live Nation merger. Idolator posted the following, which, it turns out, is in the paper version but not the online one*:

Bruce Springsteen has come out publicly against the deal. But people close to the situation say that several of the high-profile acts associated with both companies—including Bono, Don Henley and Jay-Z—are likely to speak out in favor of it in coming days.

U2 has a 360 deal with Live Nation, and for a time at least had hefty stock holdings in the company. Jay-Z has a deal as well, and as for Henley, he’s in the Eagles, which from since time immemorial has been represented by Irving Azoff, who ran Front Line Management, which was recently bought by … Ticketmaster. Azoff’s to be the “executive chairman” of the new company and, according to speculation in the NY Post (see my previous entry), will soon make short work of Michael Rapino, current head of Live Nation.

The asterisked caveat below aside, the prospective sight of people like Jay-Z, Henley and Bono lining up to defend a consumer-hostile, artist-endangering merger of two of the worst companies in the world is a tiny bit nauseating. Forgive the slightly dated reference, but it gave me a feeling similar to the one I had while watching the Freddy Mercury memorial concert back in the 1990s, where a bunch of aging rock stars played for hours without being able to mention AIDS. Not a great moment in the rock annals.

 * Funny, I can’t find the Bono graf online… though it’s in the print version and if you search Google News for “Bono Ticketmaster” the sentence fragment quoted by Idolator comes up, but not in the actual story linked to. It’s possible the graf is problematic and the paper excised it.